From time to time, Baby Jane Hudson appears here with her question and answer column, But You Are In That Chair: Baby Jane’s Advice For the Confused, Depressed and Clueless. Today she continues (after a long layoff due to the holidays, winter, a small fire in her music room, a leaky vertebrae and a small drinking problem, since dealt with) her exploration of all things social media.
Dear Baby Jane,
Recently I went on a job interview and the interviewer asked me if I happened to follow him on Twitter. I guess this guy is some big deal on Twitter. I had to say no, I don’t follow him. Then he said, “Well, who do you follow?” and “How many people follow you?” The truth is, not that many people follow me. But am I to be judged solely on how many Twitter followers I have? Do I have nothing else to offer? What is this world coming to?
Don’t Judge,
San Diego, CA
Dear Don’t Judge,
Do you follow me on Twitter? @ThisIsBabyJane? Huh? Do you? Well, probably not. I only have 14 followers. I think 12 of them are robots. Don’t get me wrong – I love robots – but it can be demoralizing on a site like Twitter not to have any human followers. And I’m sure my tweets are way, way funnier than yours yet I hardly have any followers. I guess there are programs out there that help you find more people to connect with but who has time to deal with that? I, for one, can’t let social media take over my life. I only allow it 15 minutes of my day. I get up at 11 a.m., have a cig, have a orange juice and vodka, open the front door, look around for stuff left on my doorstep (people are always leaving stuff on my doorstep – sometimes its fresh milk, sometimes its dead roses from Mickey Rooney, sometimes its shit in a plastic bag), watch TV, watch more TV, drink, drink, drink, cry, put on old outfits from when I was young, sing, burn old sheet music, drink and then, AND ONLY THEN, do I go on Twitter and poop out a few tweets. As for the blowhard who wanted to know if you followed him? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Baby Jane
Dear Baby Jane,
I started a blog about being both cheap and fashionable. Maybe you can relate? Anyway, I need to crush my cheap and fashionable competition. It’s getting to be a crowded field. Do you have any SEO advice for my site? Any ways in which I can reach out to bloggers and get them to link to me? I have really good ideas about how to make jeans from Walmart look hot!
Cheapie in Chesapeake Bay
Dear Cheapie,
Not only do I have no idea what you’re talking about, you sound very annoying. But I don’t get many letters so I’m going to address yours. First, no, I can’t relate. Who do you think designed my pinafores and sailor suits? Adrian, that’s who! Don’t know who Adrian is? Look him up! My closet is full of designer labels from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s… I even have some heroin chic pieces from the 90s. I hate cheap and fashionable. Second, what is SEO? Third, reaching out to bloggers – the best thing to do is to go to their blogs and fawn all over ’em. “I love you, I love your site, I love everything you say! BRAVO!!!!” and once you’ve won their confidence and mutual admiration, you get them to link to you or you run them over with a car and lock them in a room for 20 years. And don’t write me back saying that’s too hard – I’ve done it!
Baby Jane
Dear Baby Jane,
Are you on LinkedIn? Can we connect professionally? Although you don’t know me, I am also a singer and vaudevillian performer living in the past and I’m hoping to find like-minded souls online to help guide me to a new job. I think someone like you would really give me the cred I’m looking for. Also, through six degrees of separation, I hope to connect to Gallagher. Unless you know him and would hook me up?
Razzle Dazzle
Chicago, IL
Dear Razzle Dazzle,
I guard my friendship with Gallagher very closely and wouldn’t feel quite right about hooking you up to him via social media. There are certain genius artists – Gallagher, me, Liz Taylor – who you just don’t approach that way. Also, I think I have all the vaudeville connections I can handle right now. If I align myself too closely with that world, it might hold me back from making the jump to Broadway.
Baby Jane
Dear Baby Jane,
What is Stumbleupon?
Confused,
Green Bay, WI
Dear Confused,
To stumble is to sort of fall but not fall all the way. It happens to me quite often – I’m trying to get upstairs to go to bed at 4 a.m. after waking up under the piano again and my toe catches the edge of the stair and I stumble forward. Now, I much prefer this to planting my face on the stairs or on the rug. I’ve had such severe rug burn! However, sometimes I “stumble upon” something good. This means that I find some lost treasure or nugget or morsel or memento mori. Here are some examples: the other day I stumbled upon a box of chocolate-covered cherries from 1954 and they were still good; recently I stumbled upon a rumpled $10 bill in an old coat and immediately spent it on Totino’s Pizza Rolls and cigarettes; once I stumbled upon a rat skeleton in the back of my closet and was instantly reminded of my own mortality. See how that works?
Baby Jane
Dear Baby Jane,
Do you think that maybe some of the hot girls who follow me on Twitter are real? I know – they only have 2 tweets and 17,000 followers or 17,000 tweets and two followers but I like the way their boobs look in their bikini tops. Also, if you follow me in the next hour you could win an iPad.
Horn Dogs and Corn Porn
Lafayette, AK
Dear Horn and Porn and Corn,
Can you imagine how wonderful it would have been to have Twitter when there weren’t so many twats? Why, you could be friends with Joan Crawford or Rita Hayworth or Carole Lombard and get nice, studio-approved tweets in your stream! How pleasant would that be? It would be all about the lovely raspberry Jell-O in the commissary and the fab weekend at the beach and how hard they are working to make their next picture. It wouldn’t be all this come look at my sickening porn and follow me to win some at-home airbrush make-up kit. I know, I should despise the studio system but I have nostalgia for it. At least we knew what was what – no need for verified celebrity accounts. No chance of Ashton Kutcher going rogue and tweeting whatever he wants 1900 times per day. Actually, he never would have been allowed to marry that oldie in the first place. He would be making comedies like The Rage of Paris or Mad Miss or Dog Be Gone and happy for his $250 per week. Wait. How did I get on this topic?
Anyway, I don’t have a need for an iPad. The only way to get me to do those things is to give away a case of Glenfiddich or Glenlivet or anything that starts with “Glen.”
Baby Jane Recommends
You know what I hate? When I forget something. I try writing lists but then I lose them. When I forget something, it’s usually something important. When I was out I was supposed to get a carton of cigarettes. When I was out I was supposed to get more Dinty Moore stew. When I was out I was supposed to get more Soduku puzzles. What does this mean? I have to go out again.
Or what about phone numbers? You ever forget phone numbers? What about the number for poison control? I keep meaning to put that on speed dial.
What I needed was a message board. Yeah, a place to write things where I would see them and remember them. That’s why I love this chalkboard skull. Sure, you could write “I Love You” to the imaginary person in your life or you could write “Buy cigs at store, ya dope!” or “Pay water bill before they shut ‘er off!” or “Watch Faces of Death 2-nite!”
Better hurry. In the time I sat here blathering on about it, someone else probably bought it.