Tom Barton never imagined his thoughts on sex would stir up the Internet. How wrong he was.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Melody speaks gif fluently🇺🇸🌻🇺🇦
@UnpaintedMelody
·
Follow
Now, if only he’d join us on twitter so we can follow him!

“When I called Barton to tell him he was famous, at least on Twitter, it was the first he heard of it. He laughed uproariously. Then, he said: ‘My wife’s going to kill me.’ He laughed again.”

theadvocate.com
Tom Barton never imagined his thoughts on sex would stir up the Internet. How wrong he was.
Tom Barton never thought he’d go viral.
2:07 PM · Jul 7, 2022

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/article_611ddfc6-fe0c-11ec-a57c-3b869c012a52.html

Tom Barton never thought he’d go viral.

With good reason. Though he’s a retired computer programmer, that work was a long time ago, in the age of punch cards.

Today, at 71, Barton, of Baton Rouge, is barely on the internet. He has a Facebook account but last updated it four years ago. He’s never logged onto Twitter.

Yet there he is, on the social media website he doesn’t belong to, streaking across the web like a comet. His recent musing on sex and abortion has at last count been retweeted 13,200 times. More than 72,000 people have “liked” it. Thousands have engaged in a sometimes heated debate about whether Barton is the wisest man alive or a heathen headed for a hot place in the afterlife.

How did a man who is the very definition of analog become a social media sensation? It’s all my fault.

The first thing I do every morning is grab my newspaper and read the letters to the editor. I’ve always loved them: They are our version of the public square, a place where anyone can offer an opinion on just about anything.

*snip*

[elleng]

1. *The first thing I do every morning is grab my newspaper and read the letters to the editor.

I’ve always loved them: They are our version of the public square, a place where anyone can offer an opinion on just about anything.

And when I unfurled my paper and read Barton’s paean to the joys of sex, I thought to myself: This one deserves a wider audience. How often do you read a message from a stranger with frank statements like this one: “I’m an old man who has probably had his last sex, but that doesn’t mean I’ve turned against it.”

Or: “In my mind, sex is the best it gets. It’s fun, good exercise and free! And most importantly, it’s life’s most spectacular form of intimacy. Think of music, think of poetry.”'

[localroger]

2. It's an eloquent, self-effacing, and fearlessly honest rant about the human condition. /nt