Posts Tagged ‘followers’

It’s that time of year again.  Call it what you like.  Christmas, Festivus… or as I have taken to calling it this year, Bah-Frigging-Humbug.  Yeah, I’m not so much in the holiday spirit this year.

Except that I guess I am.

Or, rather, I realized this morning that I am no less in the spirit of the season right at this moment than I am all year long. That’s probably an important point of clarification.

I try, admittedly with a sarcastic bent, to keep the spirit of this so-called season in my heart throughout the year. It’s not always easy. In fact, on stabby days, it’s almost impossible. That one word there, ‘almost’, makes all the difference in the world.

I am so damn lucky to have that ‘almost’. I don’t give it to myself, either. That ‘almost’ is a gift to me, given by a hell of a lot of people. Those people give me the gift of a smile, or a giggle, or a big laugh. That ‘almost’ makes such a huge difference in my life.

This is my thank you to those people, for all of the times you have given me the gift of a brighter day. I am grateful to have people – you – who have helped me smile on the worst days; to you, who have made the good days even better.

To all the people I share my life with on various Social Media sites… Those social media sites that I take so much pleasure in taking the piss out of? Yeah, those. To all of you that I share time with on those sites, I thank you. I may not always tell you on a day-to-day basis that you’ve made a good difference in my life, or that you’ve made me smile, but I’m telling you now. I follow you for a reason, and that reason is that you make a positive difference in my life.

To the smaller group of people that I touch base with on a regular basis, I wish you all of the happiness that you have brought to me over this past year. The last year has been stellar, and getting to spend time – even virtually – with you has been fabulous. I hope that you and your families have a wonderful holiday together, and that the next year brings all of you many smiles, chuckles, and warmth. I don’t just mean warm weather, either.

To those of you that share more of my life than just a tweet or a status update, I adore you. You help make every single day happy for me, even when I’m a snarky bitch. You help keep me sane, even when you are active participants in my insanity. You have, without a doubt, become a part of my life. If I have brought to your lives even half of what you’ve brought to mine, then I am grateful.

To a very small few, the ones that know they have a little bit of my heart, you are so much a part of my daily life that I can’t imagine that life without you. Nor do I want to. I wish you joy. I wish you love. I wish for you everything that you have brought to me, ten-fold. I can not tell you every day how much you mean to me, but please know that every day I don’t say it, you mean the world to me. You make me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

And finally, to those of you that have my whole heart; to those of you that know the real me and love me anyhow… the feeling is entirely mutual. Unreservedly, unwaveringly, and unfailingly. There is never a time when you are not in my thoughts, there is never a moment when I don’t carry you with me into the world. It couldn’t be any other way because you are the best part of my heart. Quite simply, I love you.

*ahem*

This started out as a post about people whining on various social media sites about feeling ignored and put-out because it seemed that no one was paying attention to them.

That annoyed (and hurt) me to the point that I refrained from posting on those sites because I didn’t want anyone to catch my notoriously contagious bad attitude.

You’re welcome.

So, this weekend, I was absent from my own timelines. I wasn’t vocal. I didn’t tweet. I didn’t update my status all that much. There were messages in private from people, and I was still reading my social media streams, but overall I just shut up.

What a concept.
Shutting up.

We all know what Social ME-dia is really about. It’s the place we go to talk about ourselves, and to tell other people what we are thinking. Even when we are sharing content, it’s still ME-dia. We share what we like; what we find interesting, or touching, or inspirational. Or just plain effed up.

We hope that others find what we’re sharing worthwhile enough to turn around share it with others.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, as long as we don’t crawl too far up our own asses.  From that vantage point, it’s difficult to be anything but… well, an asshole. And I just feel that I’ve been seeing a lot of assholes lately. I needed to see if that was really the case, or if my perception was off.

With that in mind, this past weekend, I didn’t participate in Social ME-dia.
I participated in Social You-dia.  I read, rather than typed. I listened, rather than spoke.

I found out a lot of things.

I found out that there are a lot of assholes out there. I wasn’t wrong.
I found out that a lot of people I follow are more stellar than I thought.
I saw that one of the people I am friends with on Facebook has been having a tough time.
I read a lot of really exceptional articles.
I found some really cool websites.
My heart broke a little for someone that I care about.
I missed tweets from someone that I look forward to seeing.
I saw a famous person doling out some inspirational advice.
I read some beautiful poems.
I saw some awesome artworks.
I heard some music that I quite liked.

The simple fact is that I might have missed a lot of this stuff if I had been busy finding stuff to post and share. Kicking back for a day and letting everyone else feed my mind was refreshing. It was relaxing. I’m not going to give up on the ‘me’ part of social media, but taking me out of the equation for a while was a nice change.

I’m not saying that everyone should just stop practicing Social ME-dia. If we did that, there would be nothing out there to see on the days that I – or you – might want to practice Social YOU-dia.

Not everything I read was good. Some of it – a lot of it – was simply Social Mediocrity. But remaining quiet for a couple of days really allowed me to filter the mediocrity and see the mediamazing. It’s out there if you watch for it. If you are quiet enough to see it.

For me, shutting up every now and then just might be the best thing Social Media has to offer.

By the way, I didn’t re-tweet or share a damn thing.
I barely even thanked anyone.

You might think that makes me a bitch. But think about this:

You might have tweeted something that I found completely fitting and inspirational and life affirming. Life changing, even. The fact that I didn’t re-tweet you doesn’t mean it was any less important to me.

So the next time you might think that people aren’t paying attention?

Re-think, relax…

Shut Up.

I love Twitter – for the most part.

It’s fun, easy and you can dance to it.  Oh, wait.  Sorry, that’s ABBA.

Twitter is a great tool whether you want to share content, get content, read updates on friends, or you just plain want to socialize.  It very rarely pisses me off in ways that make me want to get all stabby and stuff.  Sure, it goes down more often than a tired newborn (and you thought I was going to the naughty place) but overall, I’ve found it to be a great experience.

Except…

Except for the people.

I don’t know why this surprises me.  It not like I really love people all that much in my real life, why would I like them any better online?  And this little rant does not include people that follow me, people that I follow, people that I am friends with, people that I socialize with or people that I want to see naked.

Some things I just can’t tolerate on Twitter.  If I happen to follow someone, and they do one of these things, chances are really high that I’m going to unfollow them without so much as a second thought.  It may be petty and it may seem childish, but that’s the way it is.  I’m sure that I do things that cause people to unfollow me, too.  I’m okay with that.  In fact, most times, I outright encourage it.

So if you follow me, and I follow you… and then all of a sudden I’m not following you anymore?  Don’t feel bad.  You just committed one of my personal cardinal Tweet sins.  There are only three.  But they are pretty much unforgivable sins.

One. Be a part of anything that begs for more followers. This includes tweets that ask me if I want to know how you got so many, tweets that include hashtags like #TEAMFOLLOWBACK and tweets that are generally something that I’d consider spam.  Every now and then, someone that I’ve been following for a while will fall into tweets like that.  I’ll give you one or two and hope it goes away.  If it doesn’t?  Bye.

Two. Be a bot. I don’t follow and will immediately block and report you.  The end.

Three. Spread hate. Political discussion, fine.  Calm debate, I’m all for it.  You spewing hate at someone, some individual, some group of individuals?  Buh-bye.  In fact, this is the only rule that has no exceptions.  If a bot is interesting enough, I have been known to follow.  But this?  No wiggle room.  There is a person in Twitterville who is one of the most vile, barely-human creatures I have ever encountered.  And damn if this guy doesn’t have a follower count in the almost hundred thousands.  But this guy?  Is pure douchebag.  I don’t unfollow people that follow him – it’s always better for people to figure stuff out on their own.  But I’ll tell you what, if someone retweets his “work”, and it shows up in my time-line?  I unfollow.  I never want to see his name, tweets, quotes, or other sundry shit, even from someone else.

Wait.
I guess there’s one more.

Shit on people that I care about.

Do that, and I guarantee you I’ll drop your ass faster than the speed of light.

Don’t be a douchebag.
Twitter needs less douchebags.
Not more.

Just sayin’.