Series: Pet Peeves #4

Pet Peeve #4: Twitter

I did one for Facebook, and now I think it's time I did one for Twitter. In the blogging world at least, it's seen to be more acceptable to have a Twitter account than a Facebook account. I think bloggers like to kid themselves that it's less narcissistic to post endless status updates on a social networking site where people choose* to follow you, rather than on a social networking site where someone is only 'friends' with you because you added them a gazillion times two years ago, and on the one-gazillionth time they took pity and finally accepted your request. In my opinion, they're much the same. It doesn't matter what the social networking site is: I still don't care that you ate a cheese sandwich for lunch.

Anyway. Here are 10 things that annoy me about Twitter:

1. The get-as-many-followers-as-you-can craze. I think that your number of followers is meant to be a mark of how popular you are. Possible. But it could also be a mark of how ridiculous you are. For example, there's this one guy on Twitter (and I refuse to link to him) who promotes anorexia. Everyone thinks he's a tool, but he still has thousands of people 'following' him. Then you get people who follow you just so that you'll follow them back. Why? You don't care what I have got to say (if you did then you wouldn't 'unfollow' me the second you realise I'm not going to reciprocate), and I couldn't give a toss what you're getting up to on a Thursday afternoon. Let's not pretend otherwise.

2. Offensive 'Trending Topics'. What was the one I saw yesterday? #uknowuuglywhen. With all this fake popularity and name-calling, sometimes, Twitter really does feel like school.

3. Racist 'Trending Topics'. They usually read something like #thingsblackgirlsdo, #thingsblackmendo and #thingswhitepeoplecantdo. I've come up with one of my own: #thingstwatsontwittersay. My answer? All of the above.

4. Unoriginal relationship advice. For some reason, people like to RT (re-tweet) crap relationship advice that we've all heard a million times before. "A real man knows how to treat his woman." Please. Agony Aunts have been saying this shite for decades. Join the back of the queue.

5. One-word tweets. Context is everything. When you say "Yesss!", how is anyone supposed to know what you're referring to (that is, provided we even care)? It could mean, "Yesss! I found £20 on the bus!" or "Yesss! A cure for cancer has been found!" or "Yesss! is the opposite of 'Nooo!'"

6. Celebrities who never tweet back. Obviously they can't tweet back everyone, but sometimes it just feels personal.

7. It doesn't even work. Half the time I go on Twitter, a page comes up saying it's "over capacity". Seriously, how many fecking people are there out there tweeting about their cheese sandwiches? STOP IT. I've got real shizz to be chatting about here (sorta), but your cheese sandwich cheese tweets won't let me!!

8. Come again? I don't even understand what these people are saying. omdzzzz i cnt bleive it lyk iz syin stff n i dnt evn no wot it menz looooooool! I know you've only got 140 characters, but if these people removed a few of the o and z characters from the words omdzzzz and looooooool, they might find they're able to be less brutal with the omission of necessary vowels.

9. TMI. It stands for Too Much Information. Tweeting on the shitter? Don't do it.

10. I got followed by a salad yesterday. There's a sentence I never thought I would say (or type). This thing happens, though, where you tweet something really random, and then half an hour later you have some obscure business targeting you. If you tweet My hands are cold, half an hour later a glove company will be following you. Tweet My cat died yesterday, R.I.P. Fluffy, and within an hour, someone will be trying to sell you fluffy teddy bears. Tweet I have a sore bum, and wadya know: you've been targeted as a potential customer of haemorrhoid cream. This is capitalism, and it sucks.

* I use the word 'choose' loosely. Most of the time, they're only following you because they want an extra number of their 'followers' list. They used you. You were nothing to them but another notch on their Twitter bedpost.