Twitter Boredom

My 567 followers on Twitter might have noticed I have been quiet of late, not sharing my grumpiness, fun moments, philosophical pretensions or any of the other shit that appears in my timeline.

I say “might”, but in reality the majority of them won’t have. Those that truly might have noticed are here. These are the people who have proven their ability to read their timeline by occasionally responding.

Up until very recently I read every tweet in my timeline, that is to say every tweet by every person I follow, all 400 and falling. Using TweetDeck for Android this is not difficult as it stores entire weeks of Tweets and remembers where I last read from. The disadvantage is that you see an interesting tweet deserving of a response, reply but it was so long ago they just think you are mad or “random” (there is an “In Reply To” function in Twitter to see which tweet evoked the response but few twig onto the point of it). But now I can’t be arsed, I will live for the moment and glance across occasionally to see what is being said now or in the last hour or two.

The two people and the dog who read this blog may question this change of attitude, put it down to 50s grumpiness, drama queenery or just think I’m feeling sorry for myself. Some of this may be true and each person’s timeline is of their own making, nobody forces me to follow who I follow. The reality is I am having the time of my life, my future looks very bright despite the tax bods doing their best to dampen my spirits. I follow a vast number of tweeters purely for information, stage times, late ticket releases, breaking news and similar, I don’t expect any interaction, they are there for a different purpose. The rest are a combination of people who make me laugh, think or simply like.

The ones who increasingly annoy me and need to be culled in order to keep Twitter as vital as it was in the early days fall into some categories. There are not 50 or 100 categories like in some cheap Channel 4 or Five show to be commented on by B-List at best celebrities who have no direct recollection of the events or circumstances but make a fist of it to keep their income above that of pantomime regulars thereby allowing them to avoid this peculiar form of seasonal employment.

Category 1 (I will be updating this post over time so this category may be 73 in time, with a few ciders and a grumpy attitude one Sunday evening in November) is definitely the “how are you all?” merchants. Read your timeline first, this is how you find out how “you all” are. If “you all” replied simultaneously it would lead to Replies column chaos. But it never happens because so many, like the “how are you all?” merchants, never read the timeline of all the people they follow. They sit back and rely on their replies or a secret list of their homeboys for their Twitter interaction. They used to use MSN Messenger but Twitter is cool, according to the person they think is cool, everybody else thinks is a knob. Many of these people won’t unfollow people they have no interest in because they might unfollow back and suddenly a body part shrinks. Anybody following more than a specific number of followers (I will not reveal this number but on future social media courses for people who were too thick to get into media studies courses it will be referred to as Burns’ number) is obviously a follower tart or a user of Replies or lists.

Category 2 is the link freaks. I can use an RSS reader to follow entertaining or cute video aggregators, I can follow a source breaking news Twitter user. I want to read what people have to say, not what somebody else created that you found amusing and think I might, usually I don’t and if I did I would be aware of this source already. On top of this the bulk of my Twitter use is mobile so endless links really don’t work in Twitter and won’t until fast 3G coverage extends beyond 10% of my daily travels. As for people who post this stuff as Headline/Video/Turd/etc. Of The Day when it was something from weeks ago…I have no words.

Category 3 is the category with no name. This is nothing to do with Billy Balthorpe, the man with no name or even Clint Eastwood. There probably is a name, maybe somebody can tell me in the comments. It’s the people who suddenly acquire a social conscience relating to the latest bandwaggon. From not knowing who the hell he is or placing the country in the wrong continent they suddenly start denouncing the leader of country X where there is a popular uprising’s policies and ask us to RT. They pass on Tsunami warnings for Easter Island despite a) not knowing where it is b) having no followers from there but they felt sad for the long faced people there c) not having verified the source and discovered that it was downgraded to roll up your trousers an extra inch if paddling there two weeks ago.

Category 4 …can’t be arsed at the moment, there must be some popular TV show on tonight I can make loads of comments about so people think I’m really funny despite all that shit I wrote last night about not being able to sleep in permanent fear of @gashead tweeting me back “Get off Twitter or you will never get to sleep FFS, LOL, ROTFLMAO”

p.s. this new blog post will appear as a linked tweet on my Twitter timeline, ‘kin’ hypocrite eh ?!!!