Twitter

I signed up to Twitter this week. Mainly because everyone else was doing it and I hate being left out *anxiously recalls painful lesson learnt aged 9, after hurling self from wall to copy older, cooler girls*

But luckily so far, Twitter is nothing like that fateful wall. With an appealing sky blue facade, a friendly little bird as a mascot and as easy to work out as push button phone (For heaven’s sake grandma! You just pick up the receiver and dial!) it’s a whole new world of talking (stalking).

Twitter had me hooked straight away, ‘Oh Alice! Come and join us! In this sky blue world you can be friends with people you’ve never dreamed of! Look! Over there is Oprah Winfrey giving out some life advice and here is Barack Obama at a congressional picnic of all places! You and Lady Gaga seem to be watching the same thing on TV right now! You!? and GAGA!?’ It’s really quite something.

Not only can you read ‘tweets’, but you actually write them as well and if you mention someone’s name, they will see it. What a thrill that is! Imagining Bill Gates, eyebrows raised, pushing his glasses up from his nose and peering forward at the screen to see what YOU have said from your idiotic gas-fired computer. Bloody brilliant.

There is of course (sorry @Oprah, I am trying to be positive) a downside to all this. When you join Twitter and begin to ‘follow’ people (I’m now ‘following’ 114 people) you can’t help but notice that you don’t have any followers yourself...and this leads to the distinct feeling that you might as well be back up on that wall, aged 9, preparing for a short flight to the ground that will certainly end in tears (from you) and laughter (from the cooler people).

So I know what you're thinking. Just get some followers right? Make some friends! Get out there and mingle? Well it’s easier said than done, let me tell you. It’s recommended that to attract followers (much like in the real world) you must interact with people. Say things to them. Make a name for yourself on the scene. But after trying it a few times, you feel like that kid in the playground that no one likes, ‘Hey guys! Wanna play marbles? Hey everyone! Wait for me!’ Twitter is a real, systematic confidence killer.

So, option two is just talk to yourself? Easier and less rejecting (most of the time – I can be a real bitch), but then you can end up feeling like your witty comments are simply being wasted on just stupid old you. It’s Obama, Kanye and Cher who you really want to impress, not just the few spammer sex-perverts who have crawled from under their rocks and onto your follower list – that’s a real hazard by the way. The joy of seeing you have a follower is dashed when you click their smiling profile picture, only to discover that they are most likely following you from the inner depths of some Miami mega jail *shudder*. Virtual shanking? No thanks.

The other type of follower that a loser like you or I might attract is salesfolk. ‘Follow me back and win a prize!’ – errr no thanks. This page is reserved for A-List tweets thank you very much. I have important things to say to Mr McCartney and I don’t need free paint-balling sessions. Creeps. I have ‘reported’ these people to the Twitter police as ‘spam’ and ‘blocked’ their asses from my page – but now I worry that even that was uncool. Maybe it’s Twitter etiquette to tolerate these underlings? ‘Oh yeah Suzy Sex Pest? She’s harmless. And she tweets a lovely recipe for rock cakes’.  ‘Miss, Miss! Carly won’t play marbles with me!’ springs to mind– not cool Alice. Not cool.

However, before you stop reading for fear of damaging your own street-cred by association, a couple of cool moments have actually happened to me. I’ve had real, genuine correspondence with two people of interest! One thing I tweeted @indiaknight made her ‘choke on her tea’ – with laughter you understand? Not with disgust at my apparent uncoolness and motley following of perverts and merchants. And @SteveHarvey sent me a link to his radio show at my very own request! Wow. These were real highlights. I was sure the followers would flood in after that – but...they didn’t. Oh well it's only day 4. I will keep you posted and if you’re reading this, please follow me ok? It’s embarrassing. I’m not adverse to a pity follow. Thanks.

Love, @AliceBand1