JeffCroft.com

12.16.2009 // 62 Comments // Ballard Condo Ten things that annoy the fuck out of me on Twitter

God dammit, people. You suck at this social networking thing. Allow me to educate your asses on how to suck less by outlining ten things that annoy the fuck out of me on Twitter:

  1. .@whoever — Twitter doesn’t show me your replies to people I don’t follow for a reason: because I don’t give a damn. Stop trying to circumvent it. It doesn’t matter if you use a dot, a tilde, or some fancy unicode character before the @ sign; in all cases, you’re not clever, and you deserve to be kicked squarely in the taint.

  2. People modifying my message when they retweet it — Okay. Thank you for retweeting me. I appreciate that. But fucking hell, must you modify my tweet in order to squeeze in your wannabe-witty commentary? I go to great lengths to not look like a tween on Twitter, and you changing every instance of “your” to “ur” is not helping.

  3. Follow Friday — I know you’re trying to do me a favor here, and I appreciate the thought, but fuck if every Friday my iPhone battery isn’t run down by noon thanks to all the notifications I get about #FollowFriday. Great, yet another list of people I don’t know.

  4. People who don’t follow me DMing me — Okay, look. If you’re going to DM me, then please at least do me the courtesy of following me, lest I try to respond only to be bitch-slapped by bitter cold rejection.

  5. People threatening to unfollow me — This may come as a huge surprise to your self-centered ass, but guess what? I don’t do this for you. Don’t waste any of your precious 140 characters telling me you’ll unfollow me if I don’t do this or that, because I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. Go ahead, unfollow. You won’t hurt my feelings. I promise.

  6. When people link to their link to something — Okay, I’m going to go ahead and name names here. Andy Fucking Clarke, the next time I click a link in one of your tweets only to be taken to a page on For A Beautiful Web that is nothing more than another link, so help me God, I will hunt you down and shove my boot so far up your ass it’ll tickle your taste buds.

  7. Auto-follow bots — Just because I said the word “photo” does not mean I’m interested in buying a camera from your shitty eBay store. At least take two minutes to read my tweets and see if I’m really a potential customer or not before you jizz another “So and so is now following you on Twitter” message into my e-mail inbox.

  8. Hashtags used for anything but humor — This isn’t really your fault; it’s Twitter’s. Twitter has enough smart people to know that the right place to store metadata, like tags, about a piece of content is not in the same field as the content itself. Fuck, I already only have 140 characters to say my funny shit. I’ll be dammed if I’m going to waste them on whatever hashtag you came up with for your stupid little event.

  9. @kennymeyers — I couldn’t think of a number nine, but this totally works.

  10. Bitching about how other people use Twitter — As Wired Magazine so perfectly put it, Twitter pretty much laid a stick and a ball in the field and let its users invent baseball. That’s one of the things that makes Twitter awesome. People use it however they like; there are no rules. Nothing can make you a bigger asshat than trying to tell someone else how they should or shouldn’t use Twitter. Well, except maybe making a top 10 list about how people should or shouldn’t use Twitter.

Like this
Comments

There are currently 62 comments on this entry. If you have something to say, please consider adding your own.

You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of this entry’s comments.

This entry’s tags
AuthenticJobs.com
AuthenticJobs.com
Design Director
Hornall Anderson
Seattle, WA, US
Web Applications Engineer, Senior
American Public Media
Saint Paul, MN, US
Interactive Art Director / Designer
Hunt and Gather
Boston, MA, US
Senior Web Front-End Engineer
Apple Inc.
Cupertino, CA, US
Graphic Artist/Blog Theme Designer
WordPress hackers wanted to save journalism, also, design and build kickass websites.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago, IL, US
Web Developer
The Integer Group
Des Moines, IA, US
UI/ Graphic Designer
REVL Systems
PHP Developer at SocialGO
SocialGO
London, GB
Web Producer
The Salvation Army
Toronto, CA
AuthenticJobs.com »

Comments

  1. 001 // Andrew Ingram // 12.16.2009 // 2:35 PM

    I laughed, the first one is especially poignant.

  2. 002 // Jarel // 12.16.2009 // 2:36 PM

    Reading through the list I started thinking, “This guy’s kind of an asshat”. Then I read number 10. ;-)

  3. 003 // Kyle Weems // 12.16.2009 // 2:40 PM

    I totally agree with much of this, but especially #4. It’s obnoxious.

    No. 10 is probably the best, though.

    Hilarious stuff.

  4. 004 // Gilberto Martinez // 12.16.2009 // 2:44 PM

    Wow, lots of stuff there. I agree with number 2 somewhat; although, sometimes it is necessary to shorten Retweets since the @jcroft sometimes doesn’t fit. I also agree with your number 5, who the heck even does that!? lol.

  5. 005 // Shane // 12.16.2009 // 2:49 PM

    I was just happy to be able to laugh at most of these and know that I don’t do ANY of them.

  6. 006 // jennicricket // 12.16.2009 // 2:57 PM

    I have a number 11 for you…people that know they are doing one of the top 10 and are commenting to justify it. You know who you are…..

  7. 007 // Carl Smith // 12.16.2009 // 3:05 PM

    Unfollow.

  8. 008 // Brent O'Connor // 12.16.2009 // 3:06 PM

    No. 7 is one of my biggest annoyances. I automatically report twitter accounts that do this as spam. It must be working for companies that auto follow people based on keywords because they usually have 4000+ followers and are following like 5000+ people usually. Maybe, it’s just a bunch of bots auto following each other or maybe people are just a bunch of morons for following a bot that auto followed them!!

  9. 009 // Scrivs // 12.16.2009 // 3:13 PM

    You and Haney have to settle this Twitter war at SXSW…drinking style. I will referee. Loser gets to buy me more drinks, winner gets hold my hair.

  10. 010 // Kevin Stewart // 12.16.2009 // 3:14 PM

    No. 9. Without question. #9.

    Luv ya, @kennymeyers!

  11. 011 // WOO // 12.16.2009 // 3:15 PM

    I didn’t see your “don’t RT - if I wanted to see other’s tweets, I’d follow them.” Maybe that’ll be on the 11-20 list next week. Good stuff. Oh and yeah, unfollow.

  12. 012 // Jeff Croft // 12.16.2009 // 3:20 PM

    Loser gets to buy me more drinks, winner gets hold my hair.

    Who gets Jenna Marino? :)

    (Seriously, Haney and I are fine…we were just fucking with one another!)

  13. 013 // Nate Klaiber // 12.16.2009 // 3:22 PM

    I wanted to RT your last comment, but had to cut out some words to make it fit in 140 characters.

    RT @jcroft (Seriously, Haney and I are fine…we were just fucking one another!)

    Ha. Love the list.

  14. 014 // Kennys Mom // 12.16.2009 // 3:22 PM

    I would mostly agree with number 9. Except he has a really sweet ass. And that can make up for the difference.

  15. 015 // Jon // 12.16.2009 // 3:24 PM

    No. 1 has some legit uses. If I tweet “Hey how do you do [something technical]?” I would probably get a lot of the same, obvious answers that don’t work for some non-obvious reason. I might want to reply to one person’s response in a polite way that both acknowledges and deflects those duplicate suggestions.

    If it’s used as a “hey look what clever thing I wrote,” well, that’s half of all tweets, anyhow. :D

    Good stuff, this list has been beckoning for a while now. Specifically #10 is something a lot of people forget.

  16. 016 // Jeff Croft // 12.16.2009 // 3:26 PM

    Jon, stop trying to apply logic to my rant. Seriously. Fuck off, dude. :)

  17. 017 // Jon // 12.16.2009 // 3:36 PM

    Hey I’m just trying to bring your half-ass rants up to standard! :D

    Oh and #11 is DON’T USE TWITTER AS A FUCKING RSS FEED. http://twitter.com/jcroft/statuses/6744297091

  18. 018 // Mike D. // 12.16.2009 // 3:47 PM

    White Whiiiiiiiiiine

  19. 019 // Jeff Croft // 12.16.2009 // 3:49 PM

    Oh and #11 is DON’T USE TWITTER AS A FUCKING RSS FEED.

    Busted.

  20. 020 // Brian Klepper // 12.16.2009 // 4:25 PM

    HAH! #ilovejeffcroftandhissharphumor ;)

  21. 021 // Tyson // 12.16.2009 // 4:38 PM

    Dude, if someone’s tweets piss you off, don’t follow them. You’re like the guy who bitches about a TV show while watching it for an entire afternoon, remote in hand, while his filth slowly consumes his darkened basement.

    Also, I hate you. With respect. Or something. Please don’t ban me. Choose instead to follow me.

    (Posted by some random asshole reading your blog. Irony intact.)

  22. 022 // Rob Landry // 12.16.2009 // 5:05 PM

    Unfollow!

    There. That oughta fix ‘im.

  23. 023 // Aaron // 12.16.2009 // 5:32 PM

    Wish I could write “fuck” on twitter. Cool if I do it here instead?

  24. 024 // David // 12.16.2009 // 6:46 PM

    When I first hit this link through Google Reader, I got a “service temporarily unavailable” error. I thought that was the joke.

    But the actual joke is funny too.

  25. 025 // James Bennett // 12.16.2009 // 11:12 PM

    Dammit, who are all you kids and what are you doing on my lawn?

  26. 026 // Andy (Fucking) Clarke // 12.17.2009 // 1:27 AM

    When @malarkey posts links, they are always direct to the URL. If you ‘choose’ to follow one of my shameless, self-promoting, capitalist feeds like @cowshedstudio, then soak in the ads for my products — sucker. :D

  27. 027 // Pointless Critic // 12.17.2009 // 2:53 AM

    Yesterday i was thinking that retweets are somewhat bordering plagiarism.This is why. What happens if a friend who you think has not yet heard the news you wanna retweet ,just so happens to be in the know,you will have the same information and this i believe will have your timeline saturated with the same piece of information,over and over again.

  28. 028 // Alan // 12.17.2009 // 3:20 AM

    WAIT… Scrivs has hair now?

  29. 029 // Jorge Quinteros // 12.17.2009 // 4:14 AM

    There’s absolutely nothing more I hate about Twitter users than f*cking Follow Fridays & Music Mondays. I follow the people that I deem interesting and I don’t know someone else telling me who I should follow by the end of the week and as for the music, the same sh*t.

    I agree with you on all accounts and would appreciate to see some changes at least in these 2 matters. Overall, greatly compiled list of annoyances.

  30. 030 // Marko // 12.17.2009 // 4:18 AM
    1. Harming the ozon layer worse than a year of cow farts by clogging the intertweb with another “ten things to do/not to do…” that can easily be reduced to just “1. Don’t annoy and use common fucking sense.” Oh wait, but you can use twitter AND html, python and mysql any way you want…
  31. 031 // Cpawl // 12.17.2009 // 5:42 AM

    What’s Twitter?

  32. 032 // Patrick Haney // 12.17.2009 // 8:54 AM

    I agree with most of your points here, and will refrain from mentioning karaoke or @nobubee for at least this post. No guarantees on Twitter though.

    At the same time, #1 is Twitter’s fault (where the hell is the option to see all tweets from a user already?), #4 is often worsened by Twitter clients (is it so hard to check if the user is following me to tell me up front if I can/cannot DM them?), #8 is dead on (instead of using a hash tag for an event, why not use the event’s Twitter account so it shows up in their @ replies?), and to #9 I say “meh.”

    By even stating #10, you are contradicting yourself. Instead, you should’ve said “Reposting the same damn content on Facebook that you put on Twitter.” Just a suggestion.

    Also, something about your mom.

  33. 033 // Sheryl Breuker // 12.17.2009 // 9:14 AM

    The preamble is best. But if I choose one of your bullets, I choose 7 - auto-follow bots. That just pisses me off.

  34. 034 // Jeff Croft // 12.17.2009 // 9:34 AM

    By even stating #10, you are contradicting yourself.

    That was kind of the point. The whole post was supposed to build up until you read number ten and realized I was just f’ing around. :)

    Instead, you should’ve said “Reposting the same damn content on Facebook that you put on Twitter.” Just a suggestion.

    Yeah, because aggregation of content to different sources on the web is totally not something that ever happens on the internet. rollseyes

  35. 035 // Scott Nelle // 12.18.2009 // 6:47 AM

    I predict a lot of sarcastic follow fridays for you today, Jeff. I weep for your battery life.

  36. 036 // Drew Tempelmeyer // 12.20.2009 // 12:47 AM

    Love the post.

    I’ve never been threatened to be unfollowed, but does anyone really care about their follower count?

    As far as the bots, I always check their follower to following ratio.

    And damn, I’m late to comment.

  37. 037 // Rob // 12.20.2009 // 4:01 AM

    Think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t use Twitter. As funny as this was, I’m glad I don’t. It confirms all the things I have assumed about it (yes I’m an asshat)

  38. 038 // Elliott // 12.21.2009 // 5:45 AM

    I will hunt you down and shove my boot so far up your ass it’ll tickle your taste buds.

    Pullquote please.

  39. 039 // Colin Devroe // 12.21.2009 // 7:19 AM

    I didn’t even know No. 4 was possible but overall I agree on them all.

  40. 040 // Al Newkirk // 12.22.2009 // 1:12 PM

    I agree with them all, I’m used to 70% bullshit when surfing the net though so it doesn’t bother me like it does you. Although as I’m typing this I can recall being spammed daily by this bitch (avatar suggests) telling me about hosting providers and other uninteresting unsolicited banter, sadly I haven’t unfollowed her (it) because I’m egotistically desperate for followers (like Scientology I suppose).

  41. 041 // Shyam Kapur // 12.22.2009 // 6:48 PM

    I like the post greatly. Also, several of your other posts, too. I also liked the comments. I think the onus is on all Twitter users & developers to make Twitter better for everyone. The way forward, in my opinion, is smarter technology that solves many of the problems you list. Have you tried the search tool TipTop at http://FeelTipTop.com that actually reads the tweets and organizes them in a variety of interesting ways?

  42. 042 // 24yearoldteenager // 12.23.2009 // 8:17 AM

    ….ha ha…had a good laugh at this… and yes u are a asshat!… and yes.. i don’t use twitter! ha ha…

  43. 043 // Steve P. // 12.23.2009 // 11:10 AM

    11: Stop Homey Bromides. No more quotes from Gandhi, Santayana or Miles fucking Davis.

  44. 044 // Apoorv Khatreja // 12.26.2009 // 9:59 PM

    So you want hashtags to be moved to a separate field for metadata? Twitter is popular only because it is simple to use and free of complications.

    Also, like you said, Twitter just put a ball and a stick. People made hashtags. When it became popular, Twitter went ahead and included the feature into Twitter. Its useful, btw. Through hashtags, you can read tweets about a particular topic/event, without having to follow the guys.

  45. 045 // Eyebee // 12.27.2009 // 8:36 PM
    1. People that watch shite on TV, and tweet that it’s annoying shite. Turn the fucker off then!
  46. 046 // Jeff Croft // 12.30.2009 // 7:28 PM

    So you want hashtags to be moved to a separate field for metadata? Twitter is popular only because it is simple to use and free of complications.

    I’m not convinced Twitter NEEDS to support tags in any way. I’ve yet to see any truly useful tag usage.

    Through hashtags, you can read tweets about a particular topic/event, without having to follow the guys.

    Search accomplishes that without needing hashtags.

    I’ll remind you all: this post was a joke. Relax a bit, everyone. That’s why I wrote it!

  47. 047 // Mark Stoecker // 12.31.2009 // 11:11 AM

    Holy crap I laughed my ass off, mainly because these are all so very true. Thank you very much for the post, this was great!

  48. 048 // Snel geld lenen // 01.04.2010 // 10:07 AM

    Hell yeah, very funy article!

  49. 049 // reiner // 01.06.2010 // 6:54 AM

    Great Info. Thanks

  50. 050 // ADOWP // 01.08.2010 // 11:53 PM

    I laughed my ass off at #6! I don’t know who Andy ‘Fucking’ Clarke is, but he sounds like a real douche.

    And I for one, hate Twitter. I stopped wasting my time there 6 months ago.

  51. 051 // Prepaid // 01.14.2010 // 3:28 PM

    Yehaa, No. 7 is one of my biggest annoyances. I automatically report twitter accounts that do this as spam.

  52. 052 // Smileys // 01.14.2010 // 3:30 PM

    What’s Twitter?

    xD Nice one^

  53. 053 // NikkiD66 // 01.22.2010 // 11:18 PM

    OMG LMAO I love love love it! Next time could you add the douchebags who follow only to get followed? Oh, and the people (who get unfollowed real quick like by me) who fill up the entire stream with shout outs every damn day of every damn person they know.

  54. 054 // zooni // 01.28.2010 // 9:57 AM

    i disagree with u on number #2 if u wanna comment n modify retweet wats so wrong in that ???

    10 is best :)

  55. 055 // christin // 01.28.2010 // 11:52 AM

    i agree with ur comments…some of my friends are also threatng to follow them bcos dey r following me

  56. 056 // Louis Roque // 01.29.2010 // 2:28 AM

    ;-) Very original point of view, great topic to “re-twit” ;-)

  57. 057 // Julius // 02.02.2010 // 7:13 AM

    haha, great. i never use twitter and now i have 10 more things why i don’t want use twitter. wish you a pleasant evening (without twitter?) ;D

  58. 058 // Trauersprüche // 02.13.2010 // 3:16 AM

    I totally agree with much of this, but especially #10. Nice Article^^

  59. 059 // Neandertal // 02.13.2010 // 3:35 AM

    Love No. 10! If you like to tweet about cats or dogs or toilets or whatever you like. Tweet it. Feel free to tweet as you like!

  60. 060 // Filme online sehen // 02.13.2010 // 4:33 AM

    Great list. I also hate followfriday because its useless causes many boring tweets.

  61. 061 // salvia // 02.17.2010 // 10:15 PM

    I can’t stand the rapid-fire tweets by some of the people i follow. I don’t need 10,000 posts by one person in 30 min. especially when they’re posting about walking to the train station, smoking a cigarette, now i’m waiting, i hate the cold, etc. nobody cares. i’m glad you’re cold and miserable.

  62. 062 // roger jansen // 03.03.2010 // 2:19 PM

    i really hate twitter, i don`t understand why people want to put their whole life on the internet. i find it disturbing

Post your comment

Sorry, the time to post comments to this entry has expired.