Unspoken Twitter Rules (That I Just Made Up)

You know how, before facebook sucked, it had rules? Like the one that said you couldn't join unless you were a student, at a university, with an .edu email address? Yeah, that was awesome. Considering the increased media attention that twitter's been receiving, and the subsequent exponential increase in users, someone really needs to tell the slower people that THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG. These unspoken laws of twitter are (for NOW) just my passive-aggressive opinion, but I think twitter should officially adopt them and remove anyone who doesn't comply. Or at the very least: I just can't follow you if you commit any of the following twaux-pas.



You really shouldn't:

• Use 5-year old internet acronyms (like lol, roflmao, brb, g2g) or 1-year old lolspeak (like I can haz, I'm in ur - -ing ur -, or anything else obnoxiously misspelled). The only exception is if you're doing it ironically. Otherwise you look like you haven't been on the internet in years, and you might as well be my grandmother. Acronyms that I won't judge you for include omg, wtf, ftw, ftl, and fml.
• Spell things wrong. The people I follow write complete sentences, and spell-check if they're not sure. This is not a chat room; it's not about speed. It is, however, about exchanging intelligent information, and I'm not interested if you can't communicate like a person.
• Ask "What does # mean?" "How do I send a reply?" "How do I find people to follow?" Do your research, dude. You shouldn't be allowed on twitter until you understand the basic concepts. There's like 4 things to know. Also, let me google that for you.
• Abuse caps lock and/or punctuation. Again, this isn't 6th grade, and we aren't in a chat room. Sometimes caps lock is funny; a lot of people use it for emphasis since bold/italics aren't supported everywhere. Bad punctuation is only funny if we already know you can use it correctly.
• Follow a million people, wait til they follow you back, and unfollow. I shouldn't even have to say this. You're an asshole for even considering it.
• Steal people's ideas without giving them credit. I know, it's extra work sometimes to reword tweets to make it fit with a RT, or maybe you feel weird mincing their words, but trust me, it's better than just pretending you came up with it. And I promise, there's always a way to make it fit.
• Ask people to RT. This is retarded. If it's interesting, we'll RT it.
• Use twitter as your personal messaging system. If your entire history of tweets is you replying to one friend about where to get dinner tonight, good luck to you. Direct messaging was invented for a reason. Also, EMAIL.
• Bribe people to follow you. I swear to god, if I see "If you follow me I'll follow you back!!!" in one more bio, I'm going to explode. Is that REALLY how you want to describe yourself? That's all you've got?
• Talk about your meals. I'd rather hear about almost anything than what you're eating right now - no matter HOW DELICIOUS that Subway sandwich is today. This just alerts everyone that you literally can't come up with anything else to tweet than the fact that it's 12:00 and you're eating, just like everyone else in your time zone. You know what? If you don't have anything interesting to tweet, don't tweet anything at all. This should be in the constitution.
• Use twitter as a truncated RSS feed for your blog. Look, if I like your blog, I'm subscribed to it in google reader, and I'll see when you have a new post. If I have to hear about it twice, I'm going to get rid of one source of those alerts - and it's probably going to be the one where I have to click a god damn link to see what you're talking about. I'm not saying you can't link to your (infrequent) blog posts, just don't let it be the only thing you use twitter for.
• Tell everyone when you're "logging off" for work or sleep or whatever. Um, this isn't instant messaging. It's expected that you won't be there all the time, and if you don't respond instantly no one's gonna be like "OMG are you mad at me?"
• Oh yeah, and don't say tweeps.

I don't have a million followers, and I'm not pretending I can teach that (You should be a celebrity or a fictional character. There, I did it.), but I CAN suggest a few ways to have a decent amount of not-retarded ones. Or at least, to have me.