Just when I think it’s safe to play #FollowFriday again.

It’s no secret that I hate the Twitter meme of #FollowFriday. I wrote a rant post back in March about why I’m not playing anymore, and I’ve stood by that pretty adamantly. Ari Herzog, who wrote a recent post about the meme, shares the same sentiment as I do, which is,

I recommend Twitter users every day–when retweeting their thoughts or web links, when thanking them for prior advice, or when singling out unique people.

I thought that the madness of the random, meaningless, lists of people to #FollowFriday (or #FF) recommend had ended since I wrote that post in March. I thought that things had calmed down.

So last Friday I dipped my toe back into the Follow Friday meme and posted a #FF recommendation and gave reason as to WHY people should follow that person, as one should. So far, so good.

Today I tweeted that I lost half a cookie in my morning coffee, in melodramatic distraught. Next thing I know, Cookie Monster is following me on Twitter. The Official Cookie Monster (not to be confused with all those Cookie Monster impostors out there, mind you). I felt rather honored that such Muppet royalty would follow me, so I recommended him for #FollowFriday. After all, his Twitter account is hilarious … assuming that’s the real Official Cookie Monster and not some paid personal Muppet assistant.

I was away from my computer the majority of the day. I came back and checked my notifications to find the usual handful of random people following me that I had never heard of. I always check out each individual person that follows me to 1) make sure they’re not a bot, and 2) see if they’re anybody I find interesting enough to follow in the 3 second glance I take at their profile.

One such profile was this, and I took sympathy on the woman to attempt to protect her identity and those of the people in her background:

Pardon my french, but…

WHAT THE HELL?!?!

Why I’m not playing #FollowFriday anymore

There’s been a meme going around on Twitter for a while on Fridays known as #FollowFriday, whereby people tweet a list of names of fellow Tweeters and follow the list by the hashtag “#FollowFriday.” I think it’s meant to suggest to other followers people that they feel are worth following, thereby increasing the followers of the people they’ve plugged. I think it’s kind of stupid, but I’ll admit that I’ve done it.

Well I’m not playing anymore, and here’s why:

People seem to plug me a lot for #FollowFriday, and I’m not sure why because I honestly don’t think I’m that interesting. But in the past couple weeks I’ve actually gotten direct messages from people who have plugged me that were upset that I didn’t promote them back. To that, I have to say this:

Cry me a frickin’ river.

There was no method to my madness of whomever I picked to promote for this stupid meme. I clicked the names of whatever people were visible in the various sections of my TweetDeck at the time. Why? Because I think all the people I’m following are worth following. If I didn’t feel this way, I wouldn’t be following them in the first place.

I’m not on Twitter for some kind of juvenile popularity contest, I left that school of thought in 10th grade. I’m on Twitter because I kinda have Shiny Object Syndrome and one day in April 2007, while watching a hockey game and having an IM conversation with @mediaphyter (I knew her then as “RockEmSockEmJen” or something like that on a now-defunct social network known as Consumating), I somehow found it and said, “Ooh, this looks interesting!” and signed up. Then last year it exploded, and now I’m on Twitter to meet people, to network, to learn from people, and to have fun.

That said, I’m sick of seeing blog posts and topics in LinkedIn groups on how to get 1,000s of followers. Really, why would somebody even want that many? My sense of self-worth isn’t correlated with the number of people that follow me on Twitter, and if yours is, then you have much bigger problems.

Granted, as I type this I have over 1,600 followers, but as I said, I’m not sure why because I’m not that interesting. If I lose followers as a result of this post, guess what? I don’t care. I’d rather have a smaller group of followers that I learn from and interact with than a gazillion faceless people who are nothing more than numbers to pad my stats and self-esteem.

Think about that one.

So if you follow me and want to plug me on #FollowFriday, I can’t stop you, but I’m not plugging you back. If your feelings are that fragile that it really matters, then you should unfollow me right now — in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly politically correct or Little Miss Sunshine all the time. If I follow you, I feel that you’re interesting enough that you’re worth following, but I’m not playing favorites, I’m not treating anyone with kid gloves, and I’m not playing the #FollowFriday meme anymore.

So bite me.

Photo 1 by climbnh2003, photo 2 by evilpeacock.