Every now and again on Twitter, I’ll go through and follow and unfollow a bunch of people. If I unfollow you, don’t take it personally. Likewise, I don’t take it personally when someone unfollows me. Twitter’s dynamic, not static.

However, a little while ago someone contacted me and demanded to know, in a snarky, confrontational, borderline douche-y way why I had stopped following her. I didn’t really know what to tell her, except maybe I unfollowed her because she was the type of person who would contact me afterward demanding explanations in a snarky, confrontational, borderline douche-y way.

j/k.

But @snarkyconfrontationalborderlinedouchey got me thinking about some of my Twitter turn-offs. And then I drew some pictures with my dubious artistic skillz.

(I see some of you getting paranoid. Remember that I’m talking in terms of extremes and NOT YOU. We’ll have more fun that way.)

 

1) Spammer

 

The annoyance level of this one is high enough I felt I had to include it even though I probably wouldn’t be following you if you were a spammer, I’d block you from following me. You asshat.

 

2) Constant Promo

 

You GUYS. Constant promo is like spam’s baby nephew. Sure, tweet lines from your book. Tweet your release dates/publication news. Tweet your friend’s releases. But for god’s sake, engage beyond that, or you won’t be promo-ing effectively.

 

3) TMI

 

Hey, morning glory, I heard a story…Twitter is PUBLIC. *gasp*

There’s a fine line between being naughty/inappropriate and just excessively, constantly oversharing everything about your body/sex life. One can be cute and fun and funny, and the other can be uncomfortable.

I know it’s hard to resist. It hurts. You know what helps? I repress. Rai’s are real good at repression. Like the time I watched a certain scene in Jerry Maguire with my dad sitting next to me, or the time my mom tried to use a Meatloaf song to launch a discussion about the birds and the bees.

Mama Rai: “You know what he’s talking about, when he says he would do anything for love, but he won’t do that? Sex. He wouldn’t have premarital sex. Because you can die from it. If you aren’t married.”

I repressed! It works great. So the next time you feel the urge to put up an avi of your nipple, take all of that desire, shove it down deep, and write a sex scene with ping pong paddles. Trust me.

 

4) Chronic RTing

 

RTing is fun, isn’t it? But 40 inane RT’s without a break for any actual original content can get boring. RT responsibly.

 

5) Never Tweeter

 

Self-explanatory.

 

6) It’s not you. It’s me.

 

Ah. This covers probably about 99% of the users I unfollow. You may be super fun and have interesting things to say, but I need to let you go right now. I may let you go, and keep someone who hits all of the pet peeves I listed above, but for some reason I want them to hang around a little longer. Maybe the time for us getting together isn’t right at the moment. Maybe I’ll come back to you later, and we’ll feel that click. Maybe I’m burned out. Maybe I just need a change. It’s not you. Really. It’s me. Now baby, please don’t…here. I’ll get the check.

Alisha Runs Amok, Bad Paint, Random Junk Twitter destroys the world, Twitter Love

A few months back, something horrible happened.

Ann Aguirre vanished from Twitter without a trace.

Many of you may have heard the Official Government Story. According to the authorities, Ann’s Twitter account was hacked and deleted, thus condemning her to a life without 140 character snippets of conversation. How will she know the newest trending topic? How will she stay up to date on all the hourly life minutia of a gazillion different Twitter users?

I know. Tragic.

I set out to uncover the truth about Ann’s disappearance. Unfortunately, the Moira Rogers duo of Bree and Donna were completely useless, having fallen into the depths of despair over Ann’s unexpected disappearance. Both kept claiming that Ann Aguirre was inexplicably transported to Alabama to hang out with them and party hard. Clearly both had gone mad with grief.

(My attempts to contact Alisha Rai were also fruitless, as she is no longer speaking to me in sentences free of profanity. Vivian Arend claims that Canada was not involved in Ann’s disappearance. Robyn Bachar blamed the elves. Misty Evans put forth her suspicions that rogue KGB elements may have been involved.)

I was forced to set off for Mexico to find out what had happened to the author. Luckily, my Spanish language skills include the words naranja and tequila, so this gringo was all set for south of the border shenanigans.  

What I found shocked me to the core. I have included NEVER BEFORE SEEN VIDEO FOOTAGE of the events of the fateful night when Ann Aguirre disappeared forever.

  

 

 

 

See that folks? Ann Aguirre, abducted by aliens eager to read Razorland, and still she thinks about her readers and Twitter entourage first. That’s love, right there.

Don’t worry. I’m sure Ann will be freed eventually by the Mother Ship when it stops to play some funky music, Close Encounters-style. However, we must soldier on without her on Twitter…

…in fact, I have to go tweet about feeding my cat and follow up with a riveting 140 character rant about what I had for lunch. Carry on!

Technical Details: All art was done in Microsoft Paint for maximum choice of color palette and vibrancy.

The moon shifting position within the frames is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Some may wonder why Ann Aguirre was writing a novel in the middle of a cow pasture while sitting on a milking stool. Alas, since she is no longer on Twitter (perhaps not even in this solar system) she cannot be asked this intriguing question.

Razorland looks pretty damn awesome. It also looks as if some lucky reader could win a copy of it on Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7137327-razorland

No cows were harmed in the making of this blog post.

Keith Melton's Megalomaniacal Delusions, Keith Uses Paint, Random Junk alien abduction, ann aguirre, humor, Mexico looks like Ohio, Twitter destroys the world