They recognised me!

Hugh MacLeod

Actually they didn’t, but I heard someone say this. They were so surprised that they were stopped on the street when recognised by a complete stranger (stalker).

Is that what we’re looking for?

Plastering our happy face all over the web, so someone will walk up to us and say; ‘Hey, aren’t you the girl/guy who talks rubbish on YouTube?’

Surely not? Surely yes!

Most of us on Social would love to achieve that recognition at some level. It’s an endorsement of all the hard work you’ve been putting in day in and day out, just so that a random person somewhere points at you (I’d be quite scared actually) and shouts out to you that they actually know you. And of course they have no idea who you are, all they’ve seen is an alter ego of you on the web, very likely talking complete non-sense.

Happy spotting!

Michael de Groot

Are you lonely?

Hugh MacLeod

Because filling ourselves up with followers makes us feel less lonely, right?

When Social Media first lifted it’s ugly head (we didn’t think so at the time) we followed as many folks as we could on Twitter, because it was almost a dead-cert that they would follow you back and they did, stupidly!

There was an unspoken etiquette. I follow you and you follow me back, we didn’t have to ask for it, most of us just did it. Fast forward to 2018 and whenever we now follow someone on Twitter, we definitely do not get a follow back.

Then when we realised it was all going pear shaped, we didn’t follow people back and they didn’t follow us back, our follower and following tally became out of sync. Twitter limited our ability to follow, I think the number was more than 2000 twits, it then blocked us from following anymore until we ourselves got some followers back. To get the whole thing into balance.

The etiquette no longer exists, everyone is out for themselves and we want our stuff to be seen, never mind about the people we follow, we’re not even bothering to look at them.

The sad state of my Twitter

It doesn’t matter the other way around. You can have hundreds of thousands of followers and you don’t have to follow any of them back. Roll on the celebrity in that case.

Twitter has become the home of celebrities who need social proof that they are loved and even compare the amount of followers they have with each other, like a real-time popularity contest. I’ve even heard Simon Cowell talk about this with his judging team on Britain’s Got Talent.

Happy tweeting!

Michael de Groot