He Can Blow Up My Phone Any Time

Hey, Friends.

So, remember a post or two back how I suddenly stumbled upon the fact that there are Twitter Analytics?  Yeah.  I'm still kind of amazed that it took me this long to realize it was there.  To be fair, I don't often use Twitter from my laptop.  Plus, it says to "click here to see your top tweets", and my tweets are generally pretty pathetic, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to ever click that thing.

As we've covered many times before, I don't have a lot of followers on any of my social media.  I don't really care, and I've yet to suss out how the hell I ever managed to get the ones that I do have.

Real talk, Friends: Most of the time Twitter is a socially acceptable way of talking to myself. No one is paying the slightest bit of attention to what I post.  I'm just throwing that shit out into the ether. I get so little interaction that I can have notifications turned on.  I'm lucky if I get a couple of "likes" a week.  If I post something I think is highly amusing/entertaining, I admit I will check to see how many "impressions" it got.  Anything more than 20 is amazing to me.  I'm not going to throw hashtags all over it to get more views.  (Unless it is for a blog post.  I will make exceptions for that. This may not seem like much to anyone else, but I actually put a lot of time and work into it, so I would like people to read it.)

Friends, you might be wondering why I was even interested in looking at the Twitter Analytics.  Good question.  I was wondering the same thing myself.  Did I really want to see it all spelled out for me how tiny a speck I am in the Twitterverse?  Yes, I kind of did.  I am a huge nerd.  Give me pretty graphs and numbers and let me ogle them! Dazzle me with your data and let me give myself a headache trying to figure out why some of my nonsense seems to be way more popular than the rest. I'll admit that maybe, just maybe, buried deep down there was the tiniest bit of me that wanted to discover that I was much cooler and more popular than I have given myself credit for being.

In what should be a surprise to no one, my tweet that has gotten the most "impressions" ever is the one I have pinned.  It's been there for over a year, and it's not going to change any time soon.

Too true to change.  I find myself wondering about this more often than I care to admit.

Moving right along, kids.  

The data pictured below is for my Top Tweets in the last  month, but the one at the top of the list? Blows everything else out of the damn water.  Literally the only thing I have ever posted with more "impressions" is that pinned tweet pictured above.  I'm not surprised by the result either, as I'm still getting notifications related to it over a month later.  Let's look at the results, Friends.  

Don't get too impressed.  A lot of that is other people being cool and it accidentally rubbing off on me.

I can totally explain how this happened....for the most part. We'll go in reverse order, shall we?  Save the best for last.

3)  People love their damn Rice Krispie Treats.  I made them out of Fruity Pebbles and posted a picture.  I honestly have no idea why that got so much attention.

2) I went to a concert and posted a picture.  It was the first night of Panic! At The Disco's Death of a Bachelor Tour.  I attribute this to them being cool and having a lot of fans.  

1) Oh, there's a back story for this one.  Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and get ready for story time.

It was a normal day.  I was at work, feeling a little under the weather and hoping I wasn't getting whatever stomach bug had been making the rounds.  I was convinced that I could just power through to the end of the work day....until it became very clear that I was not okay and needed to go home. Like immediately. I didn't want to further contaminate my coworkers.

I made it home, changed into my pajamas, and snuggled up under a blanket on the couch.  If I was going to feel like death warmed over then I was going to do it at home and make my misery as comfortable as possible. I turned on the television for some company and discovered that The Hangover was coming on soon. I don't know what it says about me, but that is one of the movies that I just have to watch any time it is on -- doesn't matter if I just stumble across it part way through.

I decided to try and distract myself from feeling like shit by checking Twitter before the movie started.  I'm scrolling through the posts, and I see that Logan Henderson had posted something.  So I replied with the tweet above, not thinking much of it because it's true.  I fucking love that song and listen to it all of the time.

Watch the video.  Trust me, it's good.

And then I snuggled back into my little blanket burrito and proceeded to fall asleep before the movie even started.

I woke up, looked at the time on my cable box, and freaked the hell out for a hot second.  7:15?  In the morning or at night?  Holy shit, was I already supposed to be up and getting ready for work?  How the hell long was I asleep?!

I grabbed my phone so I could see what day it was -- sad, I know.  I was all discombobulated and had no clue.  Still February 6th, meaning it's evening.  Thank you, iPhone! I flopped back onto the couch and let the relief wash over me.  

I just laid there for a while until I determined that I actually did feel a little better after my accidental 4 hour nap.  And that's when I noticed that my phone kept buzzing. In my moment of nap-induced panic I hadn't bothered to look at anything beyond checking the lock screen for the date and time.

What the fuck happened while I was sleeping?  Twitter notifications are blowing up.

Friends, when you have as small a number of followers as I do, I have notifications turned on for everything. As previously mentioned, I'm not the greatest with social media. I have somehow managed to also set myself up to get text messages from Twitter about said notifications.  My phone was literally just vibrating next to me on the couch, and had apparently been doing so for a while.

My first thoughts were not of the good variety. I'm used to talking to myself on Twitter, so it didn't even cross my mind that I had posted a reply right before I passed out. My train of thought immediately jumped to:

1) Something bad has happened: natural disaster, we declared war on someone/something, etc.

2) My account has been hacked.  Nothing I have ever posted has gotten this kind of a response.

3) Did I sleep-tweet?  Is that even a thing?  What kind of ridiculous thing have I done that I don't remember doing?

It was with more than a little trepidation that I unlocked the phone and opened Twitter.  

I looked at my page, half expecting to see it had been taken over by a porn-bot or the like.  Nope, looks normal.  It would appear that I didn't sleep-tweet anything either, which is a relief.  Oh hey, 5 people liked my reply I posted earlier.  That's nice.  And checking the home screen doesn't make it appear that any catastrophic, world-ending event has happened.  Guess I'm going to have to look at the notifications.

And...now we have our answer.  

He replied.  While I was busy sleeping on my couch, Logan replied. That explains it all. I was getting all of these notifications because I was "mentioned" in his reply that a shit-ton of people were "liking" and re-tweeting. It had nothing to do with me -- I was accidentally popular by association.  Some of his coolness had rubbed off on me.

That is the long-ass story of my Top Tweet.  Like ever.  A month later and I'm still getting notifications about this, almost every day.

Twitter Analytics can be fun, right Friends?  Okay, I'm really struggling with a way to bring this all back on point after that.  In reality I can't see why I would ever need to look at these things again.  I'm not going to be promoting a tweet.  I'm not hell-bent on getting an insane number of followers.  I don't run a business or need to gauge my audience. Maybe out of morbid curiosity and/or sheer boredom at some point.  I'm still going to feel like I'm talking to myself most of the time.

But on the off-chance that Logan has nothing better to do with his life and actually stumbles across this and takes the time to read my ramblings....

Hi there, Logan.

Thanks for the reply.  I probably should have said so at the time, but it was beyond me at the moment. And thanks for making me momentarily cool by association. For the record, I'm totally okay with you replying to anything your little heart desires and causing chaos on my phone.  Any time.  Hell, if you wanted to do an experiment and follow me, we could see if my phone completely blows up and dies. Just throwing that out there....you know, in the name of science and research.  I'm due for a new phone in a couple months anyway.

xoxo,

Me

Following the Crowd (Or Not) -- Musings

**This didn't start out to be a rant, although in retrospect it does kind of sound that way.  Think of it more as thinking out loud, pondering the possibilities, if you will.**

I've been thinking about "followers" lately, especially on Twitter.  This has mainly come about because I seem to get one message a week offering to "sell" me followers.  I tried to get a picture of the last one just now, but it has mysteriously disappeared since last night.

I've long since come to terms with the fact that I am basically talking to myself on there, throwing my thoughts out into the universe and seeing what happens.  I refuse to participate in the "follows for follows" shenanigans, or to accept the many offers to buy followers.  It still amazes me when people favorite or re-tweet anything that I post.  I'm always a bit shocked anyone noticed it in the vastness of Twitter.

I really only have three qualifications for choosing the people that I follow:

1) They are people that I actually know, in real life.

2) Someone randomly followed me, and when I looked at their profile and recent tweets they seemed interesting.  I'll follow them back.  Many times I don't as they appear to be crappy spam accounts, posting the same ads over and over.

3) I also follow people whose work I admire, whether they be actors, musicians, writers, scientists, journalists, comedians -- it doesn't matter.  They have done something which I liked or admired, and I follow them to see what they've got going on.  Also, it would seem that the odds are pretty good that whatever they share -- be it a news story, a discovery, a new band -- it might be something that I would enjoy also.  Or maybe not.

Twitter is also unique in the immediacy with which you can interact with people.  I don't care who you are -- if someone you admire, be they a "celebrity" or not, responds to you in some way, you are going to have a bit of a fan-girl moment.  I'm not saying you will have a public freak-out, maybe more of a quiet "Holy shit!" moment.  Warms the cockles of your heart a bit.

The thing I truly do not understand is the "Follow Me!" phenomenon.  You've seen it at some point.  The seemingly endless parade of people begging others to "follow" them -- especially when it is to someone with thousands (or even millions) of people following them.  What are they hoping will happen?  Am I missing some secret part of Twitter where you score "cool points" by having someone with a lot of followers that follows you?

I'm trying to think of a plausible scenario where such an event might naturally happen...

Okay, let's assume that your favorite actor/musician/fill-in-a-celebrity here is stuck in an airport waiting forever for a delayed flight -- or maybe he/she is on an insanely long flight in the middle of the night, bored out of his/her mind, unable to sleep, and has nothing better to do than lurk on Twitter.

He (or she) sees all of the people begging to be followed.  In a benevolent, sleep-deprived mood they decide to check out some of these people and maybe follow them, knowing that a galactic shit-storm may be unleashed, inundating them with even more requests to "FOLLOW ME!!"

What does the "follow me" crowd imagine will happen at that point?  Are they just delighted to have scored a famous follower, thereby earning popularity in their little niche of the Twitterverse?  Do they think said person will be overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of their tweets and they will become best buddies?  Do they secretly (or not so secretly, in some cases) hope that said famous-type will suddenly realize that they have, in fact, found their soul mate, their missing piece, their one true love who has been cruelly kept from them all these years by fate and distance?  I mean, I suppose it could happen.  I'm not out to crush anyone's dreams here.  Who knows?  Maybe it has already happened -- I didn't actually do any research on this.  I'm just saying the odds of that happening are not in your favor.

Think about it.  Look at what you actually post on Twitter.

Based on my own account?  Probably not.  I post a lot of random crap.  I work in a public library, so some of it might be amusing to other library folk, but probably not to someone who travels the world playing concerts or shooting movies.  (Unless they are well and truly bored, and find the minutiae of life on a much smaller scale to be utterly fascinating.) My extensive foreign travels consist of several trips to Canada, our lovely neighbor to the North.  The only obvious connection the two of us would have would be that we are both human beings with Twitter accounts.  We've not got a lot of common ground to start from.  Just as I have no idea how filming a movie works, or how to deal with paparazzi in your face, they probably don't have that much experience dealing with a library patron passed out at a table and drooling puddles atop it. ( Is he just sleeping? Drunk? Dead? That's the fun game you get to play!)

For my part, I'd rather get "followers" by earning them.  We are either friends in real life, or they have seen what I have put out into the Twitterverse and they actually liked it.  I'm not going to beg, plead, or buy followers.  Maybe that makes me old-fashioned, or totally uncool because I don't want the cache of having thousands of followers in an instant.

And if for some reason I actually ever end up being followed by someone I admire (probably a lapse in judgement on their part), that's cool.  It's also cool if that never happens.  I am who I am, with 80-odd followers or thousands.  

I hope people realize they are greater than the number of "followers" they have.