Oh Qwitter! Follow Me, Don't Follow Me!

It's been gnawing at me for a few days now.  I get what Twitter is all about.  It's a cool, simple and often fun way to check into the thoughts of people you find interesting.  The trouble is, I'm often not that interesting.  Now, I don't know about you.  Maybe you're always interesting.  Maybe soon as you wake up and brush your teeth, or whatever you do, interesting and witty observations about topics of supreme relevancy just come to you.  That doesn't happen to me.  I'm usually making cream cheese toast (sans crust) or lying on the floor encouraging my daughter to roll.  My wife may ask, "didn't you make coffee?"  And I'll say something like, "no, do you think I should Tweet that?"  And she'll say something like, "No, how about Tweet this!"  And then she'll do something with her finger that I'm pretty sure you can conjure up a workable image.

But I feel compelled to "Tweet" because I have followers.  Don't ask me how I got them because I'm not that interesting.  But I do my best to Tweet things people will find interesting (or at least not boring/obnoxious).   The idea of somebody following you one day, then not following you (or unfollowing you) the next, to me is akin to them saying--"well, I no longer believe you're going to say anything interesting ever again."  So when somebody "unfollows" me on Twitter, I can't help but take it personally.  I mean it's not a professional rejection.  I don't get paid to Tweet.  Perhaps my personality doesn't translate well into 140 characters.  Maybe I don't really care.  I mean, if I stopped Tweeting tomorrow, I doubt a rift would form in the space time continuum.   But were I to attempt to stop my cream cheese toast making obligation, well I assure you, time and space would shift in dramatic, near awe-inspiring ways (at least inside my house).

Still, why does it hurt so when I'm "unfollowed"?

Why should I care that somebody quit on me?  Thanks to Qwitter, you can now find out the who and even when somebody stopped caring about you.  It's a good chance that person was a spammer whose account had been shuttered by the folks at Twitter.  But I've had the unpleasant occasion of attempting to direct messaging somebody who was following me and I them, but received instead a message explaining that I couldn't message that person because the 'insert username of cad who unfollowed me here' isn't following me anymore.  That bitter sting of rejection was a cold reminder that even anonymous "friends", whom I haven't spoken with in person for over twenty-years, can hurt your feelings if you're too sensitive about such nonsense.  Which I admit to being.  As a resolve, I must thicken my skin.  So I say: follow me or don't follow me.  Sorry, R.E.M., but I still don't get what 'I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush' means.


Words into action:
Follow me on Twitter here.
Don't follow me on Twitter here.

Bottom line is that Twitter is here to stay and I'm going to use it gosh dangit, even if my only followers are wondering where their cream cheese toast is at.

What's your take on the Twitter Following/Unfollowing phenomenon?  Comments wanted.