Three things I’ve realized after joining Twitter.

I’ve just recently started getting involved at a higher level with web development and the tech world, and I’m quickly finding that not having a Twitter page in the tech world is like checking the basement in a horror movie.

Spoiler Alert: You’re dead.

What annoys me most is that I was under the assumption that Twitter was a social media for narcissistic introverts who don’t actually read anything other than their own posts (totally different than blogs); so I’ve been mostly ignoring that section of the internet. Turns out it’s essential to being awesome at the Internet.

Here are three things I’ve learned about Twitter after jumping in this late in the game.

1. You will be judged harshly on the quality of your Twitter account.

I tried to join a website by the name of Forrst which is a community of developers and designers, but in order to create an account I need to be accepted. In order to be accepted I need to fill out an invite and fulfill some requirements. Although not required, guess what’s recommended? Twitter Account.

It’s recommended because fuck you.

Three days before the start of high school, my friend Charlie hit me in the forehead with a rock. This meant that the first two weeks of the most influential year of my youth were spent walking around with Frankenstein stitches on the front of my face. Thank you Forrst for making me feel less cool than those first 14 days of freshman year.

I have a little over 20 followers (see lesson 2) which is roughly 0.00013% the volume of people following Justin Bieber, a pop star best known for his impersonations of a male singer. I have as many followers as I have fingers and toes. I could do one sit-up for every follower every day and still become morbidly obese. I’m just terrible at having followers.

I don’t deal well with rejection, so my application to become a member of Forrst is now on hold while I sort out my insecurities. I couldn’t get past step one because I feel like the internet’s version of the weird emo kid that cuts himself. Ironically, Forrst has made me feel like other Forrest:

“Can’t tweet here.”

2. Most of your followers are spider robots trying to have sex with you.

I get an email anytime a new person starts following my twitter feed (read: once a month), so imagine my surprise when I received three followers all in the same day! On further inspection, all three were morally questionable females that had dirty things to say about themselves in their bios.

Definitely not a spambot.

I like to believe that I’m not the most horrendous looking thing on my block, but I doubt very highly that three scandalous dressing chicks saw my profile while browsing through Twitter and decided they wanted to know more about my thoughts on cottage cheese.

What blows me away is that there are 125 people following Yelena Saintfleur. That means there are 125 people out there who are web savvy enough to create a twitter account, but not savvy enough to understand when an internet whore is a fake thing.

I have yet to delete the spambots as I desperately need followers if I ever plan on making another pass at Forrst.

3. You’ll never truly understand what Twitter is for.

This is the third time I’ve joined Twitter and the third time I’m confused by it. It’s like an ex-girlfriend that I keep getting back together with forgetting why we broke up in the first place.

Hint: It’s because she’s racist.

I just have no idea what the value is, and I keep assuming that it’ll kind of just dawn on me as I use it more. Right now, it represents how badass I am on the internet (note: not very) and how slutty robots are. Which, for all intents and purposes, actually sounds pretty awesome.

Follow me on Twitter @MacsJF. I need to feel accepted.