Why Does This Group Of Women Want Me To Arm Wrestle Mark Bittman?

On November 2nd of last year, I tweeted that I would like to arm wrestle food journalist, author, and former New York Times columnist Mark Bittman:

It’s a pretty straightforward sentiment. a) I think it would be fun to challenge the author of the bestselling cookbook “How to Cook Everything” to an arm wrestling competition and b) I think I would win. This isn’t a case of macho bravado on my part, just an honest opinion. I’m deceptively strong and I work out a few times a week at the YMCA down the street. That’s all there is to it.

But then something magical and mysterious happened. What began as just a simple tweet has somehow managed to connect a geographically diverse group of women, connected only by their shared enthusiasm for me arm wrestling Mark Bittman.

Since I tweeted it, the Mark Bittman tweet has been a frequent visitor in my mentions tab (for those unfamiliar with Twitter, ‘mentions’ are where you can see when your tweets have been liked, retweeted, and/or interacted with.) While the current stats for this tweet are 5 retweets and 17 likes, I can assure you it has been interacted with many more times than that. Perhaps people liked and then unliked it, or perhaps they deleted their Twitter accounts sometime afterwards. Maybe it’s just the same group of people repeatedly liking and retweeting it over and over. It’s impossible to know for sure. But then, just when I’ve almost forgotten about this tweet, I’ll see it in my mentions again. Someone found it and liked it. That makes me happy.

But who are these people finding this tweet and interacting with it months later? And why do they want me to arm wrestle Mark Bittman? Through answering these questions I discovered a vibrant and tight-knit group of women who, when they’re not repeatedly encouraging me to arm wrestle Mark Bittman, share a deep love of cooking, gardening, movies, fashion, and being with friends.

There’s Nicole from Los Angeles:

There’s Kirstie from Chicago:

And Susan from New York:

And Trish from Denver:

And Katie, also from Denver:

But that’s not all they have in common. They also love sharing photos of delicious meals they’ve prepared:

They all enjoy inspirational quotes (who doesn’t!). Here’s a few that were posted yesterday:

They like to share lessons and wisdom they’ve learned:

Indeed, you can learn a great deal from my fellow members of the Bittman Arm Wrestlers Group (as I playfully refer to us.) In 2016 it’s fairly common to take the power of social media for granted. But at what other time in our species’ history would it have been possible for a group of people from across a continent with similar, almost completely identical, interests and an abiding love of liking and retweeting a 6-month-old tweet over and over and over again to find each other. For all the negativity and venom you’ll find on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere on the internet there’s also a great deal of camaraderie, love, and support. One of us should tweet that.