How to Get Un-Followed onTwitter

Last night, I received an aggressive e-mail from someone I recently un-followed on Twitter inquiring as to the reasons I un-followed her. The fact that she bombarded me with that question solidified my decision, but for her (and you,) here goes…

The people I’m sure to unfollow:

1. The Twitter Addicts: You know, the ones who post a constant stream of tweets, every minute or two throughout the day. The people whose icons totally monopolize my screen and prevent me from seeing anyone else. What do these people do? Do they have jobs? Lives? Apparently Jennifer Aniston dumped John Mayer for being addicted to Twitter and I can see why. It’s annoying as hell.

2. The Auto Message Senders: Please don’t thank me for my follow and tell me how much you look forward to getting to know me. It’s a surefire way to guarantee that you won’t because I unfollowed you the minute I got the message. Tweet me or send me a personalized message or just ignore me. Please.

3. The Sketch Balls: Folks who follow thousands and have no updates or followers themselves, but want access to the inner workings of my head? No thank you, they get blocked from my updates.

4. The Pimps: People who do nothing but promote their own cause. Sure, I post links to my blog when I have a new post, and I’m fine when other people do the same. But people who do nothing but pimp themselves? I don’t want to see that.

5. The Lazy Bones: If you haven’t updated in six months, I’ll probably unfollow you. Nothing personal, but what’s the point?

6. Annoying Famous People: Celebrities who send public kisses to each other all day long. As fascinating as I find celebs, I prefer to read about them in US Weekly. On Twitter, they are a bit too much like “us” and I find it irritating rather than endearing.

7. The “Follow you, Follow me” folks: Have you ever been followed by someone only to follow them back to be unfollowed? How rude is that? Two can play that game, so consider yourself dumped.

8. Social Media Experts: What qualifications do these people have? I have a blog, a Facebook account etc. Maybe I should start calling myself an expert? Would you all buy that? Exactly.

9. The Overshare-ers: Twitter is innately narcissistic. Are any of us really as interesting as we think we are? Probably not. But do you really think that people want to know about the zit on your forehead or the dump you just took? Maybe they do, but I don’t.

10. The Sunshine Spreaders: Maybe I’m too jaded, but having messages constantly pop up that tell me to smile and love life make me want to punch the computer screen. Perhaps that’s my problem though.

11. The Bible Quoters: You love Jesus. You know Bible passages. A lot of people do, but is Twitter really the place to profess that? All day long? Not for me.

12. The Number Seekers: “I need 876 followers to reach 1,000!! Please re-tweet!!!” And… what’s the point of doing this for you? Tweet something of substance and your numbers will grow. Keep doing this and they won’t. Or at least they shouldn’t.

13. The Contest Whores: Bloggers often offer an extra entry for their contest for tweeting it. There are many people who do nothing but tweet about contests, all day long. I believe these people should disqualify from that extra entry because they rarely have followers and the whole point is to gain visibility. And also they’re really irritating. A new laptop might be worth entering, but a box of two dollar breakfast bars? Not so much.

I might be willing to let you slide if you only possess one of the above, especially if you offer me some value mixed in (or if you’re hot, Ashton.) But, two or more and you’re history. And I won’t miss you one bit. And thank you, annoying woman for inspiring a blog post– I was stumped on what to write about today. Now I’ll go and Twitter about it. And you won’t even know, because I blocked you. So there.