Here Is a Person: Enter the Tildeverse

In the fall of 2014, writer Paul Ford was a couple drinks in and reading a 2004 Thanksgiving letter Stevie Nicks posted online, addressed "Dear all Armed Forces Members~" (it's still up, and a great read). Ford was perplexed by all the tildes she sprinkled throughout her writing. His wife Mo, who grew up in California, told him "that's a west coast thing... it's more like handwriting." If you asked me, I'd tell you that a tilde at the end of a sentence in informal online communication is supposed to signify a playful, flirty, cute, or sing-songy tone.~ But a friend online had a different answer: "tildes are only ever properly used in front of usernames on shared hosting." And that answer sent Ford back to the 90s, because back then, homepages existed at URLs like CyberFox.net/~vixen. In the essay he wrote about what happened next, he put it like this. The "~" is a little like the "@" on Twitter—a shortcut that says: "Here is a person." Here is a person. Back in May I promised an essay…