Steve Birney

I know things. Terrible, terrible things.

How twitter turned me into a raving lunatic

I started tweeting in earnest this month and many good things happened:

  • I got to follow a lot of my web "heroes." Mostly folks from Metafilter and geek programming/cartooning sites.
  • None of them blocked me!
  • Some of them actually followed back! And even replied, etc.
  • Got connected with several folks who liked my posts and decided to follow. 
  • Tried to channel @hodgman several times

Then it got weird, for the SEO/Marketroid/MLM/Get Rich Quick/Social Media Expert assholes showed up. All at once. They all had 3000+ followers and were following the even more folks. Several were bubbly blondes. I did not respond well, to say the least, leading to this multi-post rant.

1) Is there a program that these blondes with 25k followers use to follow you then unfollow after 24 hours if you don't follow back? 11:14 PM Jan 17th from web
2) Or do these blondes have followers simply because they are girls on the internet? 11:15 PM Jan 17th from web
3) How can anyone follow more than 100 people? At 75, I am seeing between 20 minutes and 2 hours of timeline. At 10k, you can't see shit. 11:17 PM Jan 17th from web
4) Ah, I just realized that there are folks using twitter as a popularity contest-shocking! Thankfully, I won't have to worry about that 11:20 PM Jan 17th from web

Oddly enough, this seemed to generate more marketers to start following. I seriously don't mind being followed. I like that people want to read what I write, but these guys obviously hadn't read shit. Otherwise they would be (rightly) offended! 

@scumbagMLMassholes FUCK OFF AND DIE. that is all. 5:39 PM Jan 18thfrom web

There is no twitter user with that name, as far as I know, just a way to vent. I then though I might have vented too much.

My apologies for the swearing earlier. I am just so steamed by multi-level marketing scammers following me (and people following back!)5:49 PM Jan 18th from web

When I would check out these people, they would universally have tons of followers. Without any real content, they would achieve these numbers solely by the "autofollow" promise. And the unsaid threat that if you dropped them, they would drop you. 

It was 2001 all over again. Not just satisified with a good blogroll, users can see everyone else's roll and compare. Link trading is back and more virulent than ever. The number of connections they have is far more important than the quality of their interactions or even the limited content that isn't @replies.

I then tried a new strategy, I would shame them at their own game and point out a shameless promoter with 14000 followers who doesn't follow a single person!

Go @tferriss! Push only on twitter - 0 following | 14,134 followers. SEO/marketers you try that, see how many YOU get w/o the follow back. 8:01 PM Jan 18th from web

Sadly, I realized logic wasn't going to work on these guys, and to top it off, none of them were responding to the bait. They just kept following.

I decided I needed to take the "good fight" to them, and saw that one of them @wearesocial had asked "Why do people use twitter?"

@wearesocial (Serious question) You follow 1,300+ --How do you use twitter? Can't be to read the folks you follow, you would spend all day!8:08 PM Jan 18th from web in reply to wearesocial

To their credit, I did get a reply:

RobinGrant @stevebirney re: @wearesocial - nope - we don't read everything but we do read the stream from time to time and we do listen for @replies about 11 hours ago from web in reply to stevebirney

This worked as confirmation that my thinking about these guys was correct. And they dropped their follow within a day or so, since I hadn't bitten.

As you can see, I am seriously down the rabbit hole at this point. 

I hit my peak of madness when I see an article that is basically a tutorial for these guys to abuse the system

Wow, this is almost pure evil http://tinyurl.com/8c5lc6 and this surely is http://www.tweetlater.com 11:18 PM Jan 18th from web

The Tweetlater program is the one that was the last straw. It allows you to schedule future tweets, so you can appear to be active WHEN YOU ARE NOT ONLINE. Hook up a quote generator or fortune to that badboy and you are in like flint.

*ahem*

I had my "I can't believe I am so worked up about this" moment not ten minutes later.

I think I am done fixating on the overzealous marketing people. I will block and move on. They can tweet their way and I will tweet my way.11:27 PM Jan 18th from web

Then, and I still can't figure out how I got there, I found this wonderful blog post from someone else who had a similar emotional response to twitter "abuse."

Ok, one final thing, @greeblemonkey had a similar epiphany a few weeks back that is worth reading - "My Twitter Manifesto" http://is.gd/gqhT 11:38 PM Jan 18th from web

That made me feel far less crazy.

Soon after a post from someone I follow asks:

Follow everyone who follows you and filter, or follow only those you really read...after a trial period of course?

As it turned out, my ranting had prompted that tweet and he got several responses (including one from me.)

So, I can add another item to my good list:
  • Realized that there are people listening and have had many great conversations.