out in my headstraights by appointment only

Ah Twitter, how do I love thee? I jumped on this social media bandwagon back in September 2009, not really knowing (or caring) about what I was doing. Today I feel pretty much the same way on Twitter, however the 3,000 people that I’ve seemed to have amassed over the years keep me entertained. And they occasionally send me DMs about shady weight-loss programs, which is always useful.

But for all the years that I’ve spent on Twitter, there are still some things that piss me off about it. Some of them may seem trivial, while others will have you nodding in agreement and waving pitchforks and burning torches in the air.

1. The auto-DM: I followed someone a few weeks ago, and after about 20 minutes they sent me three direct messages. It was basically one long-ass message that they had broken down with links to their website and a generic ‘thank you’ for following them. Seriously? I don’t give a flying fuck if you follow me back or DM me to say thanks – I follow you because I want to keep up with your tweets. If you think this is a great marketing idea to make your new followers more welcome, it’s not.

2. Trying to find your Twitter worth: I’ve been seeing this crop up recently, where people will randomly tweet out “My Twitter account is worth $3,194.40 What’s Yours worth?” and all you can think of is “Can you shove that money up your ass and shut up?“. Seriously, why on earth would you want to try and find the value of your Twitter account? Not only is it annoying to see on your timeline, you can really get depressed when you finally realize that you can’t write to Twitter asking for a cashier’s cheque for said amount.

3. Tweeting how many people unfollowed you: This is another irritating service that people love to sign up to. OMG YOU JUST UNFOLLOWED ME WHAT DID I DO WRONG YOU ARE SUCH AN EVIL PERSON THIS IS BEYOND FORGIVENESS etc. We’re eternally grateful to see that 12 people unfollowed you and 19 people followed you. We’re also eternally grateful for the Mute button on TweetDeck.

4. Tweeting your horoscope: Yet another baffling thing that people sign up to. If you want to put your faith in the stars, that’s fine, but please be aware that the sugar-coated horoscope that you just automatically tweeted was also simultaneously sent out to about a quarter of a million people. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? MAYBE YOU’RE IN RETROGRADE.

5. Anyone who still uses paper.li: Stop it. Just stop it.

6. People who have private accounts: what in the holy hell are you tweeting about that you don’t want the world to see? This is the Internet – why are you on Twitter if you want to keep your thoughts to yourself? THE WORLD MUST KNOW HOW AWESOME YOUR LUNCH WAS. Also, private accounts are a bitch to retweet, so just come out of the Twitter closet already.

7. People who think Twitter = Google: There are certain times where asking a question on Twitter is a good thing. Something like “Does anyone know where I can get organic flax seed oil to massage my dog with?” would probably get a few replies. Asking something like “Does anyone know what time the stores in Dubai Mall close tonite plz?” is not.

8. Commemorative tweets / followers: YAY! You hit 400 followers / 12,000 tweets – have a fucking cookie.

9. Brands that act like people: Hi, we’re a brand and we’re not quite sure how this social media thing works but we’re going to go ahead and jump into it anyway and assign someone to talk to people on Twitter like we’re BFFs and braid each other’s hair on the weekends. It’s incredibly creepy when I’m chatting to someone on Twitter and I’m suddenly elbowed in the ribs by an over-friendly brand that is trying to be a part of the conversation.

10. Verified accounts: you verified people sitting there looking so smug with your blue tick marks…