minisculey more brave on the internets

So, I have very limited presence on the internets (other than Facebook, on which I am prolific), mostly because I spend a bunch of time sowing my own garden instead of reaching out into other folks' spaces. For instance, I follow all the big players on Twitter - John Hodgman, Wil Weaton, Neil Gaiman, etc. - but I almost never try to have any conversations with them. I hardly ever comment on other people's blogs if I don't know them in real life. I don't even comment on people's photography on Flickr.

This has almost nothing to do with having my own head in my butt, and everything to do with my crippling self-consciousness in possibly having *anything* positive to contribute to these folks' lives. I mean, what can I add to Maggie Mason's life that she doesn't already have? Pretty much nothing.

However, on Friday, Gina Tripani posted this tweet:

...and I thought to myself, hey, that seems to be a safe question, and Gina seems to be a very nice person who would not shun me on the entire world wide web for thinking that I could add to this conversation. So I tweeted a response back.

Today, she posted the results on her blog, and not only was my response one of her selected replies, but she also characterized it as being something clever!

I do realize how transparently fangirl I'm acting, but really, I don't care, because no one made fun of me for stretching out of my comfort zone, so suck it, Trebek.

In case you're interested, this was my response: