twitter fail blog

We’re gathered together here today, brothers and sisters, to talk about a cancer that’s spreading through our community. Yea, the good book says that the world’s first television advertisement was broadcast July 1, 1941, and the evil advertisers have been finding ways to steal little bits of our time and attention ever since.

Each piece we lose seems so small, so inconsequential, and that indifference helps them chip away at our freedom to control what we see. “Oh, but it’s just a minute,” you might say. That’s one minute you will never get back. One minute that could be spent voting for a LOLcat or talking like a pirate. One minute when a piece of joy is lost forever.

It started innocently enough. One person recommended a product he liked. And their friends thanked them for the recommendation.

Then the evil advertisers, caring not for your love or friendship, decided to twist an innocent retweet to his selfish advantage. And others followed. Now, what do we have today? We have advertisers running rampant on twitter, pretending to care about you. Evil advertisers who set up keyword searches so they can spam you every time you mention something even remotely similar to the product he’s selling. He’ll make it sound all nice and helpful. But what does he really want? To steal your attention. To steal your time. To sell you something. And, by doing so, he reduces the total joy on twitter. For this, we all suffer.

The advertisers are known by many names. They may look and sound like the guy next door. But don’t be fooled, because they are not here to here to help. No, they are not here to give, they are here to take. So, although it’s hard, you need to take a good look at what an advertiser looks like, so you can arm yourself for the future. Our future.

We must stand up now for all that is right and good on twitter and tell these advertisers that it’s time to go packing! If they approach you, send a DM to @spam, and stop these evildoers in their tracks. We must take back the stream before life on twitter as we know it becomes a cesspool of misused trending topics and hashtags.

Do I hear a “Hell Yes?”

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell @RobSalzman you saw him on Twitter Fail