Over the weekend I surpassed having over 1000 followers. It is a mildly and oddly satisfying milestone. There are probably porn bots, marketing bots and record producing bots (I’ve tried to avoid and weed them out over time). There are artists, musicians, HVAC businesses, politicians, grammarians, historians, writers, and some who tweet in languages I don’t even know. Out of the 1000 are probably 300 to 500 individuals or organization with whom I feel a bond and the others are just there in my twitterverse.
Many who are not engaged in the social media world and, in particular, the twitter world, wonder what is the attraction? What is the reason a normal person would “follow” someone, tweet or retweet, or worse, reply to some anonyomous human being in the digital world?
Well, for me, it is engaging, comforting, challenging, informative and yes, sometimes, a great way to avoid other tasks I should do, am supposed to do or just forgot about. I do have standards …
Obvious bots get blocked.
I avoid commercial followers except for those who have fun, interesting or respectufl tweets from time to time and who don’t spam with 18 tweets a minute.
Artists, writers, musicians, record producers and other such folks, I am wary of, but will give them a chance to show they will not spam me into catatonia or put the hard “sell” on me by sending intense and repeated, pleading DMs (if you don’t know what DMs are, it doesn’t matter) that I listen, read, view their products and purchase same.
One follower sent me a DM saying she could show me how to earn more than $230 dollars a day. I didn’t have the heart to DM her I bill more than that an hour. Mind you, I don’t always make $230 a day, because I am also an active Democrat and a Rotarian. Neither organization leaves too much time to actually work.
So I will continue on my twitterway and attempt to find balance in this over stimulated world. Tweet me @CarolDWoodward .
Prince George VA & Environs 