The Might of a Little Blue Bird [or, Twitter is Awesome - Use It's Power]

Twitter can be an amazing thing. 
I can prove it. I recently (somehow) convinced my mom to get on Twitter. She follows some local news, some football accounts, me and the Mister, and maybe some cute animal accounts. Information at her fingertips, on a curated level.
That's amazing, right?

But, past that, it's even amazing-er. 
Well, not in itself, but in what it shows about people - and what you can do with that information.

One, that people are friggin' weird. They will go on and on and on about something and argue and bicker and, ugh. It's funny to watch, and then I realize "wow, I'm way too interested in this internet argument that means nothing.

Two, that people really do feel anonymous online. They can say some nasty things (see point one above!) but they can also say the weirdest things as well.

Three, a lot of people spend time trying to be positive. There are a few accounts I follow that are just positivity accounts, randomly posting things to make you feel better. The people running these accounts get nothing from it, other than trying to make others feel better! I recommend Positive Sailor Moon and Positive Plant.

Four, there are a ton of cute animal accounts. You thought there were tons of accounts on Instagram for dogs and cats and all that? Yeah, it's the same on Twitter. Every once in a while there will be a repeated image (and I follow more than a few of these accounts), but some are quite adorable. Okay, most.

Five, people are obnoxious. Plain and simple.

One thing, though, that is magical about Twitter?
The mute and block features. But also report for spam - that one comes in handy, too. But, really, mute and block are amazing.
Those cute animal accounts I mentioned earlier? They have a bad habit of spam-like retweeting of random accounts (there has been Grey's Anatomy, something about colleges, some other TV shows and random things...I dunno all of them, but there has been a lot). All of which are things I'm not interested in. At all. I'm interested in little dogs and hedgehogs and kitties and, well, any other animal. And none of the extra stuff spewing from the accounts (like those retweets). So, going through and muting all those retweeted accounts? Yeah, it feels good. And it makes my feed more of things I actually want to be seeing.

When Star Wars Episode 7 came out, I muted "star wars" and "#starwars" and managed to get about a week without spoilers - it was bound to happen anyway, and I should have actually muted more than that, but it did take out the brunt of content. While I would have loved to see more reactions to the movie, I saw more than plenty with those things muted (though, all of it was positive, so that was good!).

And then there's fellow bloggers. Some bloggers tend to get attached to ad campaigns (there's one with Poise that I've been seeing floating around for months now!), and either they tweet about it a lot or retweet other people tweeting about it a lot, and at least once a day I'm seeing something about Poise. Kind of obnoxious. Lately, though, there's been another one. The tweets all go something like this "dealing with LBL? Dunno what that is? Click here! [link here] #ad [or] #sponsored" and, while I'm curious what the heck "LBL" is, I'm not clicking that damn link. It's an ad. And a very badly formed ad campaign, at that - clickbait works, sure, but the less we click the bait, the less it'll be used, and the Internet can go back to a time when there isn't "one magic trick" or a list of 20 things, and you "won't believe number 14!" or all that nonsense. Sorry, rant over! Back on subject - I blocked that darned "LBL" phrase. No more tweets about it! No more small fits of rage every time it shows up on my feed!

And then, some people just have a bad attitude online. And after following them for a while, and seeing more and more bad attitude, I unfollow. I don't need that in my life - I'm more than negative enough for myself, thank you, I don't need anyone else adding to it!

If doing things like this "hurts my numbers" on Twitter, I'm alright with that. I would rather see a stream of awesome things, versus more darned Poise ads.
Plus, really, the best things I find on Twitter (besides cute puppies)? Tabletop RPG players and webcomic artists. They're always up to something fun. The subject matter is just about totally unrelated to this space, but you can bet I follow the heck out of those people and accounts. Because they post regularly, they post interesting things, and they are some super nice people. Plus, something that I am personally interested in and what to be involved in.
All the accounts just trying to promote a hashtag because they are paid to do so? That just gets boring. Sorry, bloggers.

Though, really, that's kind of the beauty of Twitter - you can use it to see whatever you want to see, from whatever niche you want to follow, whatever world you want to be a part of.
That's pretty cool, right?

~Havok