This morning I have been dipping a toe into the Twitterverse. It's a strange word, isn't it – “Twitterverse”. The Twitter Universe. It really is a universe of sorts though – populated with subject driven worlds, related interests, and with no barriers between them. It's loud, it's cacophonous, it's fast moving, and it somehow seems to embody Norah Ephron's blogging mantra – that whatever you're saying is true for about as long as you're saying it.

Here's the thing about “dipping a toe” – before long I know I'll think “oh sod it”, hold my breath, and jump in – then find myself out of my depth, panic a bit, before realising that everything is fine. I'm fine. We're all fine. Everybody is fine. Deep breaths.

Except everybody isn't fine – certainly not in the twitterverse. Some people are really very angry indeed, and don't need much of an opportunity to tell whoever will listen exactly why they are angry. Thankfully there is a “block” button that switches them off mid-rant, never to be seen again.

I wish a block button existed in the real world.

I've been reading the tweets posted by those in the #writingcommunity – and it's been a revelation of sorts. While sitting on my own, tapping away on a keyboard in the dead of night, I often forget there's an entire world out there of others doing exactly the same. It's nice to have a window you can open to the passing torrent of happiness, sadness, anxiety, hope, laughter, and every other emotion – to find that the world is enormous, and that the invisible surrounding crowd face the same struggles, doubts, and challenges.

Anyway.

Enough pontification for the moment. I have an important mission to complete today – fussing, and feeding a good friend's dog while they are out for the day. My family always had dogs when I was young – I kind of miss it. We have cats, but they're not the same. The old saying about dogs having owners, and cats having staff is more accurate than most will admit.

I have been waiting most of the day for something sizeable to download from the internet. If our internet connection was behaving itself, I imagine it would have finished downloading quite some time ago (an engineer from the telephone company is visiting our house tomorrow morning to find out why).

I passed the time a little earlier by reading a graphic novel that's not even on my 'to read this year' list – 'Lumberjanes' – originally bought for our younger daughters a couple of years ago. They didn't show much interest in it, so it got subsumed into my own collection of books in the junk room – along with all the indie titles I have collected in recent years. It's funny – I started out only interested in comic book artwork, by the likes of Adam Hughes, Alex Ross, and Amanda Conner – but then started reading a few of them, and got sucked in. Until recent years the only graphic novels I had ever read were the Tank Girl books – probably 20 years ago now – before Jamie Hewlett went on to draw the graphics for Gorillaz, and the Winter Olympics.

I now find myself at a loose end – hence yet another blog post about nothing in particular. I should re-title the blog 'Nothing in Particular'. I could win awards for the most inconsequential content, or the least effort expended. Back in the day everybody and their dog had badges all over the blog, advertising the community awards that had been bestowed up on them. If memory serves, almost all awards were pyramid traffic schemes dressed up as awards.

While on the subject of pyramid traffic schemes, a 'hoo-haa' of sorts has been brewing on Twitter over the last few days, and it's quite entertaining in a 'can't stop watching' sort of way. I need to explain some things first though – bear with me.

On Twitter, a number of people have started including the hashtag '#WritingCommunity' in posts they want other writers to see, and perhaps comment on. This has created a belt-and-braces group functionality of sorts within the Twittersphere, with people watching search results related to the hashtag as a simple means of creating a 'channel'. Anyway. Within the group, there seems to be a mania among some to attract as many followers to themselves as possible – they dress this up as a thing called '#writerlift', and link a number of accounts to the post, with instructions to follow and/or re-share the list. There's only one problem with this idea – it's against the Twitter terms of service – terms as 'encouraging reciprocal following' (or words to that effect).

So – when the news broke that Twitter had started reprimanding people for their behaviour (spamming the crap out of the system while chasing higher and higher follower numbers), a small number of very vocal people became ever so slightly enraged that the FREE platform they were taking advantage of should be questioning their behaviour at all – and reacted really quite badly (read: amusingly, and somewhat predictably). I have therefore been sitting quietly on a nearby fence for the last few days, eating popcorn, and enjoying all the butt-hurt posts.

It's a storm in a tea-cup really, but an entertaining one. There are far more important things going on in the world right now – you know, like the US President almost declaring war on Iran. I saw a wonderful post on Facebook earlier – 'hang on while I go and catch up on the expert analysis of world events being published by the people Facebook knows I went to school with'...

This rather labyrinthine story begins the night before last, when the children decided – after I had already washed up, and cleared the kitchen – that it would be a good idea to do some “Christmas Baking”. It transpired that “Christmas Baking” really translated to “use every damn pot, pan, baking tray, saucepan, spoon, fork, knife, or whatever the hell else, and leave it all out”. I ran away and hid – happy in the knowledge that the children were making happy noises in the kitchen, and fearful of what I might discover in the morning.

It's probably worth noting that I had to be at work early the next morning, so got out of the shower, got dressed, and left without even looking at the kitchen.

Fast forward through a typically breathless working day (read: spent headbutting the desk, and wringing my fist furiously at the laptop), and I returned home in the early evening to an unfolding conflict in the middle of the kitchen. No washing up had happened, nothing had been put away, and now Miss 15 appeared to be trying to make something to eat in the middle of the devestation. When she helpfully asked my other half “what's for dinner?”, I thought it best to retreat to a safe distance and start looking for hard hats and sandbags. Of course I didn't DO that – I walked through the middle of everybody, and quietly started washing up. I might have said a number of words under my breath too.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yes. After washing up, eating dinner, and then washing up again, I snuck off to the junk room to grab an hour of peace and quiet. While noodling around on Twitter, a writer I follow posted someething about a writing community that was blowing up – and that's how I found quite possibly the best internet rabbit hole I have discovered in quite some time.

I'm not entirely sure how these things happen – how the tides of the internet work. I'm guessing somebody posted a hashtag while efusing about their circle of online friends, and it caught on – and then their friends posted it, and their friends, and so on – before long it became a flag to post in the ground, signalling to kindred spirits that among the millions pouring through the social internet, “we are here”.

This chance discovery was made within Twitter – the #writingcommunity hashtag. I lost the better part of the next hour reading, smiling, following, liking, and replying. Somehow in the most basic of all the social networks, a community had formed itself – you might almost say it had evolved. I think it's kind of wonderful that such a thing might have happened – that in the middle of the political hellscape that Twitter has become in recent years, a well-spring of ordinary folk have brought each other together.

Go check it out. Head to Twitter, and search for #writingcommunity – be warned that you might not get anything done for quite some time afterwards though.