2. People on Twitter who always tweet IN ALL CAPS! This is an automatic unfollow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy that UR ABOUT TO GET UR DRINK ON! I just don’t consider it breaking news or worthy of yelling at me about.
3. People who end every sentence of every post with an exclamation point! This is the equivalent of ending every sentence IN ALL CAPS! And while I’m at it… what’s up with people using ellipses instead of commas or periods for no apparent reason…
4. People whose bios begin “Oh, I hate doing these,” or “I can’t think of anything,” or, my personal favorite, “I’ll fill this out later,” on a profile that’s three years old. C’mon, people, you can’t take five minutes to think of something interesting to say about yourself? A joke? A quote? A song lyric? Imagine meeting someone in a bar and saying, “Nice to meet you. I hate this. I can’t think of anything. I’ll introduce myself to you later.”
5. People who don’t differentiate between private messages and public posts. The less said about these folks the better.
6. Getting a “Hey, check out my new video” message on YouTube, then seeing every other youtuber with a screen name that begins with “davidw___” in the “TO:” field. I know that spam is sometimes necessary for self promotion, but I appreciate that some people take the time to make it look like not-spam. If you can’t take thirty seconds to look at my page and come up with a reason why I might like your work, at least take five seconds to cut and paste my screen name into a “personal” message. Otherwise, why should I spend five minutes watching your crappy video?
7. People who change their screen names every two weeks. Have you noticed that their screen names never have anything to do with their actual names or established nicknames? Or that they change their profile pictures just as frequently and said pictures never show their face. I understand anonymity, but do you understand “branding?” How am I supposed to know who you are? How would you feel if your favorite restaurant or bar was constantly moving, changing its name and its signage? If you’re in the witness protection program, maybe you shouldn’t have a MySpace page.
8. People who favorite my photos on Flickr who have no publicly available content in their photo stream. Especial if they a.) only favorite nude photos and/or b.) have a really scary screen name. So, NakedHorsemanNY, you don’t what the entire internet to have access to photos of you riding a horse naked, I get it. How about a couple photos of you riding a horse with clothes on? Or maybe just some shots of the horse. Or the sun setting on your ranch. Anything but a blank profile, Stalker McCreepsmeout.
9. Follow Friday on Twitter. It’s a good idea in theory, but if you want me to follow someone, tell me who they are and why I should follow them. Or, better yet, retweet some of their best posts. A list of screen names with a Follow Friday tag is meaningless to me.
10. The fact that only four people still use Live Journal. I don’t lament the demise of Friendster or MySpace, but in the advent of Facebook and Twitter, it feels like nobody blogs anymore. They just tweet and post status updates. I used to meet people on Live Journal and feel like I was actually getting to know them, which doesn’t happen anymore.
I still read. I post on the random chance, but most of my friends here can read my status updates on facebook. I also have my smuttier blog that’s hosted privately. ;
But I do read.