Barack Obama Follows Me On Twitter

At some point over the last 13 years that I've had a Twitter account, Barack Obama, the former President of the United States, one of the most powerful people on the planet, followed me.

Screenshot from my Twitter account on 10/14/2021

I didn't know about this until a colleague at work pointed it out to me. Looking back at the timeline of twitter, I can only guess that he followed me in the early days of the platform when there weren't many choices. It looks like he followed me pretty early on, since in my followers list he’s near the bottom along with friends that followed me from when I first created my account. He joined in March of 2007 and I joined in February of 2008. Twitter was a much smaller place back then and a lot more fun... not like the cesspool of hate and vitriol it's become.

Barack Obama perhaps reading one of my tweets

Obama follows 589 thousand accounts on twitter. I’m honored and humbled to be in such a select group with influence on a world leader. Curious about who I was competing against for his attention, I poked around to see who else he is following. It turns out we both have excellent taste in music...

We both follow Jetboy!

You might remember the 80’s hair band Jetboy from their hit Feel the Shake. I do. So does Barack Obama! It warms my heart to think he may have signed some executive orders while bobbing his head to Jetboy in the Oval Office.

What happens when you eat aluminium foil? You sheet metal! Get it Joe? You sheet metal!

I don’t know why he followed me. A slip of the thumb? Probably, but it’s not lost on me what an extreme responsibility this all is. More and more, we are the media we consume, and through some stroke of luck, I have a direct line to a powerful, influential, world leader. How will I wield this power? More dad jokes? More hot takes on JavaScript? You’ll have to join Barack Obama and follow me on twitter to find out! See you there.