Twitter makes me feel like a loser. Really, all social networking does. Lately it seems I’m basing a good amount of my already sparse self-esteem on the number of my online “followers” and “friends”.  Therapy has taught me, if nothing else, that measuring and weighing various aspects of my life makes me feel good. Lucky for me, because there’s a lot to measure: bank accounts, credit card balances, weight gain/loss, number of children I keep track of, and now, the number of “Followers” I have on Twitter.

Facebook is Twitter’s evil twin. By last count I have 49 friends on Facebook and by FB standards this puts me on par with your basic nose picking-loser. To clarify, a FB “friend” means someone who’s agreed to share their basic profile information with me and in return will put up with the too many to count photo postings of my kids. I’m really not that popular in real life either, and come to think of it, I don’t even know what the inside of some of my FB friends’ homes look like.

But Twitter is where I really become unhinged. I have 7 “followers”, one of which wants to share her sexy photos with me and another is my husband, @whatgoingonhere, so that one doesn’t count either. This whole tracking of friends and followers has become such a thing for me that I can be found refreshing my Twitter/FB pages nano-seconds after I’ve logged-on, just willing with sheer concentration, I’ll have a new Friend/Follower. It goes something like this:

On Facebook: Log-On. Refresh. Nothing. O.K. one more refresh and then I’ll stop. Nothing.

Switch to Twitter: Repeat Facebook steps. Nothing.

If you feel sorry for me and would like to do something charitable, you could always follow me on Twitter. Like my husband says after a romp, “I’m not above a charitable act.”