{"id":141,"date":"2009-10-09T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/10\/09\/my_twitter_unfollow_rules\/"},"modified":"2009-10-09T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-10T02:26:00","slug":"my_twitter_unfollow_rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/10\/09\/my_twitter_unfollow_rules\/","title":{"rendered":"My Twitter Unfollow Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

I follow about half as many people on Twitter<\/a> as follow me. Given the extremely small numbers in both categories, that’s not a declaration that merits any significant reaction. Frankly, I’m not too interested in increasing either number, and I’ve occasionally taken steps to decrease one of those number by unfollowing people.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I view following someone as extending an invitation for that person to step through the doorway and into my home – and I have certain standards of behavior I expect for any guest in my home, just as I would expect to conform to a host’s standards when I visit him or her.<\/p>\n

So, here are my “rules” (OK, they’re actually guidelines, but I do enforce them pretty rigorously) for deciding when to unfollow someone, in 140 characters or less.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If you’re uninteresting, I’m not interested. If I haven’t click on one of your links in 3 months, or you haven’t made me laugh\/think, adios.\n<\/li>\n
  2. If you routinely use profanity, you obviously aren’t a good steward of your 140 characters. Buy a thesaurus, then try again.\n<\/li>\n
  3. I have a few hot buttons. You can push 1 with impunity, but hit more than that & you’re history. What are they? You don’t need to know*.\n<\/li>\n
  4. This doesn’t happen often, but I unfollowed someone for using a vulgarity to refer to a woman. It’s all about respect & they lost mine.\n<\/li>\n
  5. People who routinely ignore the 140 character rule & write until they use up their space & expect me to go looking for the rest. Buh-bye.\n<\/li>\n
  6. If I haven’t subscribed to your blog’s RSS feed, why do you think I’m interested in reading your tweets advertising posts? Hint: I’m not.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    OK, I think those cover the most egregious violations of my personal guidelines. If I once followed you but I’m not any longer, it’s because you crossed one or more of these lines. Doesn’t make you a bad person, just not someone to whom I want to dedicate a portion of my monitor’s real estate.<\/p>\n

    *I’m not trying to be obnoxious. You shouldn’t be altering your natural style or personal beliefs to conform to mine. I wouldn’t do that for you.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I follow about half as many people on Twitter as follow me. Given the extremely small numbers in both categories, that’s not a declaration that merits any significant reaction. Frankly, I’m not too interested in increasing either number, and I’ve occasionally taken steps to decrease one of those number by unfollowing people. Perhaps I’m in… Continue reading My Twitter Unfollow Rules<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}