What Would Twitter Do?

In the fifth instalment of What Would Twitter Do? I speak to Tao Lin (@tao_lin) about how he uses Twitter and his Twitter philosophy. He is the author of several books, including (most recently) Taipei, as well as Shoplifting from American Apparel and Richard Yates and more. He writes fiction, poetry and essays, and draws pictures and runs the publishing house/website Muumuu House and the film company MDMAfilms. He is one of the most generous popularizers of other writers and artists among working authors today. I think he is also one of the first people I followed on Twitter.

With Tao Lin, the persona and the person seem to have no fault lines—whether in his poetry, in comments sections on articles about him, in emails or on Twitter, his tone is consistent, original, interesting, and always accompanied by his avatar, that Daiquiri Ice blue square. Some people have identified a numbness in his voice, but to me it is more like the radical acceptance of someone encountering the world without judgement or inclination. Some sample recent tweets: “Imagining oneself meditating as a method for meditating” and “Cleaning my floor w watermelon.”

I sent him the following questions by email. He answered within a few days.

– Sheila Heti

SHEILA HETI: How do you imagine people read twitter?

TAO LIN: On their phones I think mostly. I think I’ve read the most Twitter while laying in bed or on my back, or just laying in places, like in parks or in airports. Maybe not the most, but a lot. I’ve dropped my phone on my face many times. I think other people must too, but I rarely hear about this.

SH: When you imagine your tweets going into the reader’s head, do you think of them as isolated things, or do you visualize them in a stream with other tweets?

TL: I usually envision them as isolated things. I haven’t thought about this before I think. That’s interesting, because maybe I should be visualizing them in a stream with other people’s tweets, if I want to have an idea of what people are seeing actually. Maybe that’s too complicated though.

SH: Do you save tweets in a drafts folder, or just write them and tweet?

TL: I used to have a drafts folder, which was a Gmail email draft that I would just click on when I wanted to add something and save when I was done adding something, but at some point I cleared out my entire 100+ drafts of various things. Then I think my Twitter drafts moved to a Google Drive file for a while. I would put all...