It doesn’t hurt to go through the list of people you’re following every now and then, to see who is still worth it, and who is wasting your attention. We’re reminded of this policy when we notice that people we initially followed because we thought they might be interesting, turn into social media douche-canoes.

Example of social media douche-canoe activity: Filling their timeline with ads. Sometimes, you don’t realize they’re doing it, until you innocently click a link to what you think might be an interesting story, and you get directed to somewhere completely different.

Like this:

Every one of the short urls in this timeline goes a product he’s selling. After clicking on one, we remembered why we like the “short url preview” feature. It saves a lot of aggravation – hover over a short url, and it shows you the real destination. We won’t fall for that trick again. (Disclaimer: We don’t know him. He may be a nice guy, but we really hate bait and switch tactics. That’s not very social.)

And, another thing: The words “internet marketer,” “social media marketer,” and other such terms make us cringe. They’re titles often latched onto by people who are selling you a system to make you look more popular on social media, or automate your online marketing, which they guarantee will get you first page ranking for any keywords you want, or some other “make money by giving me yours” program that usually has an affiliate program attached so that other people will do their marketing for them.

Here’s the news: Social media works by making connections, and having conversations with others. Automate your social media, and you miss the whole point. And, nobody can guarantee you first page ranking for any keyword you want. Correct that.. they can guarantee anything, they just can’t deliver. (Read what Google says about such guarantees: Scroll down to: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

We’re going to take the advice of @jackassletters and lighten our load. We’re going to look through our list and see who isn’t really social anymore. Following fewer people, and having fewer followers will help us keep the “social” in our twitter social media experience.

One time, a jillion years ago, FBH was toiling away on a pressing deadline by watching traffic go by outside her window. As a particularly dilapidated junker came into view, there was a loud PING! and then a CLUNK! followed by an amazing assortment of engine parts spewing onto the street below the vehicle, which thudded to a stop half a block away. It was awesome.

When bots go bad, they trail bits and bobs behind them, too. Like all these tweets:

What is “<![CDATA?” It’s code that indicates what follows is real text, and not computer code. When the program does things correctly, you don’t see “<![CDATA“, but you do see what comes next. Problem is, some bots are just not qualified for the job, and make a mess of things. When people depend on robots to post to their twitter stream, they run the risk of looking like the unsocial, auto-posting, misanthropic opportunists they really are. Not that we judge, or anything.

You probably think we hate this. Au contraire, mon frère! This is an awesome thing. When we see someone dropping code in our twitter stream, there’s no question about whether or not they’re a real person. We don’t have to wonder if they’re going to interact, or play well with others. Their bot can’t even finish a sentence, so there’s no chance they will ever show up to see what’s going on in their stream. Which would be a good idea, by the way. But that would mean they actually care.

These bot-driven twitter accounts make the decision to block them as easy as the slut at the corner bar who will sleep with any guy sporting a wedding band (Hi Marcia!). And unlike the slut, we have standards. We like to talk to real people. The kind who sometimes like to talk to us, as well. So we’ll block without a second thought, and let someone else deal with the mess.

Hello? Twitter? Clean up on aisle @amaznbargains, and @_EDconsulting, and @Iwilliam045… heck, just keep the mop out, this mess is everywhere.

We believe the main reason celebrities don’t follow real people, or read the @replies to them, is because they really don’t care what the “little” people have to say. Another reason has to be because they get too much of this:

Why would anyone turn down an offer of friendship like this?

It’s important to know right from the start what a new friend wants out of the relationship. Since our net worth is about .000000001% of @Oprah’s, we’ve never encountered such a ballsy grab at our pocketbook. Just in case this works, we’re going to stand in line behind @MizzBubiDee, so we can ask her for half.

And then there are all the people who want advice. Like celebs have all kinds of time on their hands and are waiting around for people to ask for advice so they can dole it out like candy.

@VisionaryChick has taken harassing celebs for advice to a new level. After being turned down by @hughhefner,

she went on a campaign to get advice from an even bigger target.

Not that we’re saying she went overboard, but she tweeted @SnoopDogg 52 times in one day. Poor thing probably  doesn’t have any real friends, or an agent, or anyone she can trust. Much better to hit up total strangers to help her with what is obviously a life-altering decision.

No surprise, @SnoopDogg’s calendar was full. Undeterred, she’s moved on to her next target:

We wonder whether the “Major BB Star” is going to get wind of this. If so, how would he feel about having this person flapping her gums about the “close to working with” relationship? If we had someone who might work with us, who had to publicly hound total strangers for advice on the internet, we’d probably re-think that contract.

In case you think we inadvertently said something in defense of celebrities, we apologize for your confusion. It will never happen again.

…there is only follow and not follow. Even so, there are people who just can’t make up their mind.

When both Thubten Comerford and Chris Husong followed us again, we thought we’d check and see who else couldn’t commit to following us full-time. We found lots of two-timers, hat tricks, quartets and quintuples (okay, what would you call them??) so we thought we’d just give you a lineup of the ones who are the most prolific in the follow/unfollow/refollow game.

@ericleebow starts off our list with 7 follows, and is joined by @mcfixit:

Slightly more ambitious: @BstTwt, and @pattishock have each followed us 8 times. Perhaps decision-making isn’t their strong suit.

The highest achievement award for #followerwhoring goes to @SteveKayser, who makes all the other contenders look like slackers by following us a total of 15 times.

Why would people waste their time following and unfollowing so much? Don’t be silly, they aren’t doing it themselves. They have a bot doing the heavy lifting for them. If you check the twitter page of each of these users, you’ll see they either follow and are followed by a ton of people, or have lots more followers than they are following. The use the bot to follow people just so they can grow their follower numbers when those people auto-follow them back. And when people don’t follow them, they unfollow and move on to the next sucker. But these bots are pretty stupid, like some people we know (Hi Marcia!), so they end up following a bunch of people again and again because they can’t remember where they’ve been.

This is a popular activity for “social media experts/strategists/mavericks/consultants/marketer/gurus” because big numbers of followers gives the appearance of influence and authority to people who don’t know any better.

It’s much easier for these posers to use a robot to get mindless followers who don’t care what they have to say than to suffer under the weight of actually being interesting and providing valuable content. The end result is no different than whispering to a packed auditorium. A few people may hear what you have to say. The rest won’t even notice you’re on the stage.

Send in the Twitter Fail Bird! Tell them you saw them on Twitter Fail

You know what’s awesome about social media? Anyone with a computer can use it to talk to just about anyone else in the world. You know what sucks about social media? Anyone with a computer can use it to try to talk to you, whether you want to talk to them or not. On the one hand, you can communicate with family and friends without having to talk to them face-to-face ever again, and on the other, you have tons of spammers and bots (often the same thing) pretending to be your friend just so they can grab your attention and suck money out of you. Kind of like that bitch ex-girlfriend (Hi Marcia!) who dumped you on Valentine’s day, right after the dinner and drinks.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of experts to help you navigate the confusing world of connections and recommendations, hashtags and retweets. With very little effort, you can join their ranks, and take advantage of unfairly influence help yourself to loads of cash from help clueless n00bs who are trying to figure it all out.

1. Create a twitter profile. Make sure to use at least one of the following terms in your bio:
   • Social media expert
   • Social media guru
   • Social media strategist
   • Social media maverick
   • Social media rockstar
   • Social media wizard
   • Really, just about anything, as long as it starts with “Social Media”

   

2. Upload a photo of you looking all guru-y.
   
3. Set up a bot to follow a bunch of people, unfollow the ones who aren’t following you, and then follow a bunch more. Rinse, repeat.
4. Set up a bot to follow rss feeds about social media, and tweet the links to your timeline so you never have to actually do anything social, like interact with other people.
5. Make fun of all the people who just don’t get social media.
   Wait. That may be just us.

Okay, there you have it,   5   4 easy steps to social media stardom.

Disclaimer: The people mentioned here may or may not be social media gurus. They may or may not have used any of the techniques mentioned. What do we know? We thought gurus all lived on mountaintops and knew the answers to life, the universe and everything (and that it really isn’t really 42), so we’re not exactly sure what a social media guru really is.

If you’re a social media guru, tell us what that means in the comments.

Or, make fun of our cluelessness on twitter: @tweet_fail