I’ve been a twitter user for six and a half months now, and I’ve gotten pretty good at using not too badly. It’s taken me this long to get up to 240 followers (at time of going to print, or whatever the internet equivalent of print is) and some of those are companies/spammers, so the actual number of people who actively read my tweets is debatable. My opinion, however, is that having just 10 or 20 followers who read and appreciate what I have to say is infinitely preferable to having a million followers who don’t actually give a shit.
I’ve always believed in quality versus quantity, which is why I only follow 170 people (and some of them only tweet once or twice a week) and I really don’t understand how anyone could possibly follow more than 200, 250 people and ever hope to be able to keep up with all of them. The whole #teamfollowback thing mystifies me. I am truly vexed at this behaviour. Recently I encountered someone (who will remain anonymous 'cause I didn’t bother to memorise their name) who has the following stats:
Following: 2,511
Followers: 2,511
Tweets: 15
Additionally, this person’s bio contained the tags #followback, #teamfollowback, and #autofollow. Talk about self-esteem issues. These people’s standard tactic is to follow you for a few days, then unfollow if you don’t follow them back. Now, as I said earlier, I don’t see how or why anyone (aside from a company like DStv or MTN) would be able to, or even want to follow that many people. It amounts to standing in the middle of a soccer stadium and trying to listen to EVERYBODY’S conversation. At the same time. But the thing that gets to me more is that a person who’s only sent 15 tweets is being followed by so many people. What could they have possibly said or done in 140 characters or less that would have evoked such loyalty? Oh, that’s right, nothing. Cause the 2000+ people following you are most likely following the same amount of people (or more), and can’t possibly notice your monthly “I had bacon with syrup for breakfast #rebel” tweet.
I’ll admit, my Following list contains a large number of celebrities, both Hollywood and local (as does just about everyone’s, I imagine) but I’ll follow anyone whose tweets I find interesting and/or informative, and/or contains borderline pornographic twitpic links. And I’ll retweet anything I find funny/awesome/cool-in-some-way from anyone, and I expect nothing less from the people I follow. But I’m sure as hell not gonna followback anyone who follows me just cause they did follow me. And I’m not gonna bitch about my best one-liners not getting retweeted, or beg for others to retweet my best jokes, and I’m sure as hell not gonna beg celebrities for retweets, cause my self-esteem just isn’t that low (OK, I did ask Jonah Hill for an RT once, but that was a joke based on a previous user who begged for an RT, and it was funny at the time, damnit.) Sure, I occasionally check my Klout score, cause its amusing to me to see how I “influence” local celebrities (today I have a +6 influence on Model/Actress/Lawyer Jenna Dover... How? Why? Whatever) but that’s more out of curiosity than a burning desire to feel like what I have to say is really, REALLY important.
I’m totally bamboozled at the mindset that compulsively gathers a large following but doesn’t use it for any particular purpose. You want your voice to be heard? Use the damn thing. As for me, I’ll continue shouting into the darkness. Even if no-one’s listening, at least I’m saying something instead of sitting in the corner, waiting for someone to notice me.
That is all.
PS. please follow me, I'm lonely.
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