Twitter is starting to annoy me.
It actually annoyed me from the start. When I first heard of Twitter I thought it was narcissistic, restrictive and destructive to the structure of the web. Example, all those shortened URLs aren’t only a security risk – you could click through to a phishing page, thank god for Macs! – they’re also reliant on a third party to serve up your link. Take it out and there will be millions of broken links to piss off search engines and anal retentive SysAdmins.
Twitter is the junk food of the internet.
With all this in mind I started to Twitter anyway. I followed celebrities and news journos and did enjoy getting their tweets. Still do. Some people post things that are the best of the web. It’s a great way to know when someone updates a blog/video/image etc. It’s great for information.
But lately as my private, non “professional” base of following/followers grows, I’m finding Twitter a lot like something familiar, something 1999…
Oh that’s right! Gay.com’s chat widget.
The majority of the people I follow on Twitter have started to use it as a chat program. I don’t know if this is a trend or if it’s just the type of person I follow. In the morning, I’m shifting through “HI! GOOD MORNING TWEEPS!” “HEY HOW YOU DOING?” posts and their equally important “HEYWAZTUP?” responses – meaningless manusia. During the day I have to skip past “EWWW! NO!” posts when someone mentions feminine hygiene. Or requests to add things to my avatar in the name of some social cause.
Don’t get me started on FollowFriday. On second thought, lets: #FF is utterly useless. If I want to know who you’re following I’ll take the time and click your profile. With the new Twitter page and other slick apps, it’s dead easy. Stop sending out your entire 150 names in 4-5 posts, filling my timeline with garbage!
This crap has no meaning to me. And I like it when Twitter has meaning. Has value. Now, to me, it’s becoming a really slow and irritating IRC channel.
Rant over. Back to your lives, humans.
(posted to Twitter 11:28am, Friday November 5th)
10 thoughts on “Fail Whale”
I’ve unfollowed two guys today whose posts consisted of their daily horoscope 96% of the time. And none of them Gemini.
I continue to go to Twitter for humour and cleverness from others users and am still enjoying it for the most part, but you know I’m 3 yrs behind, in 2013, I’ll be all like “fuck you Twitter”, although I said just that to Facebook 2 weeks after registering when I started receiving invitations to be friends with ex-schoolmates I never even liked then. Still a proud non-member.
I don’t “hate” Twitter, but I do find it annoying and useless.
Unfollow is your friend. Someone annoys you, unfollow them. I just unfollowed Steve Martin. Steve Fucking Martin annoyed me, so I dropped him. I feel like I just turned down the hottest cheerleader in high school. But you know what? Fuck him. My time is valuable, even 140 characters at a time, and if you waste it I’ll stop reading your stuff. Doesn’t mean I dislike the guy or his work, I just don’t want my Twitter page filled up with unfunny “jokes.”
I still enjoy Facebook. I understand the privacy concerns but I think if you know what you’re doing that can be minimized. Also, just like in real life, you need to know who your friends are and drop them if they’re pissing you off. Don’t accept friend requests from everyone who requests them. Make meaningful connections only. Hide all the crap you have no interest in. Farmville? What’s that? As soon as I started seeing that shit I hid it.
Social networking is whatever you make it. Ultimately you have control over it, even if it means not using it. I never understand people who claim to hate this network or hate that one. They’re tools. Use them, use them in whatever way works best, or don’t use them. At the most one can be indifferent about them but there’s no need to hate them.
And all that crap has it’s uses but I will always be thankful for folks like you who continue with the long-form blogging. Substance is nice once in a while.
Sorry about all my negative comments. Jeesh. I guess I just suck, is all.
(LOL?)
Cb, know that I’m seconds away from unfollowing a guy I admire because, even though he’s talented and smart, every tweet he has put out in the last month has been negative. It’s boring and annoying. For me, variety works. I blame my ADD
Facebook is just wrong. 500M mass insanity, if you ask me.
StevieB, you need to post more, you muscle bound fuck! Or blog twice a day. My job is boring these days. Amuse me!
Thank God! I was feeling like a twit minority.
FF ## RT HEYWAZTUP!!!##
And mostly I just use both as a vehicle for snark.
Maybe I should change my handle to “snarkboy”??
If you notice, I really don’t tweet very much. And I don’t follow that many.
Hell, I don’t even facebook that much.
30 min after posting this, I lost 4 followers. I expect more.
love this.
love.