A sort-of-funny thing happened with Twitter last week. I was at the Ballston Common Noodles and Co., having a bowl of pesto cavatelli and leaching wifi from the nearby Panera while waiting to pick up Amy at a class she was teaching; when I thought, I wonder if anyone around here is on Twitter?

I did a quick search for Ballston and found this post by rosscott of chuckle-worthy comic The System, to which I subscribe. The DC webcomics meetup was going on right downstairs from me. Should I go meet up with them? I don’t do webcomics myself; I just read a few. Would I be greeted as a sincere fan of the craft, or as creepy interloping electronic local-stalker? I headed down the escalator to go and find out, and ran into the whole meetup crew as they were coming up.

The reception was positive; Ross appeared quite thrilled to meet a reader in real life. We talked a bit about webcomics and got a photo, but then I had to leave as it was time to pick up my wife.

So hey, where there’s internet, Twitter can work as an effective spontaneous meetup catalyst. Maybe it wasn’t quite meeting Shaquille O’Neal at a diner, but how many webcomic authors from my feeds have I met so far? The answer is now one.