The 7 Twitter Personalities

TwitBird

If you’ve never had a Twitter account, good on you.

If you’ve currently got an open Twitter account, I’m sorry. I really am. Let’s hug it out.

A few weeks ago, we gave you the Top 7 Facebook Personalities. We thought it was funny, yet entirely true.

But Twitter’s a different monster entirely.

Don’t believe me? Just sample my Twitter feed here.  140 characters changes a person into something…unknowable.

The 7 Prime Twitter Personalities

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UnIronic Tweeter The Un-Ironic Tweeter – If there’s a such thing as normal on Twitter, this is probably it. The Un-Ironic Tweeter doesn’t try to annoy, inundate, or advertise. She’s probably just a normal gal with a few interesting things to say. Such as, “Doing laundry and look, the dog crapped in the basket,” or “Yay. Husband left me…again.” I’m mostly kidding. I’m 99% sure most of this archetype are good people. They say genuine things, are polite and generally engaging. My only trouble is that most people go to Twitter looking for at least a little bit of trouble (or money.) You say you want to be completely reasonable, honest, and not try to sell me shit? I believe the highway you’re looking for is called Facebook. It’s a few exits back.

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The RetweeterThe ReTweeter – Everyone loves this person. And I mean…everyone. Just try and say something bad about them. It’s hard, right? You pour your soul into a perfect 140-character Tweet detailing the horrors of ebola-infected chipmunks, and ReTweeters click a button and spread the word, epidemic-like, across the globe. Sure, they don’t create anything themselves. And no, they probably didn’t follow your link or give two shits about you as a person. Who cares? You RT for them, they RT for you, and the whole fucking world is happy. I hate happy endings. 😐

Starving Artist The Starving Artist – I’m guilty as charged. My bad. Literally 80% of my followers are this archetype. They’re definitely starving, though as for the artist part, I’m not so sure. With the boom in self-publishing and printed art outlets, the Twitterverse has erupted with painters, sketchers, and writers. In a matter of a few years, my competition went from other published authors to every human being in the entire fucking universe. Anymore, it’s rarer for someone not to have published something. But seriously. Most of the Starving Artist Twitter crowd are good people. Talent or no, they’re genuine. But I would like to schedule a class called ‘When Tweeting About Your Book, Shitty Grammar and Clunky Blurbs will Annihilate Your Writing Career.

 

The ReQuoter The Re-Quoter – Yeah. This guy. The one who Tweets about the soulfulness of writing, the drowning emotional awesomeness of reading, and the spiritual connectedness of ejaculating paint onto paper. But that’s not really the trouble. It’s the memes, the #AmWritings, and the quotes…the damn quotes. Yes, I know what Stephen King said. Something like, “If you do shit, other shit will happen. And if you don’t do shit, no shit will happen.” You know what I’m talking about: Picture of celebrity + quote that celebrity may or may not have actually said = half your Twitter feed. Also, some Re-Quoters like to regurgitate boring quotes about life and love. Shit-tons of quotes. Things like, “My life will never be complete without you,” or “Someday you’ll come back for your toothbrush…and my vagina will be waiting.” I’m convinced most of these secondary type of Re-Quotes are bots, but it’s hard to tell. Hopefully it’ll all soon die. But if it doesn’t, the world needs to end.

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Anchor The News Anchor – I’m fine with this type of Twitter archetype. Mostly. Although he’ll never post anything original or creative, at least you’ll be informed the very instant a celebrity dies, a politician farts, or King Jong Un is spotted picking his nose. I’m kidding. Sort of. At least the sources the News Anchor links to are completely legit all the time. Aren’t they??

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The SpammerThe Spammer – This Twitter dweller probably isn’t even human. Or if it is, it’s 150 humans living in a Bangladesh hut (with better wifi than anyone.) If you’ve been on Twitter for longer than 30 seconds, you’ve rubbed elbows with a Spammer. Yep. The sexy girl pitching how you can increase your Twitter followers by 7 million. The smiling dude flooding your feed with bit.ly links leading to crappy click-bait lists. The douchey lists with names like ‘The 7 Twitter Personalities.’  Wait…what?

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The pRon star The Porn Starlet – Unlike Facebook, Twitter isn’t really regulated.  Meaning if your five year-old son types in ‘boobies,’ he’ll get flooded with hundreds of images of girls getting Kool-Whipped in the chest region. Being a guy, if I scan my new followers on a daily basis, I find that at least a third of them are naked women. Some just want more followers. Others offer ‘no credit card needed’ links to…you guessed it…sites that use your credit card to let you watch cam girls impale themselves on cucumbers and farm equipment. I suppose it’s harmless. I mean, nuthin’ wrong with half my Twitter feed being teenage girls bending themselves into positions I didn’t know were possible. Nuthin’ at all. Right? See you tonight, Sasha.

Runners-Up

The Uni-Linker (Posts the same one link over and over again. Forever)

The DM’er (Doesn’t know that no one reads direct messages)

The Hashtagger (#Hashtags #Every #Goddamn #Word)

 The Unfollower (Follow them back within a half hour, or else…)

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 Next week on Tessera Guild: Stalking Women on Instagram.

In the meantime, check out the only book you’ll ever want to put on your coffee table.

J Edward Neill