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.