Twitter Malaise
It’s been eight months now, and I still don’t get Twitter. I don’t understand the etiquette of following people, I don’t know what a retweet is for, and I can’t understand why you use #hashtags when regular text is completely searchable. I don’t consider Twitter a social outlet; I’ve never been to a “Tweetup” (I hate the verb “tweet”), and I don’t use Twitter to have conversations.
I’d like to think that I use Twitter the way it was meant to be used: to answer the question, “What are you doing?” I post whatever comes to mind and don’t really expect an answer, or even anyone to read it.
Recently I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend; more and more of my posts result in people I don’t know following me. The other day, I posted a complaint about my former web host, and immediately two people affiliated with web hosting companies followed me. Tonight I posted about how most of the photos on Flickr are crap, and three photographers (according to their Twitter profiles) added me. Then, for absolutely no reason, I was followed by a girl who describes herself as the “Official Spontent Party Chick”. No idea what that’s about.
So I wonder, is this normal? I’m pretty sure nothing I write on Twitter is of general interest, so I can’t fathom why people I’ve never met are subscribing to it.
Only two thoughts come to mind:
- Someone is trying to market to me, or
- Someone is trying to bullshit, trick, or spam me.
I have no way of knowing whether these people are shills, automated Twitter bots, or regular people with a lot of time on their hands. For awhile I was blocking them, but I’m starting to wonder if these shenanigans are standard on Twitter. Are they doing it wrong, or am I? Malaise…
