Friday, December 10, 2010

Tactical re-tweet

I got pestered by some mates into joining Twitter, which I duly did being a modern, technomological sort of person, interested in the relatively new phenomena of social media and cyber-gregariousness that now pervades our society like a funny smell you can't decide whether or not you like, encouraging us to become "friends" with people we've met at a bus stop and are unlikely to ever see again.

So, there I was, Twitterised.

Of course, I obeyed the law and became a follower of Stephen Fry, because I believe that's compulsory and there may very well be some sort of penalty for not doing so.

I read other folks tweets. Some were quite good, or informative, or interesting. Most were banal. I played around with it, tweeted a few times, even twittered occasionally.

But I have to confess, I don't really get it.

To me, other social media makes a sort of sense. It's great for sharing photos with far-flung family, of arranging rare nights out, and for generally having a regular natter when otherwise you might only talk to someone every couple of weeks on the phone. It really is quite social.

Twitter seems very . . . one way.

You post a sentence. It gets displayed for a while. You write another one. Done.


And for the number of people that are going to read mine, I'd be better off writing them on a Post-it and sticking them to my fridge door.

I decided to cheat and directed my Facebook statuses (Statees? Stati?) to become tweets, so I look like I'm a dedicated Twitterer, when in fact I only occasionally look at it. This way, Mr Fry's loyalty enforcement officers won't come after me.

I do get notifications when someone new follows me, which is all very well when it's a friend or acquaintance, but most of them seem to be businesses including, strangely, a Japanese Garden centre.

Lately, I have been experiencing a sudden surge of new followers on Twitter. At first this excited me because, suddenly, people were showing that they liked what I was saying and wanted to know more! Coincidentally, they all seemed to be ladies with a penchant for naturism, for their avatar pictures were often bereft of clothing.

Amazingly, Yasmine, Constance, Celeste, Ebony, Sexxy69 and DickLuva all turned out to be less than genuine, and were in fact spamming for business in order to drum up trade for mucky films.

Apart from the copious displays of bare boobs, their expressions should have clued me in. Half closed eyes and slack jaws are, it would seem, the industry standard "look" to demonstrate sexiness, and totally not indicative of an over-enthusiastic lobotomy.

Anyway, I've blocked them on grounds that pictures of naked ladies are actually available on the internet, if you look hard enough.

So I've been told.

And then I promptly got another one. Just before I blocked her, I couldn't help but notice her name.

In such an industry, market research would, one presumes, suggest using an alias that might be judged "sexy", a name to tempt a potential Joe to view your wares, a nom-de-pute if you will. This isn't difficult, as you could just use those ones associated with contemporary screen lovelies, maybe Angelina or Nicole, Kirsten or Eva. No imagination needed.

Here, such market research had obviously passed my new fan by.

Her name was Mildred.

Now, bad as I feel about labelling people, but when I think of someone called Mildred, it isn't in the context of sexual relations. Apologies if your name is Mildred and you're reading this*, but it really doesn't rank high in the annals of eroticism, does it? The image that springs to mind is of someone with removable teeth.

I wonder if you were a chap in the market for some negotiable affection, would you pay less if your lady of the night was called Doris or Edna?

I may be over thinking this.

Initially, writing this made me feel a bit shallow, and possibly sexist against men for not including them in this diatribe. But maybe the opposite is true. Genuine desirability depends on subjective impressions, the recognition of humanity, the identification of (and maybe with) a real person, not just on plastic pertness and a gormless physiognomy, lovely though those attributes must obviously be.

A name is important.

Of course, the popularity of any name changes from one generation to the next, so todays Angelinas will be tomorrows Myrtles, and the height of allure will one day be represented by Maude, Ida and Mildred.

Anyway, with that tangent well and truly offed, I deleted Mildred and exited Twitter for a few weeks. I'm obviously not exploiting it to its full potential, which may be my fault, but I also don't seem to have the urge (or indeed the time) to learn how to.

Ultimately, blogging may have ruined Twitter for me, because why would I want to tweet when I can squawk?




*Although, to be honest, it's not really very likely, is it?

35 comments:

  1. love the post title, sugar! ;~D xoxoxo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Are you kidding? I get all the latest breaking world news from DickLuva. She loves dick, but what most people don't realize is that she ALSO loves current events.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've been playing the tweeter game off and on for a while too. Mostly to badger people into reading my blog. It hardly seems worth it most of the time. And no one has even shown me their boobs. I must be doing it wrong.

    Yours Truly,
    @betadad

    ReplyDelete
  4. I joined Twitter on some mad, alcohol induced crazy urge late one night when I was bored and was looking for something...I still dont know what.
    I woke up the next morning with tweeters regret and never made one single tweet but I got and keep getting requests from followers. So sometimes life is boring!..but how sad must those people be, who want to follow someone who does not make a single tweet...and never will?

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Loved this. Almost too funny to ruin with any comment about the specifics, but I had to say that Twitter only starts out as all transmit. Banter on Twitter soon springs up and is a wonderful, fun, silly thing. You would fit right in. Oh, and Stephen Fry is very tedious on Twitter.

    What's your Twitter name? Or are you giving up on it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Savvy - Thank you my lovely.

    Steamy - Apparently, her choice of name was a toss up between DickLuva and NewsAppreciator

    BetaDad - We don't want much in life, do we? Someone to notice us and occasionally give us a flash.

    Tempo - Lol at Tweeters regret. And perhaps they think zen tweeter, and your wisdom lies in your blank spaces.

    MLS - Ta. I do get the impression that there's more to it than I thought, but can it compete with, for example, Facebook status banter, which I really enjoy. I won't gve up on it mind.

    ReplyDelete
  8. There are many things I don't understand, but chief among them just might be twitter. Followed closely by sexy women who try and entice you named Mildred...

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love how you write. :-)

    As for Twitter, I have to agree. I tried; I really did.

    Hard to believe that DickLuva wasn't sincere...

    Pearl

    ReplyDelete
  10. Couldn't agree more with MLS, it doesn't stay oneway.

    I really didn't get it at first at all either; seemed like opening the door shouting something into a vacuum and then closing it. You do need to give it time and you really need to be proactive about it. People don't just come and follow you for no reason, usually some sort of interaction is needed. If there is anyone you do enjoy on there have a look at who their following, chances are they'll be on the same wave length.

    I've come to the conclusion its not really about who is following you, its morea about who you follow.

    Oh and avoid the Stephen Frys and Charlie Brookers of the twitter universe; that really IS a one way system and it'll just piss you off.

    Let us know if you do want to give it a second bash, you'll find a lot of familar faces on there...

    (@judearoo)

    ReplyDelete
  11. SkylersDad - I was going to make a joke about giving good Edna, but I won't. I'm all about restraint me.

    Pearl - Thank you. I wish I hadn't followed her back now. That's the money for a ticket to Thailand I won't see again.

    Judearoo - You and MLS may have persuaded me, although I'm thinking of starting another Twitter account because the spam followers are getting a bit tedious. There's only so much gardening and soft core porn a chap can take.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Me too! I don't know you and I don't know my 120 twitter-followers either... but this morning us strangers all chatted about the weather and what to have for breakfast and then I @mentioned some people and then no one @mentioned me and then I got bored... I don't get the hash tag thing either... and not sure if anyone gives a hoo-ha about my blog b/c I think they only care about their own bog but it has only been 3 weeks and I have found your blog because of it and you're quite funny. I hope you're funny more than once. TGW

    ReplyDelete
  13. Yes, as others have posited, it starts off one-way - as it must, until anyone knows you're there - but before long there are conversations (both public and private) and arguments and concern and, yes, relationships.

    There's some saying going round along the lines that Twitter is full of friends you haven't met yet and that Facebook is full of those you wish you hadn't. So far for me, that rings true :)

    @fourstar

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh, and you always get spam followers. They're easily blocked, it's like swatting internet flies.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I keep trying with Twitter, but so far I can't stick with it. But if you're open to accepting blog friends or if you aren't trying to keep blog/personal separate, I'd love to be your facebook friend! Steamme Upkid.

    ReplyDelete
  16. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  18. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  19. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  20. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  21. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I started off strong in Twitter, but eventually, I bore even myself.

    Why say something in 140 characters, when you can use 1400?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Oops, deleted my own comment as well as my copious new asian fanbase.

    The Good Wifehold - I'll try best! And you're right. Blogging is often a bit of an ego boost, I reckon.

    Fourstar - I like that saying. Cheers.

    Steamy - 'kay!

    Eric - Sorry about the long posts, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one!

    ReplyDelete
  24. This was very funny. :)

    I've become hopelessly addicted to Twitter. I feel about Facebook the way you feel about Twitter, I suppose.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Someone finally said it. I guess I could've of said too but...anyway

    I don't get it either. Twitter. It even sounds confusing.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Otherworldlyone - I think you could be right!

    The Lissst - I think it might be a sort of blasphemy to utter such things so I ought to be careful really.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I really enjoyed reading this post, it made me laugh.

    yours, no longer followed Mildred

    ReplyDelete
  28. Technogran - Thank you for the kind words. And if you're really a Mildred, you have changed my world!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  31. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  33. I would like to invite you to visit my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  35. Are pleased to come to your blog to read your article! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

I'm going to risk taking comment moderation off for a bit, so if you're a web-bot, a robot, a bot-fly or a bottom-dwelling sediment-feeder, then please refrain from commenting.

Otherwise, have a go. S'fun.