Hashtags that had never been tagged before. There was respect, comradeship, reciprocity. See, in those days, there was personality in it. I realized then that tweeting is the greatest endeavor a procrastinator could want.

Things were sad on a lotta’ hashtags for hours after that. Favstar bot was there-congratulations all around from Favstar bot. What could be better, than to be vaguely known and loved and retweeted by so many different weakly-tied people? When he Twittercided-and by the way, he Twittercided the death of a Twitterstar-when he Twittercided, hundreds of thousands of people mentioned and retweeted.

Tweets popping up geotagged from 31 different states! He’d even take the phone on the road, location-activated. And what he’d do, he’d wake up, grab his phone, put on his Birkenstock sandals, sit in his living room- I’ll never forget this- charge that phone, and tweet all day. I once met a tweeter, username of He was 34 years old. You can steal that one if you like, Biff. You don’t have the puns in you, not like your Old Man and the Tweets, who Earnedhis Trendingway. You never understood, Biff, because you just don’t have what it takes, ya’ lazy bum. It’s about getting those favorites, those mentions, those retweets. See, it’s not about money, or power, or telling a good story with this Twitter business-and Twitter business is definitely business- it’s about being well liked. And it ain’t true what they say, Biff, because sometimes it can be too late to rebuild a following. I know you’re a big shot with your account out on the West Coast- lotta’ followers out on the West Coast- but don’t think your old man won’t block ya’. Hell, I may as well just delete the goddamn account. Yessir, old Willy Loman’s taking a break. They’ve eaten my fruit and thrown away my tweets.

If I had it to do over again, with more than 140 characters, I’d have changed it to, “All you need to get a retweet is a smile, a shoeshine, and a schlocky, pun-driven joke surfing atop the goddamn trending wave, because nobody even stands face-to-face in order to give a damn about style in this world anymore!” Guys, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve realized that the glory days are gone. Not even a favorite for the New England man. Know how many retweets I got on it from my followers, what’s left of the no good sons-of-bitches, anyway? Zip. “All you need in life is a smile and a shoeshine.” I want the four of us to take a good look at these words for a minute, written by a once-great man: Linda, Happy, Biff, pull some seats up to the old dashboard.

Biff loman lost