Greg Cooper

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet: The Guide

Twitter is a marvelous thing most of the time, with great leaders, insightful celebrities and inventors aplenty it’s one hell of a party. That is until the common folk (like you and I) start tweeting about “stuff” or what we’re up to. Not to say everything we encounter and tweet about is particularly boring per se, it’s just everything put together is uninteresting. That’s why I decided to write a guide about what to tweet and what not to tweet, you’ll find there is sometimes a very fine line between acceptable and down right Boris Johnson.

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1. Food

This is one of those fine liners I mentioned. Food is an amazingly large subject with every country, region and town in the world working with food in a slightly different way from their neighbours. Now, that in mind we need to think about tweets relating to food or eating. No one cares if you’re sitting down to have breakfast so tweets like the following are hilariously pointless;

“Off for breakfast.”

However! If you were to add to that tweet the fact you were maybe going out to a cafe for the breakfast where they serve an exceptional Full English then that makes it worth while. Like so;

“Off for breakfast to Barney’s Cafe. Their Full English is to die for!”

That way you’re sharing useful (important word there) information that people can take and interest in and possibly one day use. Again there is a fine line when it comes even to this tweet. If you visit Barney’s regularly (e.g. every day or couple of days) then tweet about it once and leave it be. Once you’ve posted about it for an entire week people start to get fed up.

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2. Bed

As appealing these tweets are to the sexually perverted, no one really cares if you’re going to or getting up from bed. In fact it’s potentially the most useless tweet you can post after the “just had a shit” tweet. The only acceptable way to inform people of your bed-ly activities are to incorporate it into another tweet, like so;

“Been flat out producing the new intro sequence for a new TV show, hitting the sack now!”

That is in a way useful (again the important word) as it helps the reader understand just how hard you were indeed working.

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3. BRB or AFK

“BRB.”

“AFK for 5 minutes.”

Why do people even post these kind of tweets? In a way you could argue these are acceptable as Twitter is becoming more and more conversation based and approaching ultimate real time. Even with that debate no one actually cares if you are going to be back on Twitter in a matter of minutes, in fact no one will notice if you’re only away for a couple of minutes due to how Twitter works. Just walk swiftly to where your beverages are stored then walk swiftly back to your computer, that way you cut down on possible loss of conversation with the few others who think Twitter is a chat room.

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4. School

Realistically if you’re using Twitter you’ve likely been to school at least once in your lifetime. That way we all know what school is like and have experienced it long enough for it to no longer be an interesting subject. Therefore we do not need to be informed of just how much you’re enjoying Math in a sarcastic format that makes you seem like a ungrateful child. Like so;

“Sitting in Maths, fun times!”

Again a fine line appears, if for instance you’re doing something out of the ordinary at school. Such as a school play maybe or have cunningly stuck a Post It note with “kick me” written on it on the back of a teacher then by all means post that tweet. For the later make sure there is an awesome picture attached for good measure. For instance;

“Sitting in English planning out the monologue for the first introduction to the school’s annual play.”

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5. Unnamed Attacking

“Some people need to get a life.”

Someone has annoyed you in an unforgivable way, that doesn’t mean your awesome followers need to be annoyed by your annoyance for the annoying one. In fact unless you name the person don’t post the tweet at all, at least if you post their name then an argument can follow or even better include their Twitter username such as;

“Pissed off with @bobmcgingle, the arse hole needs to get a life!”

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6. Where’s Friday?

If we’re all using the lovely Gregorian calendar then aren’t we all on the same page when it comes to days passing? Do your followers need to know;

“Why isn’t it Friday yet?”

No, not really, no. They don’t since they’re in the same position as you if they don’t like their job or going to school. Which most people don’t as it’s only the lucky few (which I consider myself to be) who get to enjoy the whole week. Which means most of your followers will be thinking the exact same thing, at the same time, every week, for the whole year (excluding holidays) so you don’t even need to tell them. They are so smart they can read your mind (including your boss when he finds your Twitter profile).

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As much as I’d like to say I abide by these rules all the time - I don’t. I’ll admit that on occasions I will post a tweet I’ve mentioned above and regret it every time because people follow me as they’re interested in my life not my minutes. For an example of someone who tweets only good tweets check out my own mother’s Twitter, she only tweets when she is doing something different or something has happened that is interesting to the rest of the world - @kazear

If you have anything to add to this list be sure to comment the post and if it’s a good suggestion I’ll add it :)