The last 24 hours have been as much of a stress test of Twitter as ever I can remember, what with big items in the news provoking a lot of social media connections. Speaking as a guy with a day job, it’s tough to keep up with the backlog at times, although honestly, it’s mostly an embarrassment of riches.

My criteria for following people on Twitter (I don’t use other social networks) is twofold: smart and interesting gets you added, but the problem is that smart and interesting people tend to follow each other, which tends to lead to smart and interesting traffic that is exponentially greater than if all of my friends were strangers to each other. I wonder sometimes if MC Frontalot didn’t have the right idea¹ after all.

All of which is to say, I feel guilty that I don’t have time to keep up with all the people I want to; I held off for the longest time adding even three of the Strip Search Artists to my twitterfeed, on account of I just can’t manage the time to follow all twelve. The “hippie love commune” that developed during filming that gave Messers Krahulik and Holkins such difficulty means that these kids² communicate with a fervor and regularity and volume that I cannot keep up with. I had figured it might have tapered off a bit, seeing as how they all just met six months ago and those exciting new friend! tendencies fade after a while.

Nope, they still can’t get enough of each other, even though they all seem to be migrating to Seattle; soon they’ll all live within 10 km of each, meet daily at a coffeeshop, and still tweet to each other rather than call across the room.

All of which is even more to say, I love that photo of the Artists imitating their cardboard cut-out self-portrait stand-ups. Monica and Abby are adorable, Amy and Tavis are fierce, Katie’s pose cracks me the hell up, and Maki the pagan athiest science-guy is one haircut away from Jesus in da Vinci’s Last Supper. Damn them all, it’s been half a year, I should be able to stop talking about them.

Except they keep doing things. Case in point: Ms T Falcone let me know this morning about plans she’s got for the immediate future. Now that she’s safely ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, a new locale demands new projects. Cardigan Weather, her diary comic, will be ending to make room for a new comic to tell the things she wants to tell:

I don’t want to give away too much, but I can say this. Have you ever felt like logging on is like coming home?

Watch this space for further information regarding Untitled Amy T Falcone Project, her inevitably runaway-successful Kickstarter, and the rest of a career that is going to kick so many asses. Also watch this space for what will probably be regular announcements for everybody else involved in Strip Search; I suspect the answer to When can I stop writing about these darn kids? is Never.

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¹ For a considerable period of time, the esteemed Mr Alot had a policy of only following 50 people on Twitter to keep the information to a manageable level; to follow somebody new, somebody old had to go. It appears he’s relaxed his limit somewhat these days, but he’s still following considerably fewer than the 250 that I allow myself, and I have no idea how some of my friends follow 700, 800, 1000 or more people.

² I’m old, I can call ’em kids. Heck, Hurricane Erika just turned 30 yesterday, meaning that I was taking finals in high school while she was objecting to the new, bright, loud, cold world she found herself ejected into. Kids.