Unlike many people who use Twitter, I am very picky about who follows my tweets. Yes, this is mostly because I have nothing else to do. But it is also because I can’t stand getting replies from st00p1d people.
Most of these “people” are, of course, bots. These are the automated programs created by former and current nun rapists and baby abusers to spam Twitter accounts with advertisements, porn links, political screeds and other varieties of Waste My Time. There are millions of bots with Twitter accounts, and if you’re not as dedicated as I am to blocking them, you will find you soon have a couple hundred followers with nonsense names who are only interested in telling you about a new celebrity blowjob movie or fake antivirus program they “found.”
Most of these “people” are, of course, bots. These are the automated programs created by former and current nun rapists and baby abusers to spam Twitter accounts with advertisements, porn links, political screeds and other varieties of Waste My Time. There are millions of bots with Twitter accounts, and if you’re not as dedicated as I am to blocking them, you will find you soon have a couple hundred followers with nonsense names who are only interested in telling you about a new celebrity blowjob movie or fake antivirus program they “found.”
It's hard sorting through your follower list, deciding who to block. This is why most people don’t do it. If you happen to be one of these people who thinks tending your follower list is too much trouble, I’m proud to say I can lend you a hand. See, I’ve come up with a list of 14 things a particular Twitter account can be and / or do that fully justifies banning it. I’ve based this list on the behavior of bots, so you can be sure that if you adhere to it, you’ll successfully block all the bots. It will also help you block the real people who act like bots, or might just as fucking well.
I predict that if you stick to this list with as much dedication as I do, your Twitter experience will be significantly less st00p1d. You’re welcome in advance.
Now to the list. I will block your Twitter account if you are or do any of the following:
1. Have an unpronounceable name AND have a name followed by a bunch of numbers (probably a bot).
Yes, some non-robotic people might actually have a Twitter account that looks like one of these. Let’s say your parents immigrated to America from Backwardsassistan, and your last name is “Hwixxhwillw.” And because your 150 cousins got on Twitter first, you’re forced to become Hwixxhwillw_151.
But if this is you, Mr. or Mrs. or Dr. Hwixxhwillw, I’d like to point two things out to you. First of all, your name looks an awful lot like a bunch of random letters generated by an automated spam bot creating 200,000 new Twitter accounts at once through which to tell the world about the latest fake Britney Spears sex tape. For your own sake, Mr. or Mrs. or Dr. Hwixxhwillw, please be web savvy enough to make up another name for Twitter so you aren’t mistaken for the lowest cyberscum and get lost in the blocking.
Second of all, and this is very important, THERE IS NO FUCKING LAW THAT SAYS YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR GODDAMN NOT-UNIQUE LAST NAME AS YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT. There was also no law saying this about AOL screen names, there is no law saying this about Gmail accounts or Yahoo! mail addresses, and there will NEVER BE a law saying this about anything as long as the Internet exists. No one cares what your fucking name is, and the people who do are the people you really don’t want having access to your name. Come up with another name. Around these parts we call that “coming up with another goddamn name,” and if you haven’t figured it out yet, almost all of us have done this at least once. Mine happens to be TheBluesader.
Yes, I know. You probably thought until this very moment that TheBluesader was my given name. But it isn’t. You stupid pile of out-of-touch retard.
And I can already hear the argument: “But this Twitter account is for work! I HAVE to use my real name!” To which I respond: “Oh, so it’s a corporate Twitter account? Well, isn’t that just – BLOCK.”
2. Tweet nothing but URLs (probably a bot).
This is all bots tweet. Know who else tweets nothing but links to websites I probably already know exist, or didn’t want to know existed? Idiots. And not the pitiable, adorable kind of idiot like the person you married. I’m talking about internet idiots, the sort of people who forced Verizon to jack up my bills so they could pay Cisco to invent fiber optics and 3G, because the idiots couldn’t be bothered to learn how to turn bitmaps into jpegs before sending them to Grandma’s inbox. And if there’s one thing I hate more than bots who intentionally fuck up the Internet, it’s morons – like your wife – who unintentionally fuck up the Internet because they can’t be bothered to think about what the hell they’re doing.
Dear pud-brains: I know how to use YouTube. And I’ve seen LOLcats. And the various 4chan image databases. If I want to see examples of “Internets humor,” I can find them myself. And because I’m TheBluesader, Junior God of the Internet, I have probably already found whatever you’re looking at now, and like ten years ago when it first appeared on /b/. I really don’t need another link to Goatse. Tweet original insights, or don’t tweet at all.
And by the way, I consider scanned images from Silver Age Batman original insights. Link to as many of them as you want. Because they are NEVER not funny anymore.
Ask the people who follow me. They know.
3. Use a stock picture of a model as your avatar AND use the generic “no photo uploaded” Twitter picture as your avatar (probably a bot).
Bots are too busy making with the spam to Photoshop an original picture for their avatar. Everyone else should have at least five minutes to crop and post a picture of their cat or something, for god’s sake. EVERYONE. If you are too busy to condense, format and post an original, personal picture of some kind to Twitter, you are officially too busy to tweet 140 characters.
And not having Photoshop or an equivalent program is no excuse. Windows still comes with MSPaint, motherfucker – use it.
4. Be a corporate account (acts like a bot).
Bots shill. That’s why they exist. Human beings, however, do not exist primarily to shill. I know, I know, that’s not what they told you during the last company retreat. But your inability to not be a robot with genitals is not my problem. If you want me to buy your product, stock it in a store or sell it through Amazon like all the other grownups. I get one whiff of advertiser wank from one of your tweets, and you’re not allowed to target me after I tweet key words anymore.
5. Be a self-help person I’ve never heard of (might as well be a bot).
You say you’re a paradigm-setting, charismatic self-starter who has spent the last eleven years happily helping your fellow citizens of Planet Earth navigate the highs and lows of this wild and wacky thing we call life?
Well, you must royally suck at it, because I’ve never heard of you before. Nor have I seen your goateed, square head on the front of that 600 page, hardcover Cosmo advice column reprint collection you’re trying to pass off as The Bible 2.0. If you were really revolutionizing life itself, I’m pretty sure Oprah would have mentioned you at least once. As it is, I’m pretty sure you’re just an overdressed douchebag desperately trying to figure out how to make a living out of that philosophy / communications double major. And I need advice from worthless nobodies like you like I need bot shill.
You’re not Dr. Phil. You’re not Steve Wilkos. And you probably never will be, no matter how many fat people you talk through sexual problems, no matter how many deadbeat fathers you won’t let sit on your stage. Leave helping stupids to the guys who make it informative and entertaining, stop pretending you’ve somehow gained worldly wisdom by 35, and finally take that well-paying accounting job so your girlfriend doesn't have to keep rescuing burgers from the trash to bring home for the kids. And most of all, stop polluting Twitter with random Sufi verses and out-of-context Carl Sagan quotes. Anyone who has ever told you that that kind of bullshit transformed their lives was either lying to make you feel good because they pity you, or being a prick for the lulz.
6. Be a business advice person.
Most of what I just said for #5 goes for this one, too. If you were really some great corporate advisor, I have to believe you’d have a better way to hawk your skills than by spamming a thousand unsuspecting strangers on Twitter.
Just to be sure I don’t accidentally follow some of your half-assed advice and lose my life savings, I think I’ll just be safe and go ahead and BLOCK YOUR ASS.
7. Follow more than 150 people AND be followed by more than 1,000 people, and not be some kind of celebrity (which means you’re probably reaching out to me from deep within the Bot Zone).
It makes sense that real world celebrities would have thousands or even millions of followers. A lot of people know who they are, and part of the fun of Twitter is that it gives you a live digital connection to people you’d otherwise have no contact with. It also makes sense that many celebrities might follow a couple hundred people, because often times their business is probably one in which knowing people and getting up-to-the-second information from them is pretty important.
But if you’re not a celebrity, that probably means you DON’T have millions of people wanting to talk to you, and you DON’T know hundreds of people with interesting things to say. Which means that you’re only following people and being followed as a result of key word searches. And this is by far the lowest form of making Twitter contacts, because this is exactly how spam bots find new victims.
It is also very hard for me to believe that any one person spends the enormous amount of time required to click “follow” more than a couple of hundred times. The only reason anyone would dedicate this much time to Twitter is if they were getting paid to do it, which means they manage a corporate account, which I will block because of that on it's own. Otherwise it’s obvious the account in question is a bot, programmed to follow anyone who has ever tweeted the word “penis” in any context.
I guess it’s possible that someone might be such a fantastic people person that they really do know more than 200 people and care what they have to say. And it’s possible that a person like this may in fact be acquainted with more than 1,000 people who likewise care enough to follow them. But you know what? Either way, I don’t know anybody like that, and therefore don’t care to follow them, or have them following me. Not that I specifically don’t want them reading the awesome things I say. I just don’t care that I’ve accidentally blocked them during my weekly st00p1ds-blocking.
Basically, if you’re such a social butterfly that I’m forced to suspect your brain may be a flash drive, meet the Block Hammer, Probable Robot.
8. Tweet nothing but religious fundamentalist garbage.
There’s no reason to go into much detail about this one. If I don’t care enough about your love of Jewish Zeus to talk to you in real life, I’m not going to give you the opportunity to read my tweets and spam me with whining when I inevitably offend you. No, I don’t care to hear an opinion different from my own, when that opinion has been out-of-date since before the invention of pants.
The only reason we still have churches and allow them their tax-exempt status is so you weirdos will keep to yourselves and leave the rest of us alone. So be quiet and get back to your barns. The last thing we need is you getting under our feet as we’re inventing the drugs and food additives that will sustain you your next ten years of pretending your cancer went away because Jesus Thor killed the Cancer Demons with his invisible lightning hammer.
9. Your Tweets clearly show that you have only the most basic understanding of the English language (even bots can spam clearly).
Yes, even bots can spam in basic, legible English. That’s because even the pedophiles who program them are coherent enough to know that when you only have 140 characters through which to make your point, you’d better make it easy to read.
If English isn’t your first language, that’s okay. But don’t try tweeting in your second language until you’re fluent enough to make a clear point quickly. I don’t need you clogging up my daily tweets with counterpoints to things I’ve said that read like cheap anime subtitles. If I don’t have a chance to respond to you because you don’t make any sense, I don’t care what you have to say to begin with.
And to those of you who speak English as a first language but can’t seem to make yourself understood through Twitter: go back to elementary school, pile. It’s 140 characters. Failing Twitter is like failing bumper stickers.
10. Represent a racist organization (bots aren’t this low).
See #8. With the added caveat that, were it up to me, these morons and their angry stupidity would not be protected as free speech under the Constitution. Oh, and that if I ever meet you people in public, I will go out of my way to TOTALLY RUIN YOUR STUPID SHIT.
Seriously. Porn bots are a step above you people.
11. Represent some group of nonsense-believing cranks (UFO people, fake Lunar landing people, ghost people, Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster people, antivaxers, Conservative Republicans, hippies, Mormons, Scientologists, etc.). (At least bots spam about things that actually exist.)
See #8 again. Unlike #10, nonsense tweeters don’t make me angry, they just clutter up my daily tweets with what amounts to digital static. I even pity most of them for being so confused. But that said, I have no interest in anything they think, and prefer they stay as far away from anything I’m doing as I can block them.
12. Not Tweet for more than three months (at least the bots pretend to make daily conversation).
This takes us back to the point I made at #3. It’s 140 goddamn characters, people. If you’re too busy to post something at least once every few months, you’re too busy for the Internet. And nothing is more obnoxious than having somebody reply to a tweet I made two months ago. I average about 10 tweets a day. I’ve probably forgotten what I’ve posted about an hour after I’ve posted it. If you're too busy to invest even a few minutes every couple of days to keep current, what the fuck are you doing on Twitter?
13. Tweet anything that has to do with porn that isn’t the simple love of a lonely fan.
Porn love, and a link made in the spirit of porn love, is great. Spam links to malware-infected sites are the reason bots get blocked. Be the first and we can be friends. Be the second, or look like it, and you can eat BLOCK.
14. Be a corporate CEO (I’d rather talk to the bots, thanks).
The only creature that spouts more shill than a bot is the guy who signs the checks of the dickless cannibal who programmed the bot. It’s one thing when a soulless computer program sends me advertising links like it thinks I’m stupid enough to click them: it was made to do this. It has no choice. But when a flesh and blood person, who makes $20 million a year, decides to treat me this way, I not only make a point to not care about his company, but I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know that his company's products are filled with puppy-raping lead.
I have enough people with money talking down to me on a daily basis in real life. I’ll be damned if I put up with it on the Internet. Bend over and get BLOCKED, you slimy sack of st00p1d.
Most of what I just said for #5 goes for this one, too. If you were really some great corporate advisor, I have to believe you’d have a better way to hawk your skills than by spamming a thousand unsuspecting strangers on Twitter.
Just to be sure I don’t accidentally follow some of your half-assed advice and lose my life savings, I think I’ll just be safe and go ahead and BLOCK YOUR ASS.
7. Follow more than 150 people AND be followed by more than 1,000 people, and not be some kind of celebrity (which means you’re probably reaching out to me from deep within the Bot Zone).
It makes sense that real world celebrities would have thousands or even millions of followers. A lot of people know who they are, and part of the fun of Twitter is that it gives you a live digital connection to people you’d otherwise have no contact with. It also makes sense that many celebrities might follow a couple hundred people, because often times their business is probably one in which knowing people and getting up-to-the-second information from them is pretty important.
But if you’re not a celebrity, that probably means you DON’T have millions of people wanting to talk to you, and you DON’T know hundreds of people with interesting things to say. Which means that you’re only following people and being followed as a result of key word searches. And this is by far the lowest form of making Twitter contacts, because this is exactly how spam bots find new victims.
It is also very hard for me to believe that any one person spends the enormous amount of time required to click “follow” more than a couple of hundred times. The only reason anyone would dedicate this much time to Twitter is if they were getting paid to do it, which means they manage a corporate account, which I will block because of that on it's own. Otherwise it’s obvious the account in question is a bot, programmed to follow anyone who has ever tweeted the word “penis” in any context.
I guess it’s possible that someone might be such a fantastic people person that they really do know more than 200 people and care what they have to say. And it’s possible that a person like this may in fact be acquainted with more than 1,000 people who likewise care enough to follow them. But you know what? Either way, I don’t know anybody like that, and therefore don’t care to follow them, or have them following me. Not that I specifically don’t want them reading the awesome things I say. I just don’t care that I’ve accidentally blocked them during my weekly st00p1ds-blocking.
Basically, if you’re such a social butterfly that I’m forced to suspect your brain may be a flash drive, meet the Block Hammer, Probable Robot.
8. Tweet nothing but religious fundamentalist garbage.
There’s no reason to go into much detail about this one. If I don’t care enough about your love of Jewish Zeus to talk to you in real life, I’m not going to give you the opportunity to read my tweets and spam me with whining when I inevitably offend you. No, I don’t care to hear an opinion different from my own, when that opinion has been out-of-date since before the invention of pants.
The only reason we still have churches and allow them their tax-exempt status is so you weirdos will keep to yourselves and leave the rest of us alone. So be quiet and get back to your barns. The last thing we need is you getting under our feet as we’re inventing the drugs and food additives that will sustain you your next ten years of pretending your cancer went away because Jesus Thor killed the Cancer Demons with his invisible lightning hammer.
9. Your Tweets clearly show that you have only the most basic understanding of the English language (even bots can spam clearly).
Yes, even bots can spam in basic, legible English. That’s because even the pedophiles who program them are coherent enough to know that when you only have 140 characters through which to make your point, you’d better make it easy to read.
If English isn’t your first language, that’s okay. But don’t try tweeting in your second language until you’re fluent enough to make a clear point quickly. I don’t need you clogging up my daily tweets with counterpoints to things I’ve said that read like cheap anime subtitles. If I don’t have a chance to respond to you because you don’t make any sense, I don’t care what you have to say to begin with.
And to those of you who speak English as a first language but can’t seem to make yourself understood through Twitter: go back to elementary school, pile. It’s 140 characters. Failing Twitter is like failing bumper stickers.
10. Represent a racist organization (bots aren’t this low).
See #8. With the added caveat that, were it up to me, these morons and their angry stupidity would not be protected as free speech under the Constitution. Oh, and that if I ever meet you people in public, I will go out of my way to TOTALLY RUIN YOUR STUPID SHIT.
Seriously. Porn bots are a step above you people.
11. Represent some group of nonsense-believing cranks (UFO people, fake Lunar landing people, ghost people, Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster people, antivaxers, Conservative Republicans, hippies, Mormons, Scientologists, etc.). (At least bots spam about things that actually exist.)
See #8 again. Unlike #10, nonsense tweeters don’t make me angry, they just clutter up my daily tweets with what amounts to digital static. I even pity most of them for being so confused. But that said, I have no interest in anything they think, and prefer they stay as far away from anything I’m doing as I can block them.
12. Not Tweet for more than three months (at least the bots pretend to make daily conversation).
This takes us back to the point I made at #3. It’s 140 goddamn characters, people. If you’re too busy to post something at least once every few months, you’re too busy for the Internet. And nothing is more obnoxious than having somebody reply to a tweet I made two months ago. I average about 10 tweets a day. I’ve probably forgotten what I’ve posted about an hour after I’ve posted it. If you're too busy to invest even a few minutes every couple of days to keep current, what the fuck are you doing on Twitter?
13. Tweet anything that has to do with porn that isn’t the simple love of a lonely fan.
Porn love, and a link made in the spirit of porn love, is great. Spam links to malware-infected sites are the reason bots get blocked. Be the first and we can be friends. Be the second, or look like it, and you can eat BLOCK.
14. Be a corporate CEO (I’d rather talk to the bots, thanks).
The only creature that spouts more shill than a bot is the guy who signs the checks of the dickless cannibal who programmed the bot. It’s one thing when a soulless computer program sends me advertising links like it thinks I’m stupid enough to click them: it was made to do this. It has no choice. But when a flesh and blood person, who makes $20 million a year, decides to treat me this way, I not only make a point to not care about his company, but I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know that his company's products are filled with puppy-raping lead.
I have enough people with money talking down to me on a daily basis in real life. I’ll be damned if I put up with it on the Internet. Bend over and get BLOCKED, you slimy sack of st00p1d.
Oh, Twitter.
ReplyDeleteTRULY YOU ARE THE BEST METAPHOR FOR OUR GENERATION: Pointless, illiterate, and in need of a good scourging before you're presentable.