When Twitter Gave Me Howler Monkey Angst

[Ed: I’m on vacation. Here’s the fourth of a week’s worth of guest posts.]

There was an auto-DM waiting for me this morning. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt my #HowlerMonkeyAngst boiling to the surface.

It is from the seed of angst that most of my guest blog posts are born. The wheels were turning and my mind started flying off in dozens of different directions.

I considered all sorts of examples that could illustrate why this DM was worse than a marketing plan based upon offending 80% of the population, just so the remaining 20% would feel special.

My seething rage continued to boil, until I was calmed by the soothing afterglow of a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich on an English muffin.

I asked myself, “Was this person trying to make me so angry I wanted to abduct her and confine her to a room with The Girl From Ipanema playing over and over again?”

No, of course not. She was probably new to Twitter and didn’t know that sending automated DM’s was worse than asking a NOT pregnant woman when she is due. I went to her Twitter page, sure I would find she had 22 followers and was following 37 people. I expected to see something in her bio about cats and maybe snark.

WTF?

She had 1,500 followers and was following 2,000.

Here’s the problem.

The reason she sent me the auto-DM was because I followed her last night after tweeting with her during a #hashtagchat. She had RT’d several of my snarky tweets. I appreciated it, she seemed nice in the chat, so I followed her. That is how it works, right?

Her auto DM was:  Thanks – honored to be in communication with you! http://(Herwebsite) To validate click here: http://truetwit.com/777WTF777

I understand the theory of TrueTwit, as spammers are a real problem.  I am forced to block 20 – 30 followers, every single day, so I definitely get it.

But this is the deal; it only takes me two minutes. Click, check their page, it is usually obvious who needs to be blocked, by the Listed:Follower ratio. Under 5%, almost always gets blocked; under 1%, usually get reported for spam. Also the super hot women in the avatar or the eggheads are a dead giveaway.

I am willing to spend two minutes a day to avoid using DM’s with TrueTwit in them, so as not to appear like a noob who doesn’t realize that AUTO DMs SUCK and that TrueTwit is annoying and pisses people off.

So after careful analysis, considering that the woman was NOT a noob, and that, in her bio, she purports to be knowledgeable about marketing, I can only assume that she is simply… Stupid. Really Freaking Stupid. I assume she didn’t get very good grades in high school. It is obvious that her art teacher thought she her work was profoundly awful.

I assume she wasn’t good in gym class, and that her parents were terrible people, who were possibly in prison or public office.

I will not respond to her DM. I will not click on the link to verify that I am real, since she was having a freakin’ conversation with me last night. I will not eat green eggs and ham; I will not eat them… [sorry, she has pushed me over the edge, and I have begun to speak in Seuss.]

Image: Elizabeth Haslam via Flickr, CC 2.0

Brian Meeks used to make his living in the virtual world of Second Life, where he built spaces for corporate clients under the name Ecocandle Riel. When the economy went south, he turned to Social Media and does this to feed and clothe himself.  In his free time, he does … well … social media … and publishes the blog Extremely Average. He can be reached by email at ExtremelyAverageOne (a) gmail (dot) com, or by carrier pigeon at the house with the big tree out front.