My Top 10 Twitter Pet Peeves
The top 10 behaviors of my fellow Twitterers that I find most annoying. If you're a Twitter user, too, you may find yourself nodding in agreement as you read them. Unless of course you find one or two (or all) of them to be describing you...
For the past six months, I've been chatting with friends and acquaintances on Twitter. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a popular social-networking microblog that you can access from the web, on a smart phone, or via text message (you can find my feed here).
You tell others (your "followers"--people who have subscribed to your Twitter feed) what you're up to in 140 characters or less, and they respond likewise. It's kind of like a virtual cocktail party, with the same potential to make fabulous new network contacts--and friends, for that matter.
Most importantly, Twitter is a public forum. The majority of Twitterers are mindful that the updates they post--in the parlance of Twitter, their "tweets"--will be read by others. Potentially hundreds and even thousands of others. But some Twitter users, to put it charitably, are a bit more obtuse. Sometimes astonishingly, unnervingly, appallingly so.
Below are the top 10 behaviors of my fellow Twitterers that I find most annoying. If you're a Twitter user, too, you may find yourself nodding in agreement as you read them. Unless of course you find one or two (or all) of them to be describing you...
10. Media outlets that use Twitter to distribute news headlines--and nothing else. I can receive newspaper and Live at Five headlines via RSS, thanks. Don't get me wrong, headlines in Twitter are useful. But they're also exceedingly boring if the headline writers never step out from behind them and join in the conversation.
9. Ads in Twitter feeds (and especially ads in media headline feeds). These just say you see me as a mark to make money from instead of a potential network contact, chat partner, and/or friend. I'm not your captive commercial audience--and you don't get the point of Twitter. Wonder twin powers, activate! Form of: a clue.
8. Twitterers coming on to other Twitterers in the public stream. How lame to make moves on someone in a public tweet. Please prove your prowess via Direct Message, you virtual Lotharios. Courtship FAIL.
7. Tweeting @replies that make no sense to others. When you send a reply to someone in the public stream (called an "@reply", sounds like "at reply"), it's a guarantee that many people beyond the intended recipient will see it. It helps your tweets from reading like a one-way--and, thus, highly irritating--cell-phone conversation if you add a few words that allow your tweet to make sense to the rest of us. After all, if you didn't want us to follow your feed and read your tweets, you wouldn't be on Twitter in the first place (or your updates would be private).
6. Diarrhea-of-the-tweet. Seriously. If you want to have a full-blown conversation with a follower, do it via Direct Message. Or email. Or phone. Or carrier pigeon. Or anywhere else but your regular updates. Doing it in the public stream unfairly monopolizes the streams of your followers with tweet after tweet of inane--and usually irrelevant--drone.
5. All @replies, all the time. Hello? Is there anyone in there? Do you have an original thought in your head? Ever? Or do you spend your every waking hour waiting for someone else to speak up first in order to give you something to say? Your unending responses might be witty, but your lack of ideational initiative is alarming.
4. Rapid-fire tweeting. These Twitterers are the diametric opposite of the exclusive @reply folks. They have lots of original thoughts--and they want their followers to know about them. Now. Generally all at once, one after another, in rapid-fire succession. Take those A.D.D. meds and pace yourself, Speed Racer. You're like the blabbermouth party guest that never shuts up--and never gets invited back. Or in the case of Twitter, justifies that 'Remove' button.
3. Death by a thousand @replies. You think you're a power Twitterer wisely managing your time because you save up all your @replies for one, giant batch-dump, generally at the end of the day. I'm happy you have so many followers. I'm less thrilled that your 57 @replies have just totally monopolized my Twitter stream. It would probably drive you crazy but it would mean a lot to your followers if you paced out your @replies a little more evenly. (You anal-retentive time-control freak.)
2. 1,000 following, 0 updates. Freak. I can just picture your shadowy shape in front of your keyboard getting your voyeuristic jollies from reading the updates of the thousands of Twitter users you're following--all the while keeping your own motives hidden by refusing to post any updates yourself. At all. Ever. How eery. It's a fine line between Wallflower and Bramble Lurker, buddy, and you just crossed it. Get away from me, you're making me nervous.
And my number one Twitter pet peeve...
1. 1,000 following, 1,000 sales pitches. You talk to nobody. You're only on Twitter for one reason: the wrong one. Your updates--and, my, how frequent they are--are exclusively sales pitches for that (pick one) __Better-than-Facebook! / __pyramid scheme / __penis enlarger you're hawking. Thanks for playing. Buh-bye now. You're the reason God invented the 'Block' button, butthead, and I just used it.
If you're a Twitterer, leave a comment and let me know what annoys you that I've left out of this list. And whatever you do, don't use this list as a role model. Please.
I'll beg if I have to.
