Friday is yet again upon us, my how the week has flown! Yet again Twitter is abuzz with the latest scandal, today it is the resignation of Andy Coulson (hurrah!) and the inevitable #ff ‘s – Follow Friday’s. Today I feel compelled again to write about #ff’s and warn you about the consequences of getting what you wish for..
If you are on Twitter to plug a blog or raise an issue, great..but if you are there to escape from “real life” for a while, have a bit of fun, chat with friends and play hashtag games then why look for more followers?
Follow Friday is lovely, it’s a way of sharing your thoughts about other’s with your own followers, paying tribute if you like.. To be “ff’d” not only sounds really smutty 😉 but also feels really good. It doesn’t always lead to more followers though, bizarrely many people lose followers on a Friday. Unfollowing often causes hurt and bewilderment, you think it’s personal, often it isn’t. My advice is DONT check with the likes of “www.whichbastardunfollowedme.paranoid” Definitely never EVER tweet the result, “shaming” the unfollowee…! Remember that following more than 300 people is REALLY hard, sometimes people just fancy a change or struggle to keep up. That’s why I put people in lists, so I can follow the lists rather than everyone all at once in some kind of Amazonial Twitter stream.
Once upon a time there was a girl called Humphrey who would say good morning to Twitter every day, often scattering toast or fairy dust around.. She would wish everyone a good night and sometimes invite Twitter #inbedwithHumph.. her days were spent laughing and playing with a bit of flirting dropped in..
Nowadays I am too overwhelmed by replies and scared of repercussions to “play Humph” like I used to. I’ve written before about the so-called “Twitterati”, it was back in August, following my birthday. I had around 1000 followers at the time I think and it was “pre-Dorries-law” days. Throughout the day I was inundated by birthday greetings, which was both lovely and shocking. It opened my eyes a little to what the “Twitterati” face every time they tweet…
Now at almost 2000 followers, I sometimes find myself hesitating before making a tweet for fear of a big response.. I still want to answer everyone who tweets me, I find it rude not to and I really enjoy having conversations. However, I haven’t always the time it takes to do so and often get really abusive replies, particularly if I have tweeted on a political issue. (I am also excruciatingly aware of how many tweets I stack up in a single day, although they are mostly replies)
More than once I have considered deleting my account over the past few months, I have even started a new one in order to rant a little without fear of reprisals. These days I tend to just tweet about disability issues with the odd moan about the telly or politicians thrown in. But by deleting my account I would lose the little influence I have built up and I truly believe I use it for good and want to continue to do so. I love my followers, I am really proud of the “work” I do on Twitter and this blog and would hate for that to go to waste.
Thanks to my lovely noisy neighbours, I now have a borrowed computer so have Tweetdeck back. Tweeting is SO much easier with it! What do you mean, you don’t use it? You MUST! It is FANTASTIC ! It has come just at the right time for me, with my first foot operation being next Tuesday..*gulp* There is a long recovery and I expect to spend most of my waking hours stuck in a chair in front of the computer with my foot elevated. I can blog, read, watch TV and listen to the radio but hope I get my Twitter “mojo” back and spend time laughing and playing on Tweetdeck again. I don’t know if “Humphrey” will properly return though, she seems to have lost her flirting ability lately 😦 #whatswrongwithHumph #thinkshesinlove
“Entonces” as they say in Spain.. like the Mugwai..with big following comes much responsibility, or in other words.. be careful what you wish for!
Mshumphreycushion's Blog 