Things I Love/Hate About Twitter

Things I Love

1. You can follow anybody you like, unless they block you, bastards, didn't want to follow them anyway.


2. Your Twitter experience is the sum of the people you follow, slightly spoiled by your own input and the occasional violent reaction you get to something that seemed quite reasonable after 5 pints of cider.


3. People have to express themselves in 140 characters or less, apart from Gyles Brandreth or the dearly departed Stan Collymore who just send multiple tweets one after the other.


4. It's free, on the web or on your mobile, a choice of fully functioning clients to suit your Twitter experience. Bloody liberty if it goes down for a while of course, to think I pay for this shoddy service, ah, sorry, as you were.


5. Superb for news and opportunities, would never have got those Coldplay/Killers concert tickets without it. OK so a couple of my friends haven't spoken to me since because I could only get two tickets in the pre-sale and didn't ask them aong but hey, rock and roll eh?


6. Good way to get to know people from all sorts of backgrounds in a way you never would otherwise. You regret it later but shiny new things are new...and shiny!


7. Celebrities often reveal their true colours and it is surprising how many you thought would be arseholes are actually decent, caring, insecure people, others confirm that they are, indeed, arseholes, oftentimes even more so than you originally thought.

Things I Hate

1. #followfriday with a long list of names but absolutely no reasons whatsoever why you should follow this list of people the sender probably just compiled out of a sense of duty in the first place. This is then compounded by them asking people who they missed out of their #followfriday to let them know and they will recommend them. By their very nature they are obviously so boring and tedious that they got forgotten about in the first  place so why you would recommend them to anybody is beyond me.


2. Celebrity tarts. Along comes celebrity saying "good morning, how are you all?" i.e. I have nothing of interest to say whatsoever. Hordes of people respond in the vain hope that they will receive a reply and have their very existence validated.


3. People who constantly retweet the same people. If you're interested in what they have to say you would follow them anyway, if you're not interested you don't want to hear more and more of their tedium.


4. Chocolate. There are only so many times you can publicly weigh up the pros and cons of having a bar of chocolate.


5. I'm not watching it so don't spoil it! The Apprentice is a national institution yet people plead "please don't say who got fired, I'm on a gap year in Ulan Bator and won't see it until next January". Oh right, sorry, everybody on Twitter keep quiet while Giles puts off earning a proper living for several months more at Mummy and Daddy's expense, rolling up the interest on their student loan.


6. Mr/Mrs Obvious-Comment. Somebody tweets, you just know Mr/Mrs O-C will reply in a certain, predictable way, they do.


7. Flu. If you had the flu you wouldn't be well enough to tweet all day long about it. It's a cold, live with it.


8. Agendas. This is what I tweet about. I have no other reason for being on here. I might chip in the odd thing about something else for form's sake and so I come across as a well-rounded human being but as sure as night follows day I'll be back tweeting on message. If it's a charity I will try and make people feel guilty about unfollowing me.


9. Johnny Come Latelies. "OMG The Corn Laws have been repealed!" Yeh, that's like so 1846, where have you been all day, people have been tweeting about it endlessly for the last 163 years and you think you have breaking news and we're all going to be so impressed?


10. Misstra Know-It-All. Life is afflicted with the self-proclaimed expert, with the right followers they are pigs in shit, spouting on about an obscure topic sounding very wise. But I'm a clever sod, I can find you out, I can smell bullshit, one whiff and I Google it, play along for a while then progressively introduce a sense of unease as it becomes apparent Mr KIA has been exposed. Actually this should really come under things I love about Twitter!


11. If somebody follows you, follow them back. Why? 70% are automated bots with a picture of an attractive looking person the spammer found on a website about healthy Scandinavian living. You follow them back, they send you a DM telling you how you can get a free Space Shuttle at a site hidden by a URL shortener so you don't know when you click it is actually http://www.clickonmeandsatangetsyoursoul.com. Of the other 30% many have no updates, following People's Republic Of China, followers San Marino Blind French Cricket Society B Team. There may be a good one there so you follow only to discover their first tweet of the day is "Hi, how are you all today, would you like to see my puppies?"

This is just half an hour's bile and invective, more will follow as atrocities develop and I cultivate personal vendettas against people.

Alistair Burns, News At Ten, Twittersville Arizona.