I’ve finally caught up on the secret twumblings from this weekend, reading with the same sense of awe, wonder, fear and idle curiosity (ok, add egocentric wonder) that most of you seem to share. And while I generally avoid this sort of thing if only because I’m the dictionary definition of DOING IT WRONG when I toss my hat in, I’ll belatedly do just that.

• Do it. Yes, you. Tell him or her. You’re halfway there already – you articulated a feeling, for another person even, and it was good, it was real, it was genuine and came from a place of truth. Do you have any idea how rare that is? And now you’re going to hide it behind a half secret because you’re afraid?

• You owe the future. You people are some of the smartest, funniest, most beautiful and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of casually knowing. We desperately need the future you are going to build with your crush – the songs you’ll sing, the pictures you’ll post, the crazy sex positions you’ll create urbandictionary definitions for, the children that deserve your skewed and brilliant care. Don’t you dare tell me that you can’t make this happen because someone on the other side of the world might feel weird about an email you send them.

• Treat each other with respect. I’ve got regrets in my life, sure, but the biggest ones are when I treated someone carelessly, when I was selfish or thoughtless with their feelings. The person on the other side of that avatar, cocksure though she may be, is also afraid, just like you are. If you truly mean what you said, she deserves your respect.

• I owe some of my great friendships, not to mention the love of an amazing woman whom I absolutely cherish, to the fact that we clicked a round-cornered rectangle that said FOLLOW. You really should know what that’s like.

Behind all the memes, hashtags, cynicism, snark, gratuitous pictures and crude jokes are some amazing people. Just because we got thrown together by hearts, stars, reblogs and direct messages doesn’t make that any less important. Go put it to good use.