Go Ask Aunt Becky
Dear Aunt Becky,
You seem to have really mastered this twitter thing. I mean, that’s how I found you, so it can’t be all bad. Just a few generics:
-Do you follow everyone who follows you?
-Is this the way to get more followers? Follow randoms and hope they follow you back?
-How do you make the magic where every person you respond to doesn’t show up in the twitter feed and only appears on your page? I’m sick of seeing @insertyourname here show up all over the place every time I need to respond to one of my flock.
That is all.
Well that, and really, followers? Did we have to call them followers Twitter? I feel like I drank the kool-aid.
Oh, my Gentle Reader, you are far too kind to compliment my Twitter prowess because really, I haven’t mastered it AT ALL. I’m pretty sure that 95% of my followers are the porn bot Blow Job Britney and the other 5% are people I’ve paid or blackmailed to follow me. If you’re still waiting on your check, by the by, sorry about that. I’m a terrible record keeper.
But I will try and answer your questions to the best of my ability.
First, let me explain blather on uselessly about Twitter for those blissful enough not to have an account. Twitter was designed to be a microblog which means that tweets are intended to be a mini-blog post. Also, it was designed to go to your cellphone as a text message (which is why you’re limited to such a short amount of characters).
When I first heard about it, from my source of all things social media-ish, The Daver, I was pretty dumbfounded because I was all, “dude, who would want to keep tabs on what I do 24 hours a day? I’m SO not interesting.”
I mocked it pretty heavily because it seemed to be the most narcissistic fucking thing I’d ever heard of, which, coming from me is saying a lot (I BLOG DAILY, PEOPLE). I mean, who gives a fucking shit about what I’m doing at 8:43 PM on Tuesday evening? Then I signed up for it myself. Then I doused my foot in ketchup and ate my humble pie and I liked every damn bite.
(full disclosure: I said the same thing about blogging, except for I was all, “what I ate for breakfast is NOT national news, Daver” and then I realized that the good blogs don’t have to be all about boring shit. MY blog is obviously not a GOOD blog).
Examples of tweets that suck (am using my own name as a reference):
*Come visit my store! Just listed adorable shoes for $7.99 http://marketersneedtogetafuckingclueyo.com
Marketing tweets are dull unless you’re actually a person and even then? People get annoyed when you’re all “COME BUY MY STUFF” because chances are, you don’t need to be reminded that something is for sale every 20 seconds.
*Am running to Target!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People do not give a shit if you’re running to Target, unless it’s to get ass-lube or hemorrhoid cream and even then, it’s only fun to laugh and point.
*lol my kids are so funny lol
Everyone thinks their kids are funny.
*Pick up your free dating report at whythefuckareyoufollowingmeyoustupidassbot.com
The Twitter bots, with the exception of BlowJob Britney are lame but probably an important part of the food chain. You don’t need to follow them back.
*Win an Olympus Camera RT: @pleasestoptweetingcontests to be entered.
The contest thing, well, everyone wants free stuff, but wow, that shit is fucking ANNOYING. My New Years Resolution (besides become an heiress) is to stop following people who tweet that shit constantly. Marketers are getting YOU to do their job for free.
*If you don’t respond to this tweet, you don’t love me enough and I’m deleting you from feed.
Histrionic people are dramatic whenever they’re not feeling like someone is paying them enough mind and they’re everywhere (usually Facebook, oddly). Whatever.
*@heidimontag I love you soooooo much!
I hate to break it to you, but @ing a celebrity is kinda douchy. They’re not going to reply to you, yo.
So that’s what’s annoying about Twitter, let’s get to the good shit, shall we? Because while most of you are no doubt bored shitless (as you should be), there is a point to all of this.
Do I follow everyone who follows me? No. Mostly, but no. Because why not? Except that it’s a fucking clusterfuck on there, but whatever. I miss a lot of stuff that goes on, so if something important happens DM me.
If you’re following BOTH parties who are having a private conversation, you get a lot of this:
@mommywantsvodka You are such a fucking spaz, Becky. Why did you put my Blackberry in the freezer?
@dwink well, at least I can properly manage to throw my socks down the laundry chute, Daver.
@mommywantsvodka what does that have to do with anything?
@dwink I’m deflecting. DUH. Also, did you happen to notice how light is playing off my face?
@mommywantsvodka Wait, huh?
@dwink I want a sandwich. Who is watching the kids?
@mommywantsvodka whoops!
What I’d suggest, my friend, is to download Tweet Deck and group your people into meaningful groups, or use the List feature on the Twitter home page so that you can make sure to catch the tweets you want to see, without having to see the bullshit like I showed you above.
So, if you want more followers, my suggestion is this: be interesting. The same goes for blogging. Make actual connections with people and be fucking interesting. And feel free to disregard every single piece of advice I have offered you. I don’t really understand Twitter either.
And the followers thing, that makes me totally uncomfortable too, because while I am very important (in my head) I think “followers,” I think cults, I think that guy in Texas and the people with the comet. So I say “Twitter,” “Facebook” or “The Internet.” Seriously. Or, if I’m referring to all of you, it’s just “This is what The Internet told me.”
As always, o! Internet, my Internet, I’d love to hear your take on The Twitter. My word, while The Gospel in my head, is totally not to be taken very seriously. Nor are any of my rules meant to be taken seriously. Notify your doctor of erections lasting longer than 4 hours. Viewer discretion, as always, is advised.
“Then I doused my foot in ketchup and ate my humble pie and I liked every damn bite.”
That made me laugh.
Oh, I had a lot of head hanging to do when I finally succumbed to The Twitter. I mocked Dave pretty heavily because wow, blogging isn’t narcissistic enough?
(also, I wonder how many people will unfollow me on The Twitter now. Hehe)
Twitter drives me nuts. I tried to like it, I really did. But I failed.
*nods* I understand ENTIRELY.
I use Twitter. But nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms. or something to that effect. In reality I just don’t the time or energy to try and be interesting for the few tweets I manage to churn out daily. I barely manage it for my blog..and even that’s a game of chance.
I love you on Twitter, don’t I? I would if I were on it more, at the very least. I’m just lazy on there. Mainly because I am a bad person.
As this is my first comment on your blog, I first need to say that you are HILARIOUS. I’ve never commented before mainly because I am usually laughing too hard at your posts to see my keyboard clearly enough to type something coherent!
As for Twitter, as Jayme says above, I really really tried to like it. But I just don’t get it.
(I feel the same way about Twitter.) I liked it more when I had more time to go and meet people. I guess you can choose blogging OR Twitter and to me, it takes more time to create a good blog post than it does to tweet “LOL my cat just jumped on a chair!!LOL”
Also, it’s very nice to meet you and you’re flattering me too much. But I loooove it 🙂
i was thinking of trying twitter this year to communicate with my college class (i’m the teacher). you know, to remind them of test dates and stuff and notify them when results are posted etc. wondering how that will work. anybody tried that? alternatively i suppose i could just use bulk text messages to their phones but that is so last decade.
I think that would work perfectly!
Katryn,
You can follow a conversation by inserting a hashtag into your tweets; if you created one for your class, say #myclassnotes, then the kids could watch for those posts and not have to weed through your twitterstream for info. Cause there will be a stream eventually.
If the folks who didn’t get it (drink the Koolaid) try Tweetdeck as our Aunt says…it might make more sense…but be careful. It’s more fun than ass lube.
thanks for the advice. oh and i gotta try this ass lube you girls are on about.
I love twitter, but it really requires dedication to make it worthwhile. I have nothing to offer in the way of dedication (except to you of course, Aunt Becky).
*hump hump hump*
I wish I could get twitter I read follow a fair few people tweets . It’s too much pressure to tweet something interesting! Agggh the pressure!
It’s that pressure that keeps me from tweeting very often. Ha.
I’ve yet to be sucked into Twitter. I fear that I will never get away from the computer if I start that.
Some people find it really addictive, but I don’t see the appeal.
I like Twitter! I especially like to send TwitPics of whatever lame activity I am up to. It usually involves guinea pigs, haha.
Guinea Pigs are full of The Awesome. And people seem to love or hate Twitter, which makes sense. I’m sort of on the fence. It makes people feel WAAAAY more important than they should be.
Most celebrities may not respond to you, but mention “Speidi”, in a positive or negative way, and Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt will both follow you within a couple of weeks.
NOWAY. That’s WILD. Dooce won’t even follow you.
You will probably totally hate me for even going there, but I hate Twitter; I think it is an utter waste of time, and I think that people ARE narcissistic by nature but that Twitter takes it to a new level. I also hate text messaging for the same reason-1.you are not that fucking important and 2. have an actual fucking conversation with someone! Grrrrr. Maybe there is a real use for it, just like there is for cell phones-but I cant for the life of me figure out what that use might be. Also, I never”got” it, and don’t care to make the time to figure it out. 🙂
I *still* think Twitter is fucking narcissistic as hell, truthfully, but, you know, I try to go on there to make people laugh.
Sorry, I’m a lame retweeter of contests. That’s mostly why I have twitter, to get extra entries so I can win free stuff. I won one thing once. Better than nothing. Sometimes I have a list I sortof follow. I’m a Facebook girl myself. That I actually keep up with. There’s just too much junk on Twitter, and I always have those bots trying to follow me. I don’t know why they are following me, what do they want?
Facebook, I prefer Facebook, hands down.
I still don’t really get Twitter. I don’t post much because I can’t think of anything worthwhile to say. It is sort of fun to read other people’s random thoughts though.
I’m still not QUITE sure about Twitter either. Eh, I guess. Just…eh. I’ll go a long time without tweeting much besides: New Post up: myboringassurlhere.com
I tweeted a couple of times but just couldn’t get into the groove. Apparently, proclomations about my love for toast just don’t cut it.
There’s NOTHING wrong with proclaiming a love of toast, dude. NOTHING.
I have a total love/hate thing going on with Twitter. I frequently forget to turn TweetDeck on and, OMG, I can not keep up…but, it can be fun and I have some hysterical friends so I guess it stays.
I can’t keep up either. I go on there and BAM I have 67 new tweets before I’ve read three. I never catch ANYTHING that anyone says, but sometimes, I do find awesome people.
I started using Twitter but got bored. Perhaps if you can stay linked all day it would be interesting but going in to read what others said hours ago just didn’t keep me engaged.
Look! A bird!
Why is France so far away?
Toast!
Those nonsensical tweets are the ones that people always like.
Ah. Those weren’t meant to be tweets, those were meant to represent my adult-onset ADD attention span, which is why Twitter and I had to break up.
I think that the biggest advice for twitter I could give is to not take yourself seriously with twitter. Find the funny people who make 140 characters pure comedy gold. Little pieces of joy that make life bearable. Besides, sometimes, I don’t need a whole blog entry. I just need 140 characters.
I took soooooo long to get into twitter, and now I both tweet AND plurk. It’s addictive and silly, and I love them
And weirdly, because I follow certain people, I get followers from them, and I’ve met soe fabby people 🙂 I might even do naughty things with one of them 😀
I have to admit, I like Twitter. I’m almost ashamed to admit that, because it seems like it’s currently cool to be a non-twitterer, but I enjoy it. A lot of the people I follow are actually friends, at least of the internet variety, a few are celebrities but usually not the ‘mega important person’ type – some of them actually tweet like regular people. Besides, how could I not follow Rob Thomas, who would be one of my TV husbands if he was on TV? (Because, you know, I am NOT just a groupie. We have a deep meaningful relationship.) And everyone should come follow me on Twitter because TheBeerLady is full of teh cool. Not quite as full of teh awesome as Aunt Becky, but still worthwhile.
Besides, on good days, you can really mess with people on Twitter. It’s fun to post random bullshit to if people will take it for profound statements. And if you get really bored, you can follow ‘trending topics’ and jack with people. Like when everyone was all hysterical about swine flu. We basically went with the theory that it’s actually a zombie virus and we’re all going to die. So we posted zombie survival tips. That’s important stuff.
Love twitter (took a few tries), love your blog (you probably know this), love tweeting you Zepplin songs (a la last night,) and so on and so forth. Blah blah blah.
My one issue with twitter… The post pharmaceutical tweets. I get all emo and confess bizarre things. Weird, man. Although, I am all about the “open book” concept. I mean, if one is disinhibited, than one must be the MOST real, right?
I usually just delete the post pharmaceutical tweets anyway. For the sake of any poor human who may actually read them. Or because they tend to be embarrassing as hell. Shhh, don’t tell anyone I have feelings.
C’est la vie.
Did I just use a French Cliche?
Cool.
Rock on.
*Zeppelin (yeah, I can spell)
I don’t know anyone in real life who I could tweet with because they’re all huh? what’s twitter?. But I do have a plug in that tweets my posts so, yea, I’m totally working the system.
Oh go tweet my friend. I love reading about your kids. ME however? I have an account so I can read. But if you want to read about me reconciling an account, or compressing a PDF so that it can be sent. Oh and my partners expenses. WHOA nellie. I would have a ton of followers!
I guess I just don’t understand the actual point of twitter. Although you can be sure that if i say I am not going to do something, in 3 months I probably will…
I still cannot seem to get into the whole Twitter thing. I suppose I should as I have a blog but it makes no sense to me. I’m going to follow people when no one really follows me. I suppose I should be out there Twitter networking or something. I will stick with Facebook. Completely self indulgent but always entertaining.
I’ve been going back & forth between Twitter and my blog. Lately, Twitter has won out. It’s been fun.
I’ve been driven off Facebook. By my mom. But, since Facebook is just a watered-down version of me, it’s not that much of a loss. 😉
Too funny.
I really (no, really) don’t get Twitter. I’m also not on Facebook. For mostly the same reasons (I am not that interesting, nor am I that interested in anyone else!) But yet. BUT YET! Somehow I’ve found a loophole and here I am blogging. Ah well 😉
Still…. I don’t get Twitter. I blog because it was scary (or used to be) and now it’s liberating. I don’t see how becoming a Twat/Twit will liberate me. Know what I’m sayin’?
Huge difference between sending out a tweet and posting something on your blog, no?
Oh Twitter…
I tweet. Whether or not anyone actually cares is another matter. It’s kind of like that tree in the forest…if it falls and no one is listening, does it still make a sound? If I tweet, and no one reads it….
Not that I care. Sometimes it’s nice to just tweet and release the (rage)(discontent) pleasant feelings full of marshmellows and rainbows and butterflies that are inside me. Cuz…y’know.
It’s all about the joy with the twitter. 🙂 Who needs a psychiatrist, I have twitter and a blog!!!
due to my short attention span (a.k.a. alcohol) I just can’t seem to keep up with Twitter.
Aunt Becky, you’re so wise 🙂 You’re like a miniature Buddha, covered in hair.
P.S. Why won’t Blowjob Britney follow me? Is it something I said?
You’ve really got the comment bonfire going on this one, Aunt Becky. I’m with you entirely. It’s VERY hard to explain Twitter to someone who doesn’t *want* to get it. Most people tell me all about how Facebook lets them post updates (except those are the TERRIBLE updates) and how they have nothing interesting to say.
I hate to hear people say they are not interesting, or have no artistic talent, or have become boring. Let your friends decide and just be yourself.
I’m so lame. No Twitter. No Facebook. No nothing.
Actually, maybe that’s a good thing?
I have a friend that is constantly tweeting those contests. It annoys me to no end. There would be serious drama if I unfollowed her, though, so I just deal.
I also use twitter as a kind of blog reader- most of the blogs I follow tweet when they have an update, and on the go, it is easier to know when a new post is up that way than through my google reader.
Now if only you would follow your own advice and do the TweetDeck do-hicky like you are suppose to!
That Tweet Deck stuff is for SISSIES and people who are SMARTER than me. HA. I mean…WAIT A MINUTE.
fucking brilliant\
THE best Twittorial I have seen yet.
(I felt like kind of a douche. Thank you)
I gave up on Twitter. I got hacked twice. Plus I don’t have time to keep up with it. If I could ditch my job and at least one of my kids I would drink the Twitter Aid (again).