The Crowbar

I joined Twitter almost exactly a year ago, but I don’t consider myself an expert on Twitter etiquette. Most third party analyzers accuse me of not engaging my users enough, which is probably true. Engaging every person who tags me for Follow Friday takes a lot of precious time that I often cannot afford.

The Follow Friday phenomenon is a great thing, Twitter users staking their reputation on you and vice versa. It’s an honor to be tagged. When I first started on Twitter I returned every #FollowFriday, but then it started taking away from my Twitter experience. It became too tedious and disingenuous, so I stopped – probably to my detriment, but I just couldn’t do it.

Then, along came Twitter Lists. It slowly dawned on me that I could use it to permanently and continuously thank all those who honored me with a Follow Friday tag.

Now, every person who tags me for Follow Friday gets added to my Follow Friday list. Then, every Friday I tweet the link to the members of my list, making it much easier for potential followers to add them. 

I also watch my Follow Friday list as a stream of tweets, as Twitter intended. It’s great to be able to do that for a specific set of Twitter users. 

It’s not perfect. Because of my method, a Twitter user I recommend for Follow Friday will not see a reply from me. But, that’s why I’m writing this post – so I have a way to tell them that I’m not brushing them off and that I’m grateful for the Follow Friday nod.  

 

Taking a moment here to immortalize the small minority of base liberals on Twitter who revel in the death of a conservative. First we have this jem, a combo ReTweet of two snipes at Jack Kemp: The trolls feel quite justified in being base because, as they say, the conservatives did it first: I’m sure some base minority of conservatvies did say awful things about Kennedy and Wellstone, yet any sane person knows that if someone wrongs you it does not give you just cause to wrong them. Trolls will be trolls, great examples of How Not to Be Human.

Found this cubic zirconia on Truthdig: ‘Creepy’ Karl Rove on Meghan McCain’s Twitter Trail:

You know a social networking trend has gone too far when: (1) Karl Rove has caught on, and (2) Karl Rove attempts to “friend” you—or, in Meghan McCain’s unenviable case, follow you on Twitter. Ew.

Ew? Not sure if it was Robert Sheer, Zuade Kaufman or someone else who wrote that, but ‘ew’ speaks volumes about their maturity level. The image forming in my mind: a 13 year old girl with friends says, “Oh my God, Karl Rove is, like, sooooo creepy!” followed by “Ewwwww!” in unison and then lots of giggles. Heh. Truthdig then cites McCain at The Daily Beast:

Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy. I joined Twitter a few months ago; so far, it has been a liberating way to transition from political to personal blogging. It’s allowed me to share the less-serious aspects and humorously uncensored moments of my life. But there’s also been a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits. We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.

Yep. The giggling 13 year olds image has become vivid. I guess McCain just can’t STAND that guy Rove because he, like, keeps following her on Twitter and stuff.  In an interesting turn, McCain then talks about how SHE has explored Rove’s Twitter feed:

On the surface, Karl Rove’s Twitter feed intrigues me. Here’s a guy who for years has been perceived as some kind of inaccessible man-behind-the-curtain figure. And now he Tweets numerous times a day. I’ve never met him in person, which only makes our Twitter relationship even weirder. And to be honest, I find Rove’s Tweets boring. Sometimes he takes questions; other times he talks about his appearances on cable news and other shows. But he doesn’t say anything substantive. If I had to guess, I’d say Rove has a “ghost Twitterer” (as in a ghost writer) or an assistant updating his feed for him. Oddly enough, Rove’s Tweets seem to reveal a softer side to him. Call it savvy marketing, but I find it disingenuous.

Wow, she’s been doing an awful lot of thinking about Rove. I’m finding it hard to imagine that Rove has spent as much time (if any) exploring McCain’s Twitter feed. Maybe Rove isn’t as interested in McCain as she seems to believe. Wait a sec. Obsession over someone who pays no attention to you… isn’t that kinda creepy??

They just make no difference whatsoever in political debates. I was debating some guy on Twitter about whether Jon Stewart is funny. He got insulted because I said that Stewart’s audience of “millions” (it’s actually 1.5 mil/night or so) were probably ill informed. I thought about searching for relevant demographics to prove my point but I stopped. I realized that nothing I was going to say would sway this guy’s opinion, even if I got out the facts, because it had become emotional. I guess the guy is a big fan of Stewart, who I think is a below average comedian. Of course he says things that are occasionally funny and he does have good points. But, on the whole he comes across as awkward and condescending in that snarky, arrogant way that many self-described liberals have when they are putting someone down. The Daily Show reminds me of a bunch of high school jocks (liberal/democrats) laughing it up, making fun of and bullying the nerds and geeks (conservative/republicans). Yeah, it’s really great program, Pah! Anyway, the truth is that facts will always be second to emotions because humans are primarily emotional beings. I think this is conservatives’ greatest weakness in the political arena. They tend to think the facts will speak for themselves. The sooner conservatives wise up to the fact that facts don’t matter, the better.