on unfollowing
I spent more than an hour today trying to figure out how to word a tweet that contained this information:
It pains me to imagine that there are people out there, people I possibly even know in real life, who feel stuck following me on Twitter and wish they could figure out a way to unfollow me without making it weird.
I couldn’t figure out how to make it funny. I couldn’t figure out a cool and charming way to tell everyone that I will never take it personally if you unfollow me. Every wording I came up with sounded like an insecure boyfriend trying to prepare himself for a brutal dumping.
Everyone uses Twitter differently, and the very bottom line should be: If you don’t like the stuff that’s in your feed, cut it out. You get to control your content. We should each feel free to unfollow the people who don’t deliver content we enjoy. I do. I do so probably at the expense of people’s feelings, which is something I would never do in person. It would torture me to know that someone might be genuinely hurt by my decision to click unfollow. And still, maybe that’s bullshit because I’ve done it to people I like and to people I know.
Twitter is not real life, I guess.
Look, if we’re stuck on an elevator or on a cross country bus ride or shit even roommates for whatever reason, I’ll be polite and probably genuinely like you and be totally nice. But we’re not. We’re connected by words, 140 characters at a time all day long through my phone. For me, Twitter is a joke writing forum with a few friends who tweet some of their daily minutiae (that I actually do care about) mixed in for variety. That’s how I use Twitter. However you use it is equally valid. Don’t feel stuck following anyone. Unfollowing a person whose tweets you don’t enjoy will actually prevent you from building up a horrible, visceral reaction to every stupid thing the person you wish you could unfollow tweets, ending in a violent cesspool of seething hatred for someone who doesn’t even know what he’s done wrong when you see him in real life and spit on his dumb shoes in disgust. Maybe.
Tough to fit that sentiment into a tweet. We all have a few “Ugh, how do I lose this dude?” tweeters in our timeline. If I’m one of yours, I’d like to properly invite you to pull the plug on me and never look back. I will not take it personally, I will not be mad, and if for some weird reason we are ever bunk mates or on the same assembly line or in a submarine together, I promise to be nice and probably refollow you because we will become best friends who went through some serious shit on that sub.
None of this matters. I realize that.
