3. People using Twitter as a chat room
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that although a MICROBLOG app, Twitter, can by its nature be used for a multitude of things including for chat between friends – even I chat to my friends via long rambling replies… however my issue is the etiquette of Twitter is not accepted by some. This is my personal etiquette so feel free to disagree.
My Twitter etiquette means that if you are having a public discussion with a friend about something / anything and others interrupt it, or join in then you should include them – not carry on the conversation and cut them out; after all you are having the discussion in a public forum. Otherwise to me it speaks of the popular kids having a discussion on the playground that you are allowed to hear, and laugh about, but not join in… oh no… you’re not welcome to join… just worship from afar.
This grudge could because I have a complete issue with being excluded, but I don’t understand some people’s tendency to have either personal conversations, or catch up with friends, and then seem miffed at people throwing their two pennies in – I actually feel like typing “you do realise we can see what you’re tweeting!”.
This issue of boundaries and people seemingly using twitter wrongly (in my opinion) also extends to having relationship discussions or breakdowns on Twitter – if you are not getting on then for the love of god don’t tweet it to that person… because frankly it makes me want to curl up into a ball and die of embarrassment for you and I lose any respect I may have had. Sure it’s fine to whinge and whine about people, but don’t have arguments across twitter – its almost as bad as people on Facebook sharing every part of their relationship from the moment they smuggly click “in a relationship” to the point where they angrily declare on their wall “I never loved you anyway” and their relationship status is hidden.
So my response here is two fold:
a) if you have a conversation on a public forum, include those that add something
b) never have delicate relationship discussions in public.
4. Hero worshippers
This section will probably upset some of the “nice guys” (because they are generally nice guys) and the “heroes” but again this rant is probably my own insecurity and jealously, so don’t take it to heart if you feel I am talking about you and fee free to discuss with me.
There are certain cliques on twitter, there are the celebs, semi-celebs, porn stars, friendship groups, media luvies… it goes on and on, and many of us are members of lots. Within these cliques certain heroes come out – because they are funny, or inspiring, or witty, or intelligent, or rude… whatever – they can be virtual saints. But when they tweet there is always a certain group of people who sit on the fringe of the clique that always feel need to reply to everything they write – whether it be actually interesting or not. And my issue with this is that these people are never invited into the “group” – not really, they are kept at arms length, and they never will be. Now this isn’t just a problem with Twitter, it happens everywhere. Normally my pride stops me from chasing these “heroes” approval – I have a few I really want to like me, that I really want to validate my twitter experience – one that I tend to reply with stupid moronic responses which make me super-cringe, and I cant help myself. But after a few non-responses I have severely cut that down.
The reason I hate this is because I feel like Twitter should be a place where everyone can be part of a clique, and one of the Heroes of their group, but instead the social stigmas stick – the beautiful are raised on high, and the intelligent are respected, the funny are popular, and those that feel that they are just not quite good enough scratch around for the scraps of a response.
So my message is here – no matter how many responses and DMs you get, try to respond, make someone feel like you are bothered, after all they bother to follow you and without them you’re tweeting no-one. And if you are a “nice guy” then don’t feel you have to only ever respond, put your own thoughts out there!
After that sanctimonious trite I fully expect to lose all my followers for being a high-horsey idiot and I plan to kill myself for being so cheesy – but the sentiment is there.
To me, Twitter is a silly place to spend some time. I like silly, so it works out.
ReplyDeleteBecause people are seemingly so accessible through the service, it's easy for me to fall into a kind of mode where I'm slavishly hanging on to someone's tweets that I really like or admire, hoping for validation from them. I have to keep reminding myself how silly it is.
I've always thought it pretty important to acknowledge just about everyone who mentions me there. Tweeting into a void is fun for nobody.