There is so much material online about the do’s and don’t’s of Twitter that it would take a novice no more than 5 minutes of judicious Googling before he or she would be able join the ranks of the twitterati by the simple expedient of following rules of conduct established by elders who, a thousand of tweets ago, forged the way ahead 140 characters at a time.
And yet the requirements of etiquette on Twitter have always seemed to me to rely overly much on the ‘have-a-nice-day’ ingenue as practised by customer service reps in fast food joints, rote learned instructions that lose meaning because they are followed without reflection, out of habit, or worse, out of calculation and conceit.
Does Twitter etiquette really even matter? We’re always being told that it’s all about value, so presumably you can be &rse and get away with it so long as you remain, useful. Furthermore, such is the message frequency on Twitter, surely bad manners simply gets lost, along with just about everything else, in the blizzard of white noise that is a raw Twitter stream? The question poses itself: Is Twitter Etiquette, really, just a crock of sh1t? Here are five etiquette forms that bother me, and why I think that is exactly what they are.
Twitter Bad Manners No1: Not Following Back
Most people think that to ‘follow back’ is ‘only’ polite. I think these people must be dimwits. Perhaps, I don’t know, you should follow people that are you are genuinely interested in following? It’s more authentic to follow Kim Kardashian because you’re hoping she sends round another twitpic exclusive, than it is to follow someone just because they are following you. 3rd party apps and the Twitter List fiasco has a lot to answer for, making it penalty-free for anybody to follow everybody else, simply because you can cut out their tweets by binning them into a group or list that you never intend to review. Is it authentic to follow someone and not pay attention to what they are saying? Is it honest? The answer must be, no, and no.
Twitter Bad Manners No2: Not Thanking For The RT
Most people send round a thank you tweet for people who have RT’ed their content. This seems like irrefutably the right thing to do. Until I noticed some folks who seem to RT content for the precise purpose of soliciting the thank you tweet in order to get free promo from a guy with a larger following. Which led me to suspect that there are some other folks who send thank you tweets to encourage further RT’s, from people who only RT in order to secure future ‘Thx for the RT’s’ tweets and so on until, presumably, the end of the goddamn world. This is oblique self promotion, made worse for fact that it’s a collaboration, a pact made by Twitter cowboys whose tweets have no more merit than school yard graffiti, the online equivalent of “Muz was ‘ere’ and ‘Lisa is a slag’. Do we really need this clutter, this eyesore? Is there any value being added? The answer, again, is no.
Twitter Bad Manners No3: Not Attributing Content
Attribution is good form. I think we can all agree that its only right that if you’ve been the recipient of a tweet that has, in some small way, added value to your day, then attributing the sender and/or creator is the proper thing to do. Thankfully, most of us already do this by default, due to the functionality of the twitter website or 3rd party clients which automatically forward in a prescribed RT form. What I’ve noticed recently is something altogether more invidious – the active deletion of the RT and the @ elements of a tweet before sending on, presumably to secure the credit for the added value for themselves. In the era of ‘Personal Branding’, I well understand the value of positioning yourself as a Subject-Matter-Expert in this, or a Thought Leader in that, but to do so at the expense others more deserving is parasiticism of the worst kind, pure and simple.
Twitter Bad Manners No4: Not Thanking For The Follow
Most people recommend that you thank your followers, for the act of following. This, I have never fully understood. People have freely chosen to follow you for whatever reasons which they are entitled to have and can elect to unfollow you by precisely the same tokens. There is no contract or bond or obligation made by the act of following. At best, a thank you for following is misunderstanding of this reality; at worst, it’s disingenuous, another example of cynicism masquerading as kindness, given life by a contempt that thinks the loyalty can be so easily bought with the mindless titbit of a thank for you nothing. This is feelgood from a vending machine, lapped up by those who should know better, but somehow, don’t.
Twitter Bad Manners No5: Not Responding To DM’s Or @Replies
Most people recommend that you respond to DM’s and @replies promptly, and preferably before you tweet something else entirely unrelated. I surprise myself to find that I am full agreement with the cognoscenti on this, that you know what, we should all at least try being human beings once in a while. And yet, DM’s remain somehow unnatural in this medium. I defy anyone to continue a DM conversation for more than a few rallies, before reaching for the phone or tweeting an email address. The140 character limit frustrates nuanced conversation and seems most suited to precisely that one-to-many message – that very self promotion – that I’ve spent the last 500 words or so of this post criticising. And so I stand accused another twitter crime, worthy of condemnation: hypocrisy.
For me, the DM column has always been somewhat neglected, relegated offscreen in favour of the Twitter Groups that I do follow, or the all important Mentions column with which I track the essential progress of my ego as it flies or falls in accordance to the number of RT’s and #FF I receive. The most human element in all of this twitterverse – the DM – is unseen and unread, until too late in the day for any kind of adequate response. Such is etiquette in this wonderful world of ours. Such is etiquette on Twitter.
Final Thoughts
RT this post, obviously. This article was written in tribute to James Howard Kunstler, author of a brilliant polemic blog, ClusterfuckNation, which I recommend that everyone reads.
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