twitter fail blog

Twitter has this function you can enable so people can follow you if they know your email address. Sounds pretty good on the surface: all your friends have your email address, so it’s an awesome way for them to find you. Except, if they’re really your friends, aren’t you already following each other? Unless you do things the old-fashioned way and have actual real-life conversations. That’s just silly. With email, and IM, and chat, who has time to actually talk anymore? In our sound byte driven world, are there still people who have something so important to say that they need more than 140 characters? Look at this drivel. Clear proof that lots of words don’t equal interesting.

We’re actually going somewhere with this.

Every now and then, twitter sends us a snotty email like this:

Translation:  Here’s someone who would like to follow you so you’ll follow them back, but they can’t find you because you just can’t be bothered to click one little box. Instead, every time your email address shows up in someone else’s contacts, we have to send you notifications like this. Good God Girl, can’t you just play along??

We don’t know this guy. Never met him. Exchanged emails once, about a client’s domain. Like 3 years ago. Since then, he’s sent us invitations to connect on other social media, so it was only a matter of time before he tried to find us here.

Because we’re in his contact list, like probably everyone else he has ever exchanged emails with, twitter thinks we should be friends. We follow plenty of people we don’t know, though, so let’s take a look.

Zero tweets? Pretty interesting so far. And a business, not a person? Even better. If we follow, we’re guaranteed to get a bunch of ads. Really tempting.

You gotta admit one thing, though, “Boomerang Lending” has got to be the worst name for a loan company, ever. Correct us if we’re wrong, but isn’t that what the Nigerian scammers are doing? Sending you money and then snatching it right back?

(Disclaimer: We have no proof that this person is a scammer or affiliated with Nigerians in any way. Our attorney would bitch if we didn’t say that.)

Took a look at their website. Apparently, they are some sort of pawn shop. We enjoy watching Pawn Stars, and are amazed at what a big jerk that guy and his daughter are on the other pawn shop show, but they’re on tv, not in our timeline. Other than the little chuckle we get from their name, Boomerang has very little entertainment value.

This is exactly the reason we don’t click the little box. Other people we don’t want to talk to, or be talked at by, have our email address. Like spammers, for instance. And the guy who threatened to sue us because he didn’t like our jokes. (Ergo: the disclaimer.) But especially spammers.

Since having tons of followers doesn’t mean anyone is actually listening, and the conversations we have with real people, and the penpal relationships we’ve developed help us feel connected to the rest of the world, we’re going to tell Dan “Boomerang” no thanks. In fact, we’re going to go ahead and block him now to save ourselves the trouble later.

PS: Yes, we have another twitter account. It’s linked to another blog of ours. You could go over there, read a couple of posts, and then say something nice. It would make your mama proud.