Just the other day, I received the following “direct message” via Twitter from a tweeter named Cary:
“Any particular reason you don’t follow Lisa? I know, this is weird.”
To which I replied:
“Nope. Sometimes I just don’t take the time to think about whether I’ll reciprocate or not.”
And I went back to working.
At the end of the day, I decided to follow her, and I got this message from Cary:
“Thanks! There was a complex in the making…”
And this message from Lisa:
“thanks for the follow,(sic) we have been twittering about you all day!”
Really? All fucking day? I looked at their archived tweets. Sure enough, they’d been publicly (to their followers, at least) speculating all day as to the rationale for the lack of followership from a litigious rodent. On a weekday. When I clicked the evidently coveted “follow” button, a tired reference to “muskrat love” appeared on my screen.
The next day, I un-followed both of them. I follow Twitter on my blackberry, so if you write too frequently, I can’t keep up with the other folks I enjoy, and I’m not going to follow you. It ain’t personal.
Incidentally, Cary and Lisa stopped following me a day or two later. I like to think it was a much-discussed, tandem decision about which they both derived much satisfaction. I hope the phrase “this’ll show ’em” was typed.
My response: EAT A DICK. Because if you only add friends to a 140-character messenger service so that you can prop up your ego by piling up strangers who might give a damn what you’re doing, your time can better be spent chomping a phallus. Just not mine.
And by the way, Lisa, a semicolon goes between independent clauses, not a comma.
I will be using “litigious rodent” and “chomp a phallus” as much as possible in daily conversation.
Do you, by any chance, read http://www.salamitsunami.com ? I ask because y’all both make me wet my pants regularly. 🙂
OK, I thought Facebook was like high school. I was wrong. Twitter is high school.
whatever.
I like following you on witter because you always type in lyrics to bad 80’s hair metal bands….and really who cant love a thing like that.
You had me at “Sorry Lita but it is a big thing”
I strive to be that creative.
countessa, thanks for the referral! i’ll check it out tonight when i’m home.
freeman, ding ding ding! your analysis is correct.
avatg, sorry if i offended. just callin’ what i see.
punkrock, glad you get it! i spend a good bit of time in my car with XM.
like PRD, I’m a sucker for your 80’s hair band quotes (even if my cold induced retardation occasionally leaves me clueless..)
so can i go rub it in their faces that you followed me first??? lol
I had a rare and fleeting moment of Twitter over a follower of mine who seems to ignore me, which was followed in a mercifully short interval by ‘Good God, woman, you are 38 years old! This isn’t Homeroom. You no longer look like Jeanine from Ghostbusters. Get over it.” (Yes, my personal revelations often come in the third person and sporting film references. I can’t explain it.)
Correction: That should say ‘Twitter Angst”.
Also: Not sure that IS the third person.
This post was great. I have Twitter [mostly] for my business. When people follow me, I don’t always follow them. I mean, people “tweet” when they blink and inhale. It makes me insane. I don’t need to know that you just pissed or that you just took a sip of water. However, I feel it imperative that everyone knows my polling place smelled like old people and death.
“prop up your ego by piling up strangers who might give a damn what you’re doing”
Crap…that’s the whole reason I started a blog.
I am soooo with ya on this.
And for the truly obsessed, I hear there is software or some Twitter plug-in you can install to track when someone “un-follows” you. Then you can get more upset than you already are over the fact that your FollowING stats exceed your FollowER stats.
ChurchPunkMom, I’m just glad to have an understanding audience! On the music reference, I think the two of y’all are it.
Shieldmaiden, Admitting the problem is the first step towards overcoming it, so congrats!
Sherri, You “get it.” Kudos.
Matt, That’s okay. You won’t tear up, though, if readership drops for one day, right?
ChatBlanc, Thanks…it’s good to have an ally.
NGIP, Really? That’s a bit out of control.
Twitter gives me the creeps. I almost signed up. But now I am having 2nd opinions. Yowza!
it’s just that i don’t know what twitter is, and all that chat between you and them was another language to this fossil.
i still write letters by hand.
BTW, don’t try to ‘splain it to me – – it would be like teaching the pig to sing.
BTW 2, I like the music references too, married to someone stuck in the mid 70s music wise, i am a fan of 80 hair bands. pour some sugar on me!!
Laughing my ass off.
Cuz it is so true.
And I’m so stealing ‘chomp a phallus’. Brilliance. Pure brilliance.
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