From the outset, I admit to having been quite leery about Twitter. An old friend of mine suggested I give it a gander 4 years ago, so I tentatively did, but once I created an account, I kind of shrugged my shoulders and thought, "Okay, now what?" I had just recovered from a 2 year health battle, had started getting into writing again, but had no real plan of what my next steps were going to be. So I simply tweeted random humorous thoughts of mine, kept in touch with friends and their seeming need to show me everything they ate and regularly update me on their sleep schedules. I finally reached a point where I thought there was really no point to tweeting and I'd be better off not condensing my thoughts and writings to 140 characters, and instead writing on a blog and Tumblr. Three years later, after appearing on a radio show to promote my written work, being mentioned on another, and writing like a madman who's been given a lifetime supply of speed and only one year to live, I gave Twitter another chance, but this time with a plan in mind - to expand my fan base/readers. This made it much easier for me to sit down, look into the eyes of the Twittersphere, and use it to work toward a goal. While I'm still not 100% cognizant of all that a person can do on Twitter to better reach their goals, the site has been quite beneficial to me in reaching new readers over the past couple of years. Hopefully that trend continues. For as much as I've grown to enjoy Twitter (for the most part), however, there are still some things about the experience which I find to be less than satisfying (yes, that's putting it nicely):
1) Poor spelling/grammar/punctuation: I realize there are times when a person has to condense their message to such a high degree, that it's inevitable their spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be less than perfect. However, there are times the posts are so awful on those fronts, I immediately look around to see if I can find a Twitter/text translator. Unfortunately, to this point, I've yet to find such a person.
2) Miss-direction: While I often times post my own crazy thoughts on Twitter, I also post a number of articles I find to be either interesting, informative, or humorous (or a combination of the three). When commenting on these articles I post, most people know how to direct their opinions to the actual author of the article. However, there are times when this doesn't occur and I get an angry response from someone who appears to be insinuating that I'm the author of the article. Their messages then come across as personal attacks against me for the content of an article I didn't write. These attacks may be unintentional, but for how they come across at first read, it's difficult to not take them somewhat personally, before asking yourself, "Wait, what are they talking about?" Yeah, I know, misunderstandings over the Internet - who knew?!?
3) S-A-T-I-R-E: On my Twitter bio, it states that I'm a writer who specializes in political satire. I commonly share links to books or blogs I've written; video clips to The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Last Week Tonight, or Real Time; and even share writings from satirical websites, most notably, The Onion. In 95% of the cases when I make such posts, I include the hashtag #Satire, because no matter how ridiculous the article or video clip is, I don't want anyone to believe it's reporting 100% factually-accurate news. This is especially the case with The Onion, for while there's a decent mix of fact and humor in the four shows I mentioned, as well as in my books and blogs, The Onion typically takes an idea or news story and runs with it as far as their warped minds will allow them, often times creating for a hilarious article. Even if I weren't to include the hashtag #Satire for such articles, I'd like to believe most everyone would realize while reading them that they're fiction. Sadly, that's not the case. I'd say roughly 10-20% of the time I post an Onion article (with the #Satire hashtag), I get an angry response, giving the impression the person believes the article to be factual. I don't know how many times I've had to say, "Psst... This was an article by The Onion; it's satire." I'm not sure how much more clearly I can spell out that an article is s-a-t-i-r-e to some people, but I may have to try some different strategies, because the cycle does get to be a tad frustrating at times. Maybe if I include the hashtag #FoxNewsIsFairAndBalanced, along with #Satire, they'll all realize the article is not to be taken seriously. We'll see how that works...
4) Trolls, Trolls, Trolls: I suppose this is to be expected anymore, for it seems wherever one goes on the Internet, trolls will follow. That still doesn't take away from the fact they're annoying, though. This almost always seems to happen when a post of yours gets retweeted multiple times, and a follower of a follower of a follower of yours decides to disrupt the conversation by letting it be known that the original post was stupid. Fortunately, while the trolls are numerous, it's also easy to block trolls when they get nasty, and yes, trolls tend to be nasty. On that note, I'm still waiting for Weird Al Yankovic to come out with a parody based on the Motley Crue song, "Girls, Girls, Girls," entitled, "Trolls, Trolls, Trolls." Get to work, Weird Al!
1) Poor spelling/grammar/punctuation: I realize there are times when a person has to condense their message to such a high degree, that it's inevitable their spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be less than perfect. However, there are times the posts are so awful on those fronts, I immediately look around to see if I can find a Twitter/text translator. Unfortunately, to this point, I've yet to find such a person.
2) Miss-direction: While I often times post my own crazy thoughts on Twitter, I also post a number of articles I find to be either interesting, informative, or humorous (or a combination of the three). When commenting on these articles I post, most people know how to direct their opinions to the actual author of the article. However, there are times when this doesn't occur and I get an angry response from someone who appears to be insinuating that I'm the author of the article. Their messages then come across as personal attacks against me for the content of an article I didn't write. These attacks may be unintentional, but for how they come across at first read, it's difficult to not take them somewhat personally, before asking yourself, "Wait, what are they talking about?" Yeah, I know, misunderstandings over the Internet - who knew?!?
3) S-A-T-I-R-E: On my Twitter bio, it states that I'm a writer who specializes in political satire. I commonly share links to books or blogs I've written; video clips to The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Last Week Tonight, or Real Time; and even share writings from satirical websites, most notably, The Onion. In 95% of the cases when I make such posts, I include the hashtag #Satire, because no matter how ridiculous the article or video clip is, I don't want anyone to believe it's reporting 100% factually-accurate news. This is especially the case with The Onion, for while there's a decent mix of fact and humor in the four shows I mentioned, as well as in my books and blogs, The Onion typically takes an idea or news story and runs with it as far as their warped minds will allow them, often times creating for a hilarious article. Even if I weren't to include the hashtag #Satire for such articles, I'd like to believe most everyone would realize while reading them that they're fiction. Sadly, that's not the case. I'd say roughly 10-20% of the time I post an Onion article (with the #Satire hashtag), I get an angry response, giving the impression the person believes the article to be factual. I don't know how many times I've had to say, "Psst... This was an article by The Onion; it's satire." I'm not sure how much more clearly I can spell out that an article is s-a-t-i-r-e to some people, but I may have to try some different strategies, because the cycle does get to be a tad frustrating at times. Maybe if I include the hashtag #FoxNewsIsFairAndBalanced, along with #Satire, they'll all realize the article is not to be taken seriously. We'll see how that works...
4) Trolls, Trolls, Trolls: I suppose this is to be expected anymore, for it seems wherever one goes on the Internet, trolls will follow. That still doesn't take away from the fact they're annoying, though. This almost always seems to happen when a post of yours gets retweeted multiple times, and a follower of a follower of a follower of yours decides to disrupt the conversation by letting it be known that the original post was stupid. Fortunately, while the trolls are numerous, it's also easy to block trolls when they get nasty, and yes, trolls tend to be nasty. On that note, I'm still waiting for Weird Al Yankovic to come out with a parody based on the Motley Crue song, "Girls, Girls, Girls," entitled, "Trolls, Trolls, Trolls." Get to work, Weird Al!
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