22 Reasons Why I'm Not Following You on Twitter

Dear Lady,

I understand your request – you would like me to follow you on Twitter. Believe it or not, I understood the first time you asked. The 8 times I ignored you, I thought, would have been a message in itself. But, I guess not. And this last one kind of drove me to the edge, so without further ado, here are some reasons I might not be following you. I’ve gone ahead and put in reasons I might not be following any certain person but look through them and see if you can pick out which ones apply to you. Fun game!

1. I don’t want to.

Even though that one doesn’t tell you a lot, it is the main reason which I shouldn’t need to explain, but I’ll go ahead and break it down further for you, in no particular order.

2. You are following 1,542 people and the 24 people following you are all spambots.

3. All your tweets are a RT of @somefamousperson

4. All your tweets are @famousperson Please Follow Me!!!!!

5. All your tweets look like this – just shittin herre. hahalol she a bitch, yo n hate hahalol

6. All your tweets look like this – Call Me! FOR a GOOOOD TIME!! I GOT IT BABY!! I LONELY!!!!!!

7. All your tweets look like this – iM jUsT dOiN nUtIN aLl DaY sHiT sUcKs!

8. All your tweets are promoting your business.

9. All your tweets are an inspirational quote. Some are fine, but I can only handle so much.

10. You joined in April and never tweeted.

11. You haven’t tweeted since April.

12. I did follow you, but you auto DMd me so I quit you instantly.

13. All your tweets are replies to only one person.

14. You don’t tweet anything interesting to me.

15. You tweet 30 times per hour. I can’t handle the load.

16. Every tweet is a whine or complaint. I can’t handle the negative energy.

17. I don’t know you, never met you, haven’t heard of you, none of the people I follow are following you, combined with any reason above.

18. You are a friend or friend of a friend and although I like you a lot and maybe read your blog, I’m not that interested in getting your tweets.

19. You are a friend or friend of a friend and although I like you a lot and maybe read your blog, you only tweet about sex.

20. You are a friend or friend of a friend and although I like you a lot and maybe read your blog, you usually tweet in all caps.

21. Your tweets are protected. How am I supposed to know if I want to follow you or not?

22. The majority of your tweets are about how many people are following you or not following you.

I know I’m not an authority on who is a good Tweeter and who is not. I am not telling you that these 22 reasons should be reasons for anyone else. But they are my reasons. You can make your own.

At the end of the day, Twitter is there for me to enjoy. If I’m not enjoying it, what’s the point? And part of enjoying it is crafting my list the way I want it. Me following you or not following you has nothing to do with your self worth, how cool you are, how famous you are or how much I like you or don’t like you. I certainly hope no one takes offense to whether I’m following them or not. I follow the people I want to keep up with. They don’t all follow me back. I don’t care. They are following who they want and are probably following people that don’t follow them back, too. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a feed of tidbits and tiny news bulletins from sources I want to know about.

So, last words – go out there and craft your own list. Follow the people you really enjoy and not the ones you don’t enjoy. And don’t feel bad about it, even if someone repeatedly asks you to follow them. Stick to your guns and don’t give into peer pressure or hounding. They can’t make you. You can’t make me. You aren’t the boss of me.

43 Replies to “22 Reasons Why I'm Not Following You on Twitter”

  1. I LOVE it! I hate AUTO DM’s and will usually unsub within minutes of getting them (if I can get on the PC). I also am not a fan of the TyPiNg LiKe ThIs CrAp so those get unsub right away too!! All of your reasons are so great… but number 1 is my favorite! HA!

  2. “If I’m not enjoying it, what’s the point?”

    Exactly!

    I go through every so often and block the bots and the naked women. Right now, my Twitter list is not all that large, and is full of people I enjoy keeping up with for one reason or another. πŸ™‚

  3. I love these reasons. I also unfollow those who tweet-and-delete. It’s like, stand by what you say, people!

    I had one follower (who I was following) who was so negative, I had to stop. She begged me to come back and follow her again; said she was improving her worldview and would like my positive energy in her follower list. Two days later, I had to unfollow again.

    *shudder*

    And I stripped back my Facebook page recently too, saying exactly this: “If it’s not fun for me to be here, why am I here?” And anyone who’s not adding to my fun time? OUT. πŸ™‚ It’s liberating, actually. πŸ™‚

  4. See, that is just it – I don’t really care if someone isn’t following be back, but I feel as if I should. And then when someone follows me and is clearly porn-y, I feel sort of guilty blocking them. But stranger’s porn-y twitters aren’t fun for me. And I feel as if I should care how many people follow me, but I totally don’t.

    I like your “fun for me plan” – and am completely on board, even if that means I am not using Twitter the “right” way.

  5. “19. You are a friend or friend of a friend and although I like you a lot and maybe read your blog, you only tweet about sex.”

    I laughed hard at that one. Now I might never tweet about sex lest I risk you unfollowing me. Wait, do you mind the once in awhile tweet about sex?

  6. Heather – the occasional sextweet is fine. And if you did it too much, I’d already be not following you. : ) Let’s just say – your amount of sextweets is perfect?

  7. Loved this, Leah. Especially this:

    21. Your tweets are protected. How am I supposed to know if I want to follow you or not?

    EXACTLY.

  8. Ok, I don’t know who the heck you are, but I found you via Pioneerwoman.com and I have to say, this Twitter post cracked me up! You are a funny woman.
    And I LOVED the Jungle juice, or whatever. . .video that was. It was brilliantly produced and the artwork is fantastic. You rock!

  9. Angella and Melanie – And I feel stupid if I have to ask to be let into their secret tweets so I can see if I want to follow them and then I don’t. Feels mean. So I just leave them alone now.

  10. Leah –

    Very well said, and you outlined many of the criteria I use as well. I used TwerpScan (http://twerpscan.com) last weekend and purged about 100 “garbage” followers.

    I’m in the practice now of reviewing new followers as I get them, and if they’re tweeting sappy inspirational phrases, dozens upon dozens of links I don’t care about (I can surf the Web unassisted, really) dozens upon dozen of links to their latest blog posts (and no other content), or obvious porn or other spammers, they’re gone before I even tab back to TweetDeck. I also nuke any follower that hasn’t engaged me personally after 30 days.

    The good news? All the rest get followed back.

    Take care,

    Ken (@teleken)

  11. Thanks, Chris.

    Ken – I haven’t tried Twerpscan. Thanks for the tip! Looks pretty good. I try to do the same thing with new followers but I sometimes get behind and then it’s impossible to catch up.

  12. oh dear…”tweet & delete” is bad? I always thought of it as the twitter equivalent of weeding the yard. I thought I was being courteous to others to cut down on the clutter — so if someone wants to check me out, they don’t have to wade through lots of casual @replies with friends. Also, what about when you realize something sounds stupid or poorly written — .0001 seconds after you’ve posted it? Can’t do anything about faithful friends who follow RSS feeds, but at least I can spare the rest of the world my dumbness.

  13. Wow, Twitter can be political can’t it? I have unfollowed people for quite a few of those reasons above.

  14. This was a genious post! Now I know why the people I follow and respond to REFUSE to follow me. They just don’t want to! LOL!

  15. Susan M. The whole point is that it’s YOUR twitter account to do with what you will. If you want to delete stuff you tweeted willy nilly, then do it! But I can’t imagine anything you’d say that would need to be deleted…

  16. Not a Twitterer – You might be astonished at how many social networking things turn into high school after about 5 minutes of going live.

  17. i love you. thanks for putting this out and clearing THE AIR. i’m going to use this as my standard and start knocking off some people that i do not know, don’t want to know, but accepted out of guilt, etc…

    i guess i’m too dumb to realize that if someone doesn’t follow me back, it might mean that they don’t like me. how could someone *not* like me? ha! i kid, i kid!

    i’ve been tweeting responses to ashton kutcher for eons. so far, he’s been able to withstand not responding to me but one day, one day he will! i just know it πŸ˜‰

  18. this? is funny. I read another similar post by a guy whose twitter name might rhyme with @rudecraft the other day that was more pompous in it’s delineation of reasons.

    But see this post? Makes me want to follow you on Twitter and egads, don’t put me through this blender of reasons. Just don’t follow me back, k? πŸ˜‰ I’m not that interesting. period. I think following people is an intent to listen, not a request to be listened to. People actually grovel for a Twitter follow? eek.

  19. Heather – You just hit the nail on the head – “I think following people is an intent to listen, not a request to be listened to.” and that is how it should be. Thank you.

  20. “You aren’t the boss of me” … ha! Love that! I confess, I’m a twitter idiot. I just use it as a marquee for announcements on the sidebar so my blog has a pulse just before it flatlines πŸ˜‰ Let’s my bloggy friends know CPR isn’t required and I will post again eventually. My life is weird. Really seriously weird.

  21. AAAAAMEN, AMEN, AMEN.
    brilliant.

    i hate all of those things; everyone i know hates them, too. and yet, there are so many people who do them.

    p.s. oH My gOD tHis PoST waS So PhuUCKIN AwesOmE yoU RAwK.

  22. i suck because i talk all the time with anyone who’ll listen how much i love twitter but i have no idea what auto-dm is.

    also, i’m pretty sure that all my tweets are somehow related to sex. and/or sects. and of course, my ‘business,’ if by business you mean the private parts that i recently paid a doctor to stab.

  23. Brandon – You are one of the most unsuckiest people I know. An auto-DM is when you follow someone and you get a reply back instantly that says Hi! Thanks for following me! If you need any info about car insurance, @me a question!!

    Getting a vasectomy gives you a free pass to talk about your parts for awhile. And your tweets are funny, anyway. xoxo

  24. I used to follow everyone who followed me because I felt I had too. Now? Forget it. And if I start seeing multiple following emails from the same person I block them. Harsh? Perhaps. But, I have enough crap in my inbox. I kinda wish my phone had the same feature.

    This post reminds me that I should clean up my following list. There are way too many people in there that I care nothing about. And some of them are pretty damn annoying.

  25. um… how the fuck am i JUST NOW realizing that you’re in moorpark?!?! have you been there the WHOLE TIME?? cause um.. well, we need to chat! πŸ™‚ follow me on twitter bitch. lol

  26. Susan M., I should clarify. The “tweet and delete” thing, for me, is annoying when I’ve “favorited” something like a link or a tip or a bit of good information that I’m going to want to come back to, later (I use “favoriting” like “bookmarking” much of the time, and then come back when I’m on the ‘puter rather than the iPhone, and follow links, create lists, make some action items, etc.), and when an information source (like, say, a company I’m following b/c they post great tips on something in which I’m interested writing about for a future column) posts and then removes sources of information within a day, I feel stripped of that info, and b/c I can’t always get to the link within the tweet *rightaway*, I need it to stay up long enough for me to “get to.”

    Does that make sense?

    I’m much less talking about the casual @ replies that are chitter chatter being deleted. I understand the reasoning, there. πŸ™‚ Much more talking about those who Tweet to Inform, who then remove some of their info before it can be acted upon.

    πŸ™‚

    So, I’d rather not get invested. πŸ˜‰

    But yes, of course, it’s your account, and you “do what you want” (said with my head swirling like I’m on the playground being all sassy). πŸ˜‰ That’s what makes it fun!

    Love you, Leah.

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