Git or Twit? I’ll have one of each please.
I just stalked you on twitter. Cant believe you only have 2 followers.
I did have three. But that one only followed me for less than 24 hours before she realised:
- I tweet less than once a month on benign topics;
- She mistook me for a more interesting Keira Wong who actually adapts to a 140-character limit rather than gives up on that confinement.
I’m finding it difficult to reconcile whether I should be outraged or embarrassed by this fact pointed out by my friend, Andy.
I’ll let my ego dictate and go with – both.
And let the weak justifications on why I don’t use Twitter effectively to gain more followers begin!
“Short n’ sweet”
1. Main reason why Keira doesn’t update too often – 140 characters? I can’t even sum up my sorry excuses for having only two followers in this short space [a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma me thinks].
In defence of my shameful minimal following, I never developed an attachment to Twitter: tweet rarely, follow few is my MO. Of the few I follow, two are comedians, and Twitter is their domain, not mine. Twitter is great for people who utilise the one-word appreciation of dry observational punches: “burrrrrn”, “ZING!”, “lol” etc etc. Not so much for an author who loathes “lol” [the acronym, not the action] and loves the sound of her own keyboard punching out 140 pages, not characters.
2. What I thought of Twitter’s potential flight path.
I first joined Twitter a few years back and was dead wrong about how far and high that little blue bird could fly. ["Bah! What's with the bird? Someone ought to talk to marketing about that. I'm deactivating!"] My (incorrect) perception of Twitter’s longevity made me think Twitter was the bird in bush, not in the hand, and subsequently let it go.
Rejoining Twitter in the past six months, I can see how the rise of its popularity along with users’ own online popularity exponentially enhances the tweetness of the experience [sorry]. Though, increasingly, it bites the hand that feeds it. Ironically, controversial spitfires cause users to gain more followers in the online space to make up for the ones lost in real life a la Catherine Devenney/Wil Anderson. [And yes, I do realise my own sorry predicament if one's online followers outnumber their actual friends. Seemingly, I can't afford the risk, professionally and socially.]
Tweet for one, tweet for all
My general gripe (leading to my detachment) is that Twitter is just another platform in which to kill originality and creativity rather than breeding it: re-tweeting FB status updates and vice versa – we see enough repeated drivel in the media, thank you! And one particularly close to my home – Tweets and FB statuses being considered a newsworthy source by lazy journalists.
But are Twitter and FB the “real” thoughts of society a la Catherine Devenney/Wil Anderson? [C'mon, fair comment on John Mayer - you were thinking it too! Very likely if the guy ever decided he had enough love for someone other than himself to catch an STD off them.] But it sets a dangerous precedent, especially as Twitter doesn’t even purport paying lip service to privacy – anyone can access Tweets and everyone knows it. This goes against my grain of two-facedness discretion within gossip circles. People know they are being watched → will perform → becomes contrived → no actual news. A watched pot never boils and, c’mon, what we’re all after is that boiling point.
Walking a fine line
Moreover, using the social networking platform as a platform to defend controversial behaviour is not only boring but further proves the point of contrived, unoriginal “news”: “it was a joke taken out of context” a la Catherine Devenney. The line between what is real and what is put-on is blurred just like the line between satire/political correctness, Lindsay Lohan’s septum/Las Palma’s toilet cistern.
Reading my Tweets, I can be accused of performing contrived news. Seriously, is my life only about writing, drumming, drinking tea and occasionally building pretend rockets to space [btw, if real, very newsworthy!]? No wonder I only have 2 followers. But the moment I swap “Drumming while eating Anzac biscuits” to “Miss Image Issues in the 3rd row just caught a lot more complicated. Her literacy skill is like the blue strip on a pregnancy test….bad news” or “Writing new blog post on web manners” to “Teacher’s Pet has a face only a mother could love” I would definitely need to Tweet a lot more than 140 characters to fix that train wreck of a career.
But luckily, only two people would actually see that.
Sittin' waitin' wishin' for some more Twitter followers
Tweet me @ |paperbackwriter| (@keirawong) [for those curious...]
6 comments
bare says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:24 pm (UTC -5 )
no comment is my comment.
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Keira says:
August 16, 2010 at 11:42 pm (UTC -5 )
Helpful. Haha.
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Follow my tweets @: keirawong
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bare says:
August 21, 2010 at 7:30 pm (UTC -5 )
doll, any way you can set up for me to receive a notice then you reply to my comments?
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Keira says:
August 22, 2010 at 8:36 pm (UTC -5 )
I am not sure, I’ll look into it. I don’t even know how to receive notifications when people comment on the blog, I had to go in the back end to find out.
I would like to set you up for auto-approval as well.
Will let you know!
Keira(Quote me in your comment) (Reply directly to my comment)
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John Knight says:
August 26, 2010 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5 )
We have 1666 friends on myspazz, but the Sound SKP page on friendface (or facebook as it’s otherwise known) has three “likes” – one of them my own. Some social networking services are very useful in particular ways, but when used as whole fall into complete insipidity. I feel my IQ dropping several points everytime I go on friendface and read another post about how “ninja this toast is”. On Twitter I’m only subscribed to Stephen Fry, Martina Topley Bird and a handful of psychologists, and I find it extremely useful. If I were to subscribe to my everyday friends however, I’d be beating my head against a wall – a wall covered in lol-cats and Twilight.
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Keira says:
September 5, 2010 at 3:16 am (UTC -5 )
Made me laugh about liking yourself on FB! I refused to like myself on my FB page but I did. I forgot then I went, ‘Oooh, another fan – oh, it’s myself.’ Such a letdown.
Keira(Quote me in your comment) (Reply directly to my comment)
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