Monday, November 5, 2012

You Put the Twit in Twitter

Ahhh, social media. It allows us to connect with people all over the world. Unfortunately, many fail to make actual connections.  I have long lamented the fake persona of oneself on the internet. Rarely do you find the 'what you see is what you get' kind of person.  You run into many Jekyll and Hyde scenarios when you meet an internet acquaintance in real life.  The hyper-realized persona that one adopts online is more often a let down when compared to the actual in-person persona.  Following is just a sample of some of the weirdness I notice on Twitter.

The chronic retweeter.  This is especially bad in the sports world.  You do not need to retweet every tweet from a teams official account. Example: I'm watching the game and the team I cheer for gets a first down. The official account tweets about it. Immediately we are bombarded by countless dorks retweeting that. A) You probably follow many of the same people of that given fan base, so they already got that tweet, or were actually watching said game and had that information first hand. B) You are not part of that team's social media program. You are not their employee.  You are a fucking parrot regurgitating information that is not only useless to the entire population of the planet, but it just fucking happened and we all saw it. And your excuse of, "Well, my friend wanted me to update him because he can't watch the game." Bullshit. That's the best way for your friend to get this info? If your friend can check Facebook and Twitter, then they can find an app or website to get the information in pretty much real time.

The above isn't just for the sportos. This applies to the disaster junkies as well. You do not need to tweet every news clip you find of an ongoing natural disaster.  The AP isn't going through your time line to make sure they are on top of things. I will let you in on a little secret. YOU ARE NOT MY FUCKING NEWS SOURCE. Thank you for letting me know that you are the most disaster aware person in the history of mankind, but what I want to know is what can be done to help.  Find and tweet the links of where people can go to volunteer or donate. That kind of thing really does help. What doesn't help is you trying to show the world how empathetic you are.  Subtract the em from the 12th word in that previous sentence to reveal your true self.

Captain Politics.  This is probably worse on Facebook rather than Twitter mostly because you just 'liked' something that I absolutely loathe, which in turn just lowered my already-at-sea-level opinion of you.  Thanks for clogging my timeline with a billion re-postings of political articles. This does not make you political. This does not make you the most informed judging from some of the dubious source material. This makes you the all-time world champ at copying and pasting links. Good for you. Due to there only being two major political parties, you would think that you are basically only pissing of 50 percent of the people who follow or have friended you. Wrong. 100 percent of the people think that you are an asshole with too much time on your hands.  And I'm not talking about people who are passionate about certain issues.  This is for the people that just don't seem to have a filter and feel the need to poop out as much information as humanly possible.

Trolls.  Everyone knows who they are. Trolls know that they themselves are trolls.  Everyone hates trolls. Even trolls hate other trolls.  Which makes me question, "how the fuck do they even exist?" It's a goddamn paradox.  Trolls only exist on the internet because if more than one troll happened to be in the same vicinity as another in real life, it would most likely tear a hole in the space/time continuum.  Another reason that you can never identify a troll in real life is because they are cowards.  There is one rule I try to apply to myself wherever I may be on the internet, "Never type something that you wouldn't say to someone's face".  I've met people in real life that act all hard-ass on the internet, who face to face, turn out to be exactly what I thought, a gutless turd.  If being shitty to someone on purpose is your only goal in life, then stay off of the internet.  Just take that out on your own family.  And if that's how you get your rocks off, your only source of happiness, then you are a sad, sad, little person.  Remember, bullies usually get the shit kicked out of them at one point or another.  I'm not advocating violence, but I will endorse someone stomping a bullies ass into a mudhole.

These are some other random annoyances.

Hipster douchebags that shit all over what everybody else likes, be it whatever media, music, movies, books, tv or the like. Oddly, these wastes of space never let anybody in on what they like. Hmmm. I wonder why that is?  Could it be that you like just the same amount of stupid shit as the rest of us? Yeah. That's what I thought.

Begging celebrities for a retweet. @whoeverfamous "Can I get a retweet?" Let me get this straight. You are asking someone to retweet 'can I get a retweet'?  You are one profound motherfucker.  You can now go furiously masturbate over the screen capture you took on you smartphone because someone famous hit the retweet button as they rolled their eyes.

Begging for followers. That is probably the saddest thing in the digital age.

The use of the word 'welp'. It is especially creepy coming from a grown man.  Did you mean whelp, as in that's one word to describe you?

Who's got something, something and two thumbs? This guy.  Do the world a favor and insert both thumbs in each end of a razor blade Chinese finger trap.  At least it will stop you from typing on your phone.

"This is some kind of ironic fake quote"-said no one.  That was amusing until it became completely overplayed.

Tweeting every minute detail of your life. Nobody cares. Goody fucking gumdrops, I now know when some random asshole is sleeping, walking, working, eating, shitting, fucking, crying, or whatever. You just ate at McDonald's. Well holy shit, let's call CNN. You just ate the 245 billionth and one hamburger.  We are not waiting here with bated breath to find out about your purchase of toilet bowl cleaner and a box of mac and cheese.

Those inspirational quotes written over a flowery picture. Not just one, but about a jillion in a row. Unacceptable. Unless it is a picture of a kitty dangling from a tree branch by it's front paws with the words 'Hang in there!' written in large bubble letters, because that's all I'm trying to do man.

You spoiler fucks.  You just got done watching your favorite show. So what do you do? You track-star run to the internet to post, "I can't believe they killed so-and-so".  Really?  I can't believe nobody has killed you yet you fucking blabbermouth.  There is absolutely no rational reason for you to do this, especially in the age of the DVR.  What empty hole in your soul do you think you are filling by doing this?  And don't you dare tell me to abstain from using the internet because you felt like screaming "OMG DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER".  You might as well go around to all of the kindergarten classes in your area and inform them that there is no such thing as Santa you dumbass.  I probably should have begun this paragraph with: WARNING-STAR WARS AND CHRISTMAS SPOILERS.

Follow. Unfollow. Follow. Unfollow. Follow. Unfollow. Geeze, fucking get over yourself.  This goes hand in hand with people threatening to unfollow for whatever slight.  Oh, darn. The crybaby unfollowed me. However will I go on with my life? Easy. Laugh and refresh.

Unnecessary emoticons.  If you don't wink after everything you say in real life, why do it after every tweet? I really don't get the heart one. You know, the less than 3 dealy. I am not going to write it out because Blogger thinks I am trying to reprogram my computer and create some kind of A.I. I can't even talk about it now. It is just another thing to make people think they are clever. About as clever as a third grader writing boobless on his upside down calculator.

Writing haha after everything, and oddly after things that are not funny. I have to drive to the store, haha. You are a lunatic.  Just as before, if you don't really laugh after everything in real life, why after every tweet. It's just plain weird.  If people talked like they tweeted, there is a good chance that 80 percent of the population would be locked away in a institution of some sort.

So in summation, I believe the internet is a horrible, horrible place. No I don't.  I've made friends on the internet that I will talk to until the day I die.  I love the insane people who travel down the youtube rabbit hole to post some absolute gems.  I will read every single one of the old-timey e-cards that people post.  I will look at every new picture that you posted of your trip to the zoo.  I will never judge you as you check into Starbucks for the 119th on Foursquare. I like wishing happy birthday to someone I haven't talked to in 15 years. I will give you a (((hug))) when you are having a shitty day. (That always looks like sound waves coming off of the word hug so I always think of it as a gong hug.) I like being included in a mass invite to an event that you know that I can't attend.  What I'm trying to say is I totally heart each and every on of you. Haha.