How I Turned Around 180 Degrees on Twitter

I originally titled this blog post "How I Turned Around 360 Degrees on Twitter" but I'm always reminded of dialogue my good friend Charles Dance shouted at Anthony Quinn in Last Action Hero:

"180, you stupid, spaghetti-slurping cretin...180!  If I did a 360, I'd go completely around and end up back where I started!"

So yeah, Twitter and the whole Twitter phenomenon was annoying the shit out of me.  But as it turns out, I wasn't doing it right.  I had Twitter set up on my phone to text me when anyone I was following updated.  And holy fuck, did this ever get annoying fast, to the point where I was hating the whole concept of the uber-popular social network.  And the Twitter homepage is pretty useless to (unless you love hitting F5 over and over again during your day).

But then I learned that there are third party companies out there making Twitter tolerable.  I started using TweetDeck on both my PC and on my iPhone and it completely changes the way you interact with Twitter.  Now I was doing it on my own terms, as you can group people together into custom lists and only read what you want to read, when you want to read it.  Night and day difference actually, and it makes Twitter much more fun.

And that 140 character limit thing?  I used to find it frustrating, but now I see it as a bit of a puzzle for you to solve.  You type out what you want to say, see that it's over the limit, and then go back and start to reword, reorganize and abbreviate where ever possible.  Sometimes I rather enjoy the challenge.

So here's my theory.  Twitter is basically one big comedy club metroplex where it's always open mic night.  When done right, you end up with a room full of snarky bastards all attempting to make you laugh.  Who doesn't enjoy that?  And when you're bored with the common folk you can wander over into another auditorium and get something from some maybe-celebrities or some such bullshit.

Here are some things you should be on the lookout for, and if they get out of control it might start irritating you:

1. Women are desperate for someone to cuddle with, and want the Twitter universe to know this.  Volunteer to help them though and you'll instantly be branded as a creepy stalker perv and you'll get dropped and blocked.  Stupid perv.

2. Women also love to announce the stages of their menstrual cycle.  I'm not sure who's interested in this, but if you are, you could probably create some interesting flow charts.

3. There's a rule in the blogging world that says "No one cares about what you had for lunch".  This doesn't seem to apply to Twitter.  Sometimes people will just twitter "SANDWICH!!!!!" and then 50 people will reply "OMG I lurve sammitches!" and "Oooo bread is nummy!" and suddenly you realize you're in hell.

As long as you keep control over who you're following though, this kind of nonsense shouldn't spoil your Twitter experience.

And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I promise not to annoy you.  I can't promise I won't talk about my period though.

Comments

[kristen]

"Flow charts" That's funny.

[Chuck]

I'm glad someone got that.

[Kathy]

I think I shall start using "lurve" on a regular basis now.

[anonymousfriend]

I'm due to start tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.