UPDATE (Jan. 30, 2010): This is hands down, the laziest blogging move I have ever pulled.  I published this post on the 26th, but got distracted and forgot to pimp it on twitter.

But. I do have a reason (yes, other than laziness) for wanting to update and edit it.  The original post was about things people do on twitter to cause me to unfollow them.  But then a friend of mine, Allison, made some excellent points in the two comments she made about all these twitter/blogging/commenting rules.  (I left all the original comments in place.)

It’s some stuff that I’ve been thinking about and feeling for months, but she was the one who put it all together for me.  Especially the part about why I started blogging in the first place.

I have a bunch of crap in my head all the time and I feel better when it’s not in my head anymore.  Writing is how I work things out.  It’s why I carry a notebook around.  If don’t capture a thought on paper it’s gone forever.

My blog is my very personal journey and a long time ago I used to not be so afraid of you guys coming along for the ride.

But then I left myspace and got myself a big girl blog.  All of a sudden there were all these rules.  I’m not going to elaborate other than to say I felt pressure to fit into some sort of mold.  And to do things to get “traffic” and readers and high stats.

It wasn’t fun. It no doubt contributed to me writing some of the worst drivel of my life.

They say if you want to be inspired to write, you should read.  And read what inspires you.  So I’m going to do that. Starting right now.

I have no idea if I’m a writer or not.  But I do know that it seems to be like anything else.  You don’t know until you try.  And even if you are supposed to do something, doesn’t mean you magically know how to do it.  Sometimes you have to be taught.  You have to be ok with failing. And I’m not so much. Honestly, I’m scared to death.

I’ve decided it’s ok to be scared, too.

Oh, and here’s the original, edited post. Even though it’s a shining example of said drivel:

I started using twitter last March.  I became addicted to twitter about, oh, I don’t know…  last March, maybe?

Shockingly, it didn’t take long for me to post a rant about some things I didn’t like.  That’s also back when my husband used to comment on my blog all the time.  sigh

I still stand by pretty much everything in that post, but 9 months later my tolerance for some things has grown while my tolerance for others has become completely nonexistent.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t say a few words here about how I feel about online friendships.  I know some people mock the idea of truly being friends with someone you’ve never actually met, but I couldn’t disagree more.

I know some wonderful, strong writerly women who not only encourage me (me!) to write and stand up for myself, they call me on my shit when I need it.  And know when to back off when I don’t.  There’s really no other word for that then friend.

Some people say you should be really careful and cautious about online friendships.  That’s true, too.  A person can pretend to be anything they want to be online.  A blog, a tweet stream, a facebook page are easy ways to create a life that may or may not be all that it seems.

That’s where something like twitter comes in handy.  To me, it’s like a cocktail party.  You can meet someone, exchange pleasantries, and move on if you find you have nothing in common.  Or you can continue to be casual acquaintances.  Or if you do hit it off, you can add them on facebook, follow a blog, reply to them a lot on twitter, whatever.

This goes both ways.  If someone doesn’t find me particularly interesting, they can just unfollow.  I don’t even care that much anymore.  I’ll admit, it used to hurt my feelings, but then I thought about all the reasons why I unfollow people and realized it isn’t that big of a deal.  It’s the equivalent of saying, “It was nice to meet you” without adding on the “I’ll call you”.  And honestly, odds are if you unfollowed me, I wasn’t really feeling you either.

(Here’s where I did some editing – took out a little intro and the first few points, but I feel like leaving the last three unfollowing reasons up. Just because.)

3. This one is sort of awkward, so I’ll just come out and say it.  You’re a whore.  (Sadly, I’m referring to more than one person here.)  I’m tired of reading about how you’re not wearing a bra today or how big your boobs are or how much sex you’re having with random people.  I’m tired of you constantly posting pictures of your cleavage.   I’m not trying to be a prude here.  I mean, I like boobies and a good sex story as much as the next person.  But talking about sex constantly doesn’t make you sexy.  It just makes you slutty.

4. Taking a deep breath because this one is totally awkward.  But here goes. You pimp your stuff/ask for things too damn much! It’s fantastic that you wrote a book, wrote a new post, have a new giveaway, want to win an award, want to win a contest, want more followers, but I’m tired of hearing about it over and over again.  I’m all for pimping your stuff and your friend’s stuff.  Once.  Twice.  Maybe, in a very special circumstance, three times.  Anymore than that and I start feeling like doing the opposite of whatever it is you keep repeatedly telling me to do.  Or if all you ever tweet are links to your latest blog post or giveaway, well, I can get that information from my google reader, can’t I?

5. This is the only one directed at one person in particular.  Honestly, I have no idea why I didn’t unfollow you immediately after you snarked at me.  I guess at the time I didn’t want to think it was about me.  Because I’m totally fucking neurotic I tend to get my feelings hurt easily and assume things are about me when they actually aren’t.  I’m working on this issue, which means I gave you the benefit of the doubt when I really shouldn’t have.  But, yeah.  I’m pretty confident your snark was directed toward me.

I’m sarcastic.  I’m snarky.  Sometimes I’m even downright bitchy.  But one thing I don’t do, ever,  is go out of my way to hurt someone’s feelings.  Accusing someone of not taking medicine (umm that won’t help at all by the way) for a chronic condition that they have so they can then tweet about it just to get attention? You really, seriously thought that?

And personally, the way I handle it when I don’t like or I’m tired of  what someone is tweeting is to just unfollow them.  The beauty of twitter is that there’s no need to subject yourself to me when you can so easily make me go away.

And honestly? The irony of accusing someone of tweeting something for attention on a site that is designed entirely for the purpose of getting people to pay attention to what you say just kills me.

Tags: twitter, writing

This entry was posted by Cathy on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Blogging, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.