You’re Dead to Me

You know, on the Ghost Whisperer, how Jennifer Love-Hewitt hears ghosts, and nobody else does, and they’re pretty sure she’s nutty, and maybe the creepy things are really her fault, because, hello, she’s the one hearing voices, so what do you think? Okay, in real life, she sparkles her vajayjay, so she definitely is pretty nutty, but that’s not the point. The point is, she talks to people who technically don’t exist.

That’s kind of like all those people on twitter who protect their tweets.

When your tweets are protected, using #hashtags is worthless, because your tweets don’t show up anywhere outside your twitter vault. It’s kind of like voting for Ralph Nader. Nice try, but it doesn’t mean anything.

Nobody wants to apply to be your friend. Just saying.

5 Tweets Nobody Wants to Read

This is our top 5 list for today. It will probably be different tomorrow. Every day, new people discover twitter, and bring all kinds of new things on board. Some will be wonderful. Some will be disastrous. We’ll be here to sort them for you.

The five things we are absolutely, completely, and totally so done hearing about are:

1. What you ate for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack or hope to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack, or what you’re really hungry for, for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack. Here’s a tip: if you tweet about what you brought for lunch, and it’s gone by the time you check the fridge, someone close by is watching your stream. The rest of us, unless it is absolutely awesome, and it’s an invitation to join you, really don’t want to know.

2. How many tweets you’ve posted. Sigh. This is so obvious, it’s painful. We can see your totals by looking at your twitter stats, or clicking your name in TweetDeck, or Seesmic, or whatever. Tweeting is not rocket science. The only equipment required to post a bunch of tweets is time and a keyboard. And talent? Seriously, have you read the public timeline?

3. Where you are right now. Yes, there are lots of applications that will let you update your twitter account with your current location. Nobody really cares where you are, except for the guy who’s waiting to rob your house.

4. Twitter is down, or over capacity, or you couldn’t post for 5 minutes. Sit back from the keyboard. Take a deep breath. This, too, will pass. When twitter is over capacity and you tweet about it, you are part of the problem!

5. Inspirational quotes, one-liners, old jokes, witty sayings, quip of the day, and every other trite bit o’ garbage that people tweet when they have absolutely nothing to say, yet feel the need to post just so people will know they are still alive. If every one of those hackneyed phrases were connected end-to-end, they’d circle @Oprah’s equator about 100 million times. If you don’t have an original thought, it’s okay to say nothing at all.

We haven’t forgotten spam. Everyone hates spam, so we really didn’t need to mention it. Except we just did. There are about 80 zillion other things to add to this list. Stick your favorites in the comments.

We gotta go. It’s just about snack time, and we’re going to have…

Nevermind.

Gone in 60 Seconds

The original 1974 version of “Gone in 60 Seconds” was a totally crap movie, and the most awesome car chase film in the history of moving pictures. Don’t watch the remake, it’s even bigger crap than the original, with none of the awesomeness.

The crappy dialogue of either movie was a kajillion times better than the sewage spewed into this twitter stream:

Of course, we had to respond:

Hi Steve @resultscarpet my name is TwitterFail. You are the spammer asshat bot fail of the day. Your suspension is looming.

Why do we say this? Because in the wonderful self-correcting world that is twitter, the tweeps respond.

We’re pretty sure this isn’t the type of activity Steve was hoping for:

The trick is to get them laughing with you, not at you, Steve.

The ones who weren’t laughing at Steve struck back:

Twitter will soon be rid of Steve, because every one of these tweeps has a “block” button (and his phone number, BTW – smart one Steve). As soon as enough people report the spam and block old Stevie, he’ll be a distant blip on the screen.

That’s not as satisfying as crumpled metal and screeching tires, so, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a date with Eleanor.

Thanks to @_T_a_y_ for the alert!

We gave up after writing 10 different titles that suck, so feel free to write your own

There are times when we see a twitter stream that is so totally awful, we just need to sit back and admire its crappiness. Such is the case of @X07Brainiac, which was pointed out to us by alert Honorary Fail Bird Handler, @jackassletters.

Yes, Mr. Grammar Person, we know that a person is “who” not “which,” so we’ll point out that XO7Brainiac is not a person. It’s a bot.

“What?” we hear you saying, “How can you tell?”

The first clue:  robots don’t sound like human beings. All these posts sound amazingly similar. The formula:

1. Please Retweet
2. Item from an rss feed
3. Link
4. Hashtag

Observe:

1. The Retweet:

Only newbies, self-absorbed cretins, and bots ask everyone to retweet everything they say. We’ve talked about this before, “RT Please” just makes you look desperate and insecure, or totally fake.

2. RSS feed:

Real people, unless they’re twitter virgins, totally clueless losers, or self-important asshats, will interact with their followers, or the people they’re following, and say something original every now and then.  This bot just spits out its feed. If we want to read an rss feed about something, we’ll subscribe to it.

3. The link:

Every single tweet has a link. Read #2 again. Unless they are completely devoid of original thought, a real person will say something at some point that doesn’t include a link.

4. Hashtag:

The brainiac behind this bot thinks he can get his own username to trend, if he puts it in a hashtag at the end of every single post. So totally wrong, Wil Robinson. Terms trend when lots of people are using them. You can’t trend your own name all by yourself, so you need your friends help you out. Bots don’t have friends, because most of their followers are just as artificial as they are. And, while we’re on the subject, creating a hashtag that is your username is the most conceited, arrogant, supercilious thing to do. If @XO7Brainiac is not a bot (as if) this pomposity alone could cause him to spontaneously combust as the fire of a thousand sun shines down on his greasy, over-inflated head. (Sorry, we were daydreaming again.)

“Oooh,” you say, “he has a bunch of followers, so he must have lots of friends!” Wrong again. Follower numbers mean nothing. Some people get really envious of others’ follower count, as if numbers equal influence. Anyone can use one or more follower apps to get tons of followers. It’s one of the easiest things to do on twitter. The trick is to get followers who are interested in what you have to say. Thousands of followers who are only there because you followed them first will usually turn out to be people who are just after numbers, too. If you want people who will actually read what you have to say, fewer followers can be a very good thing. Especially if you want them to recommend you to their followers, who will follow you because you’re interesting.

Why do we hate bots on twitter? Because they use a lot of resources that could be better utilized by real people having real conversations and making real connections.  Every time you see the Fail Whale, get a 503 error, or a message that twitter is over capacity, blame the bots. Just like the Gunslinger in Westworld, their presence just ruins our fun

Our First Guest Post!

Our good friend @stinginthetail wrote a guest post for us (Guy Kawasaki did not invent that motorbike) a couple of weeks ago. She was kind enough to allow us to do one for her blog in return.

Taking about a half-step out of character, we talk about crystals, crazy celebrities, and vagazzling in You want me to stick rhinestones where?

After you read our post, stroll through the rest of her blog, and you’ll see why we like her so much.