Category Archives: Twitter

I don’t take (pathetic) bribes, not even on Twitter

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And I don’t work for free. (Although, to illustrate my point I will be breaking this rule a teensy bit and giving away some free and undeserved attention.)

Down with this kind of thing:

MTV wants me to advertise MTV and ZYNC. They want me to spam my Twitter followers and Facebook friends. They want me to subject myself to a deluge of marketing. On purpose. They want me to tell you that I like it.

Do I look like a bitch? Then why you try to fuck me like a bitch?

This isn’t a good bribe. There is approximately 0.0000001% chance of any real payoff. You want me to annoy and to be annoyed for (almost definitely) absolutely nothing? I do believe I will pass.

I believe it’s true that everyone has a price. But if I ever do sell out (and as a big fan of Andy Warhol, it’s one of my ambitions in life), you can be damned sure that you won’t be buying me so fucking cheap. Free is way the fuck too fucking cheap. Tweets aren’t worth much, but they’re not worthless. And you know this if you’re trying to trick me into selling them to you.

I do not “RT to win”, and if you need to use this kind of persuasion to get me to promote your product it probably sucks eleventy-seven penises.

I’m all for shameless self-promotion. I’m promote things I’m actually interested in all the damned time. But my personal endorsement is expensive. Even my “this is awesome, *winkwinkIknowyouknowI’mdoingitfortheprize*” endorsement. Fuck the fuck off. If you want me to contribute to your brand recognition, you’re going to need to cough up.

And my dear followers… don’t be Twitter whores. Have confidence. You’re worth enough to be classy Twitter escorts.

But why block so many people, Candice, why!?

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I post damned irregularly over here, so (nearly) no one reads this blog, and all none of you have asked any questions, but I’m in blabbity mode today.

@questular is my follow-whore Twitter account. I’ve got plenty of followers over there, but approximately 0% of them value me and/or are of value to me. Or did/were, when I was still messing with them, anyway.

I don’t post links on @candice nearly as often as I used to (I moved my linkage to @candibot, though I haven’t put much effort into pointing that out), but when I did, depending on the time of day, I usually got at least 20 clicks (with 500-some followers), as opposed to maybe one click (with thousands of followers). 500 (now 777) is an artificially low follower count, but of the hundreds (and hundreds) of followers I’ve blocked, hardly any of them were ever interested in me in the first place. Good riddance, meaningless integer incrementers!

I’d like to be able to keep track of how many people are really paying attention to me. Since my follower count doesn’t automatically reflect that (although spammers, at least, are eventually removed), I do it by hand. Pointless, really… in the end, there are just about the same number of people who give a damn about my feed, but I do it anyway. OCD?

I know normal people probably just check out how many people reply or retweet or follow their links. I shrug, and I shrug again! Possibly (definitely) I just have too much time on my hands. But I doubt very much that the number of replies/RTs/clicks I get has been affected more than the teensiest little bit (though I’m gladly minus the contributions of jerks, perverts, spammers, idiots, and trolls), and my percentages must be crazily higher than they would have been otherwise. So if I ever start to care about that, bonus for me!?

Also, my followers are awesomer than yours (on average), :p

It would be so lovely if they’d let me protect my account (approve or reject followers) without making it private.

Following me is a privilege, not a right

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I don’t let worthless followers stick around just to increase my follower count and make me look good. I cross them the hell off the list. @candice is an exclusive club. I’m going on a blocking spree today (also, to a lesser extent, following back interesting people that I may have missed). Here’s how I prune you bastards:

If you’re spam, duh, you’re getting blocked.

If your bio is in the third person, I will probably block you on the spot, without even looking at your tweets, because seriously, that’s annoying. In any case, I almost definitely won’t follow you back.

If your bio contains words like “guru”, “SEO” or anything too sickeningly buzzy, there is an almost 100% chance that I will block you (especially if combined with the third person rule above).

If you follow lots and lots of people, I will think very carefully about why you’re following me, too. If I don’t think you mean to pay any attention to me whatsoever, even if you’re not spam, block.

If you don’t do much but RT others, I might click over to some of those accounts and follow them, but what is the point of following you? There is a very good possibility that you will be blocked.

If you’re a band, a brand, or another non-person (as defined by me, not by SCOTUS), unless you’ve been careful and I’m actually interested (unlikely — if I was interested, I’d find you, and usually from another account), you’re getting blocked.

If you’re a bot that replied to me because I mentioned certain keywords? Even if I am interested in your brand (if applicable), I don’t like you, so you’re blocked.

If your feed is nothing but non-hilarious trending topic jokes, updates from SpyMaster or other such filler garbage (especially the automated kind), for fuck’s sake, make a separate account for that shit, because I probably just found your main account annoying enough to block.

If you type like you’re a 14-year-old on AIM? UR blocked.

If it seems as if you followed me because you want to win me over to your cause (generally Jesus or Tea Party), or to convince me that mine is wrong, it’s not going to work, and also, you’re blocked.

If you have never posted, not even once, and are following only 500 sexy ladies and @theonion, you are creepy and blocked.

If your account is protected and you don’t approve my follow request, well, that’s just rude. And I block rude people.

Mean people… also blocked.

Pictures of your cock? Your cock is blocked.

All caps? Caps-block.

If you’re offensively unintelligent, seriously lame, or obviously need to RTFM, unless you seem like you’d be fun to fuck with, you’re going to get blocked. (Marginal stupidity or lameness just means I won’t follow back)

If a very high percentage of your tweets are replies, I will probably be too lazy to scroll through enough of your history to see what you’re about, unless some of those replies are to me. I might not block you, but I won’t follow you, either.

If most of your updates come from “API”, make extra special sure that your don’t seem the slightest bit spammy, or you’re going to get blocked. If I’m being lazy, you might get blocked anyway.

If I’m clumsy, drunk, or just not paying attention, whoops, some of you get blocked you by accident. Sorry!

If nothing above applies to you, and none of the other arbitrary rules I’ve forgotten about apply either, you might get lucky and avoid being blocked. If I don’t block you, and you don’t post in a foreign language, I will follow you if you seem interesting immediately. Otherwise, I’ll check you out again later. If you never, ever, ever get interesting, as soon as I stop being lazy, you’re in some danger of being blocked (however, I’m pretty damned lazy). Depends on my mood.