There are many different types of
people on twitter. Although their cyber presence may not be a true reflection
of their lives, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t find it entertaining.
There are some tweets out there that make me sad, happy, excited, depressed and
all in a matter of a late morning. Twitter is far more stressful than Facebook
because it operates at breakneck speed. It’s a haven for those with ADD. Don’t
get me wrong, there are some amazing and profound tweeters in the Twitterverse.
I’m not criticising anyone or the way they tweet. I, myself, fall into a couple
of the categories listed below.
I’m only going to concentrate on
Twouth, I mean South Africa, black twitter in particular. I just find any other
type of twitter too obsequious. These are the types of tweeters I have
experienced.
Beginners:
Usually starts off their account
without uploading an avatar and therefore being displayed as an egg, accompanied
by a tweet along the lines of “This is my first tweet! I’m twittering! What’s #FF?”
This encourages ridicule from anyone you try to engage with. You’re an egg,
your existence has not yet been realised.
A few 100 tweets and a shady
avatar later, you’re in everyone’s mentions, trying to get a rise out of them.
And by a rise I mean, an RT of acknowledgement that you boosted their ego, or
more eloquently known as ‘dickriding’. Or, you could go for the jugular and
tweet some gassed up attention-seeking bile a few times and see if anyone
bites. Be careful with this one because you have to back your, in this case
bile, up until the very end otherwise you’ll fail to make an impact. This task
is better accustomed to the “A Mention Seeker”, which is explained later in
greater detail.
Failing all this, you can resort
to tagging everyone in alphabetical order followed by a #PFB (please follow
back). Don’t forget to add a smiley face to make it look more personal :)
Avatarists:
Only for self-obsessed beautiful
people (girls, preferably), or those with an incredible perception of camera
angles. Your favourite filter is black & white with a generous display of
leg and/or cleavage from a bird’s eye-view.
You begin your day with a “Good
morning J”
tweet and see if your latest revealing hipster avatar will source any thirst.
You then carry on your day complaining about how your beauty makes people treat
you differently and dropping more tweets of a tortured soul that usually end in
#FML. Avatar changes that are followed by tweets announcing them are
recommended.
You can add a few easy followers
by aligning yourself to #TeamScreenMunchThatNigga. Their mission statement
reads as follows: “Any thirsty DM, or even BBM, must be attended to with the
swiftest bat (rejection) then carefully screenmunched for the world to see how
unapproachable you are.”
McFollow Burger:
These are the people that retweet
anything that contains the word ‘follow’ and are never afraid to celebrate an
achievement of a milestone fellowship. Tell us how many followers you need to
reach 700 and I’m sure everyone will be queuing at the ‘follow’ button trying
to get you there.
You have evolved from #TeamFollowBack
and have adopted an unhealthy sense of what is best to hashtag, everything. You
can occasionally drop a pearl of wisdom, which will surprise most of your
subscribers into RTing you. But wait, there’s more; you can RT every single
time someone RTs you and inception everyone into thinking you’re not too bad.
The Police:
This is for the righteous and
all-important. Twitter is a place designed for you to govern what others should
tweet about, when they should go to sleep or when a certain topic is dead.
Clearly your life has given
indication that you can’t control everyone so you decided to question people’s
eating habits on twitter instead. How adorable. As wonderful as that sounds,
you have your work cut out for you. Your selection of followers has to be
impeccable so as to get to the breaking news as soon as possible. It’s
sometimes best to call back up, so tag your twitter mates and let them know
you’re at the scene of the crime. While discussing the offence, a lot of
bystanders will get involved to give their statement and testimony and presto,
you have a trending topic.
You specialised in relationship
advice, and since you’re here to serve and protect, your unsolicited counsel is
most welcome.
Dear Diary:
This is no different to using
twitter as a diary and/or food log. Tweeting that you’re going to the gym
doesn’t add value to anyone’s life except your own, so you have to tell us.
In actual fact, you’re most
likely to decrease the value of life by tweeting about a fatal accident before
calling the police (I am not referring to the category of people above). Ironically,
you will be the first person to tweet “RIP” if anyone passes away, whether you
knew the person or not. You’re great at seeming positive, so you’ll also be the
first to wish a happy birthday and the first ‘Halala!’ at any personal
achievement.
To add to your experience, you
can take photographs of your filtered food and cautiously placed cutlery.
A Mention Seeker:
You will do anything to get a
mention, or attention. This can be done in many different ways. You can be
vulgar, immoral, anti-establishment, a troll and a general discomfort in the
rear end.
The more insanely ludicrous your
tweets are, the better. You can spend hours just trolling celebrities or you
could make a statement by dehumanising rape, it’s up to you. Your tweets can
have quite an impact if they get through the right channels, so keep trying.
However, you do run the risk of
being roasted by a stronger, more powerful tweeter. This might force you to go
in hiding and change your handle, or God forbid, deactivate your account just
from the sheer embarrassment of it all.
The Over-Tweeter:
You tweet all day and all night
at an average of over 100 tweets every 24 hours. You tweet so much your
presence on people’s timelines becomes the background.
Your tweets become numbing to
most but you are loved by many. You are the go to guy, the last patron at the
bar still standing. You engage with everyone and are a joy, when sober. Give
that man a Bell’s. And although you tweet about it a lot, I can’t imagine what
your life is actually like since you tweet so much.
Everyone’s Favourite:
You fall into an elite group of
people who can do no wrong. Your tweets are always stellar and consistently
brilliant. You produce tweets with a wonderful combination of humour, profound
awareness and humility.
People refrain from saying
anything harmful towards you in fear of the masses suspending their account for
you. You have a reputation to uphold, and as upstanding as you may be, it is
difficult to save face when someone does come at you.
There are many other types of
tweeters, like Sports Fanatics, Poets and Story Tellers, which speak for
themselves. There are also those who merely use twitter as a platform to chat
to their mates. You may fall into any one or more of these categories, or the
ones listed before.
If you don’t, you’re probably the
cold part in a poorly microwaved pie; you will be reheated. Terrible analogies
aside, you have been heeded.
