Before I get started, this blog post is pretty random. It shoots from the hip and was thought up in the matter of 5 minutes or so. Short and hopefully to the point (it’s late and I’m tired). I know at least some of you have encountered these. They seem to be commonplace amongst the garbage users that would happily send you spam tweets all day, as opposed to actually interacting with you on a human level.

These are some of the absolute most annoying things about Twitter user practices. These are things that would ultimately drive me away from Twitter completely if I wasn’t so tied to the multitude of REAL users I have between my 3 accounts (yes, 3–They all serve their purpose). In no particular order:

1. Auto DM’s — I don’t care what they say. They’re annoying. It’s like calling someones house and repeatedly getting the answering machine, and to make matters worse, the answering machine message is terrible. Why bother even calling? *unfollows*. Get this: The other day someone sent me an auto DM that simply said “hey, how’s it going?” I genuinely thought it was a legitimate DM so I replied cautiously with “Good. How about yourself?” I never even got a reply back. Asshole.
2. The Unfollower — This has to be one of the absolute most irritating things ever. Those people that will follow you just to get you to follow them, and then immediately unfollow you to avoid reaching the limit for how many people they can follow. In other words “I want to make sure you receive my garbage tweets that advertise how you can make $54,887,684 a day with Twitter and gain 10 billion followers in 5 minutes; but I don’t give a shit in a hand basket about your tweets.” I always check to see who is actually following me back. If you follow me and then immediately unfollow me, you get unfollowed and blocked. I don’t care who you are. If you don’t value the tweets I post, then why should I even bother reading a single thing you post?
3. Zero Tweets — If you have zero tweets and are following 910 people, I will not follow you back, period. It’s pretty obvious that your auto-following rampage is in preparation for bottom-of-the-barrel, meaningless tweets about things nobody cares about. Besides, save yourself the trouble. Your account will probably get deleted within a day anyways.
4. Sleeper Tweets — These ones can be sly but if you’re paying attention, you can pick them up. These are the bot accounts (and sometimes human) that will try and slip their spam tweets into a barrage of seemingly harmless, although meaningless, tweets. Stuff like “Listening to music…”, “Just finished watching ____” and I’ve even seen some do @replies to users that were never even talking to them in the first place. I’ve been fooled by some of these before but the ones that got me were actually run by humans. As soon as I see that “Get 300 followers in a day” tweet, you are gone. Some of the bot accounts can be funny though. I’ve seen some say that they’re watching a television show that isn’t even on anymore. The other day I saw one say that it was watching the Red Sox play and this was a few days after the Sox were eliminated by the Angels (fuckin’ Halos).
5. The RT Whore — Okay, you find something interesting posted by a friend and you want to RT it and make sure your friends see it. Fair enough. That’s harmless. Doing this all day long is annoying. If all you’re going to do on Twitter is pedal everything that someone else posted before you, then you should…just stop doing it. Post some original content. It’s not that hard. If all I see in your Twitter stream are RT’s, you’re getting unfollowed for being unoriginal and late.
6. Web Host Comparison Bots — This is a personal annoyance for me because I encounter these often due to my field of work. The Twitter user that @replies people with links to web hosting provider comparisons and recommendations. I especially loathe these because they act like they’re your friend or something. Like you were looking for web hosting and voilá, there they are to help you out. This is annoying in 2 parts though: 1.) I was never even looking for web hosting to begin with, so stop soliciting me. 2.) Those web host comparison sites are always a scam. It’s been proven that the majority of the web hosting top 10 list websites give out their spots on the list based on either the amount of money you pay for the listing fee, or how much you pay to be an “affiliate”. Base your web hosting reviews on human experience.

And there you have it. A short list of some of the worst things you can encounter on Twitter. Got your own to add? Post a comment or contact me.