's Blogs

I use twitter under my published name. And true enough it is ultimately about keeping my published books afloat, as it is for many writers, artists, musicians. But I only put out a tweet about my books twice a week. The rest of the time I tweet about or retweet things I'm interested in (environment, art, books, culture, economics, gay issues, space, sci-fi, food, religion), and respond to readers, friends or other people. I take care to respond as a person, honestly, meaningfully. Sometimes I make comments or get into conversations (but never arguments or mindless vitriol, it's a waste of time).

Just as on GBT, I'll accept most 'follower' requests. I otherwise rarely follow someone first unless they really seem cool and I genuinely want their stuff in my feed. When I do I stick with them. Over time I get followers who I'll follow in return as a matter of courtesy, unless they're really unappealing (also like GBT). I won't unfollow  most people unless their content gets really offensive or ridiculous (and even then I'm quite tolerant and patient).

Then I discover there's a certain kind of person - oodles of them - who follows me, but unfollows me within days of me following them back. I realize it's all just them mass fishing and they want to appear to have way more followers than people they follow cos it makes them look good. Usually, it's all automated. They're not even doing it themselves. Some kind of mindless software is. Then I get these followers who are biggest bores you can imagine. They tweet everyone, offering to 'build up your twitter following'. It's all a huge marketing exercise that has nothing in the way of content, a big balloon full of hollow following that offers nothing else. Empty meaningless following breeding more empty meaningless following just for numbers and clicks. They're being terribly 'time efficient', but also terribly shabby and annoying, and wasting your time completely.

Some people, if they follow you and you follow them back, don't unfollow you but barrage you with daily endless tweets and direct messages to buy their thing, whatever it is. You look at their feed and self-advertisement is all it is. Nothing that's about them as people, or shows interest in the real world. Like I said, I only tweet about my own books twice a week. I'd be embarrassed to do it more than that.

So yeah, twitter twits. People who use bots, go fishing, blitz everyone with advertising but offer nothing of value to the world. They have no original, thoughtful or amusing comment to put out there. They follow and automatically unfollow people to 'build up their following' and twitter status. They even want to create a for-pay business helping yet more shallow, superficial, shabby imbeciles become the same kind of annoying, vacuous twitter twits that they are.

I don't get it. I'd be ashamed to behave that way, the mindless grasping, boring indignity of it. I always think if you're going to be on social media be real, be human, spend some time genuinely interacting with people and offering something to people. So yeah. Twitter twits. Ugh. Glad I got that off my chest.