Eric Ripert is following me

A few weeks ago, I joined Twitter on the advice of super food bloggerJaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen. It has been great. The hardest thing by far is to schedule actual “twitter sessions” during my work day, or I’ll just produce absolutely nothing and tweet all day.

But anyway, the point of this post is that on Twitter, you can “follow” people (meaning you can read their constant updates in real time) or you can be “followed” by others (meaning people who “follow” you can read your constant updates in real time). Needless to say, the more “followers” you get, in comparaison to the ones you “follow”, the cooler you are in Twitterville. But also, the quality of the people who “follow” you is really important. “Following” Barack Obama, Demi Moore or Jay Leno, for instance, is not as cool as being “followed” by said persons. It’s a balancing act.

There’s always someone you admire, a guru you cherish, or a big shot you respect. For chefs like me, being “followed” by Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud or Grant Achatz would be a huge deal.

And that brings me to Eric Ripert. Chef Ripert of Le Bernardin in New York City is one of the leading celebrity chefs today. You may have bought his cookbooks or seen him on the Food Network. Chef Ripert is on Twitter. So it was only normal that as a new Twitterer and “follower” of the most “followed”, I decided to “follow” him.

A few days later, Chef Ripert checked my bio and my website out, and I can only assume thought I was cool enough to be “followed”. He then started to “follow” me. That was exciting enough to deserve a public post on Twitter that said something like: “Guess what, Eric Ripert is following me!!!”.

About 3 days down the Twitter road, I noticed randomly that someone “un-followed” me. Being “un-followed” is quite a shameful process that consists in stopping to “follow” someone for various reasons, most of which involve thinking that the previously “followed” individual is, after all, unworthy of a “following”. It’s a big blow to Twitterers.

I jokingly posted: “Hey, someone just un-followed me. How dare she/he? Hope it’s not Eric Ripert!”. Sure enough, it was. The disappointment was hard to take, but I took it nonetheless.
However, it came to my attention, though a news feed, that the reason for Eric Ripert’s disgracious “un-follow” was a fairly decent one, and more importantly, one that didn’t brush my ego the wrong way. He had a good excuse.

As things turned out, and it was consequently all over the news, Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin was outraged for the illegal use of his identity on Twitter. In other words, Twitter’s Eric Ripert was an imposter; someone who was pretending to be who he is not, and profited of the fake identiy to sell kitchen knives, pots and pans, and other stuff a celebrity chef would sell.

So to conclude, my honor was miraculously saved. Eric Ripert, the real one, never “followed” me, anymore than he “followed” other low-life chefs in the Twitterverse. He may never have “followed” me, but he also never “un-followed” me, which is what really, really matters.

Twitter being what it is, and experiencing the phenomenal growth that it is experiencing, it probably is a question of time before Eric Ripert realizes he wants to “follow” a few folks. Then, maybe, my time will come and I’ll have the joy to being “followed” for what I am: A great “follower”.