There are so many great short stories being published these days that it’s hard to keep track of them all. So many deserve to be read and savored. Maybe you’ve read some of the five below that I’ve selected as my favorites of 2025. If not, I hope you’ll give each of them a read. And if you’ve read any of them, maybe give them another read.
All of these stories were published during the 2025 calendar year in online literary magazines and are publicly accessible at the time of this writing. I present them here unranked and in no particular order.
I #LoveTwitter so much, I even love the #failwhale (my 2009 Halloween costume)
Happy birthday, Twitter! The social media platform is 10 years old today, but Twitter kicked off the celebration early with this tweet and video on Sunday.
Starting in 🇦🇺 on 3/21 and moving across the 🌍, we thank you for 10 incredible years.
Over the past 24 hours, the love for Twitter has been pouring in from all across the globe in the form of tweets, articles and blog posts. I’m happy to see this, because Twitter has taken more than its fair share of grief over the past few months. Some people aren’t crazy about how Twitter has tweaked its timeline. Investors want to see more growth. And Twitter’s toying with the idea of expanding the character count from 140 to 10,000 has irked many users, including me.
I haven’t been with Twitter since the get-go. (Few people have.) But I signed up in September 2007 — so I’ve been on the platform for eight-plus of its 10 years. I’ve remained fairly active as a Twitter user, mainly because it remains my go-to learning network. It’s also been a way of connecting with many people I’ve never met in real life but feel like I know. Sometimes, those online connections lead to offline meetups, which is always great because I feel like I know some people — or something about those people — before I ever really meet them.
I think Lance Ulanoff best describes how I feel about Twitter in his Mashable article on the platform’s 10th anniversary:
My relationship with Twitter is best summarized as the kind you have with a sibling. I love it, deeply, but also question its choices. I can be vocal in both my admiration and my dissatisfaction. Yet, at the end of the day, we’re tied together.
Tomorrow marks my five-year anniversary as a tweeter. It is, as the Twitter-anniversary-tracking tool @TwBirthdayreminded me this morning, the eve of my TwBirthday.
I suppose I should get all retrospective, talk about how few of us there were back then, how it was a nice, close-knit community, blah blah blah. But frankly, I wasn’t even thinking about the personal historic significance of this day from the perspective of my social media use. I rolled out of bed with thoughts of GSD on my mind this Friday. Hell, I didn’t even have a Friday Five in mind.
But then the twitterverse and Domagoj Pavlesic, who developed the TwBirthday tool, handed me this gift. So, on the eve of my five-year anniversary on Twitter, I offer you my five favorite posts on this blog about Twitter.
Twitter: My go-to learning network. This post really captures why I enjoy Twitter so much, and why it’s my social network of choice, far and above all others. And this post isn’t even original. I borrow heavily from the ideas articulated in a post by Nigel Cameron, who puts it much better than I can.
It was one of those mornings. A lot of interruptions, “urgent” calls for assistance, endless email loops, petty irritations, administrivia — all the stuff that sucks the productivity out of the day. You know those kind of days, right?
So I did what any passive-aggressive, digitally connected marketer would do. I vented my frustration to the twitterverse:
And the twitterverse, in the form of @smith_ron_e, responded:
@smith_ron_e is the Twitter handle of Ron Smith, the training officer for Rolla Fire and Rescue. Ron is also an avid social media fan and, like any good firefighter, always on the alert.
I didn’t think any more about Ron’s tweet. But that afternoon, he showed up at my office with several “junior firefighter” helmets for me and others on our staff.
And that’s how I became a junior firefighter.
Thank you, Ron. You (and Twitter) brought some joy into an otherwise frustrating day. And you also reminded me that the figurative “fires” I deal with from time to time are no match for the life-threatening conflagrations you and your fellow firefighters have to respond to. I tip my junior firefighter’s hat to you.
You may credit (or blame) Tim Nekritz for inspiring me to post the following. It’s in response to his “invitation to join me in the blogosphere for a conversation titled A Video I Love And Why, where anyone is welcome to blog about or discuss great web video.”
For his entry, Tim chose the poignant and powerful With Glowing Hearts video from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. It’s a great video, and Tim provides a solid list of reasons for why it appeals to him.
And now for something completely different.
I’ve opted for a less polished, animated piece called Battle of the Album Covers. (Warning: Nothing poignant to see here, but there is some blood, gratuitous violence and frontal nudity.)
Why do I love it? Well, let’s see:
1. The concept. Breathing motion and cartoon life into album art is just a clever concept. I wish I’d thought of it.
2. A tribute to a lost art form. Album cover art is an under-appreciated and nearly extinct pop art form. This video captures many well-known album covers, along with some obscure titles, and sets them in motion through some brilliant animation.
3. How many can you spot? Don’t you love those games that challenge you to spot as many things as possible? I do. Hence, I love this video.
4. Four Pink Floyd album covers. Did you find them all?
5. The humor. OK, so it’s sick, twisted humor, maybe. But it’s funny. At least I think so.
6. The production values. What production values? Precisely. This is not high art. It’s folk art — of the people, by the people, for the people. It’s what YouTube was created for. It’s punk.
So, there’s my entry. Let’s keep this meme going. Blog about a video love and tell us why, then let Tim and me know about it.
