A few years ago, I'd put up a post about how much I disliked Twitter. For those of you who won't read it, which I'm assuming is most of you, especially now that I'm giving you this shortcut, these were my main reasons for the anti-Twitter rampage:
- It was difficult to use and also sort of pointless.
- It showed me lots of random posts by people doing mundane stuff.
- It didn't allow for adequate expression due to the character limit, which in turn resulted in people tweeting multiple times an hour, which again leads to my previous point.
- Every time I replied to someone, it showed up as a new tweet.
Then, over these summer holidays, I watched Heroes for the first time (yes, I'm many years behind on lots of TV shows. I only just started watching Buffy recently, after finishing Heroes). I loved the show and wanted to find out where else I could see Milo Ventimiglia and Zachary Quinto. I figured I could also follow them on facebook, but Milo doesn't seem to have a facebook page (although there is a fan page with at least a couple of creepily obsessive fans).
After a few moments of perplexity over what to do next, I remembered this little thing called Twitter, and it turned out that he was on it. So I decided to give the site another chance, and I'm glad I did.
Ventimiglia tweets often enough to keep things interesting but not so much that it gets annoying.
Also, get this: he actually replies! Especially when he's on a flight, apparently. There was this one time he was my entire news feed because he was replying to tweets for about 5 hours straight. Not that any of his followers were complaining, I'm sure. I mean, seriously, replying to so many people instead of taking a nap or something - how very nice of him!
Stephen Amell and Neil Gaiman also use Twitter
We all know Neil Gaiman's got a wonderful way with words. His tweets are funny and entertaining, and since he's Gaiman, even when you see promotional tweets, you're not thinking "Oh god, stop!" Instead, you're probably thanking him for gracing you with information like where you can get signed copies of his books and so on.
Stephen Amell is someone I started following on facebook after watching Arrow, and while I didn't expect him to be exactly like the character he plays, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how funny he is. Recently, I saw that he posts more often on Twitter. One more reason for me to not give up on this site.
The 140 character limit is actually rather fun
Of all the annoying traits Twitter possesses, this one was initially at the top of my list. However, with all the precis writing in school and flash fiction in college, I decided I was more than capable of turning it into a sort of challenge.
Oh wait, to Barney, the challenge would have been to use more than 140 characters. Hmm, I really didn't think that one through. Ah, whatever. Those pictures are staying right there.
This reminds me of how funny NPH's first few tweets were. Before he understood the character limit, sentences would just stop abruptly, often mid-word, if I remember right. I'd like to put up screenshots, but there's no way I'm scrolling to the very beginning of his page (especially with my aggravatingly slow internet).
Coming back to what I was saying before the NPH distraction, I swore to always use exactly 140 characters to make the most of every post. Even if I really didn't need to. I discovered it was fun and not so hard to do. Also, when I'd done it the first few times, no one seemed to care, and for a while I'd slipped into using fewer characters than I could (gasp!)
But then I reminded myself that no one really cares what you do on twitter most of the time unless you're famous, and that there was one person who cared about sticking it to the character limit: me.
I've learnt that a 140 character tweet is called a twoosh. And that's the last time I'm using that word because it sounds incredibly stupid. Way stupider than "tweet".
Quick scrolling
Since there's a character limit, even though people tweet often, posts are really short. This means you can quickly scroll down without wasting time on uninteresting things. I don't follow too many people, so a few seconds of scrolling shows me the entire day's new tweets.
#Hashtags
Some hashtags are pretty crazy, and it's a lot of fun to see the different wacky things people have to say about them. #foodafilm and #dressamovie were a couple I really liked. Okay, they were the only ones I bothered to look at, but the point is, they were fun.
That being said, some people really need to stop using hashtags with every other word. Unless it's in a parody like the one with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake:
#funnyvideo #LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
So, those are all the reasons why, although my problems with Twitter haven't disappeared and are still quite valid, I've reversed my general opinion of the site. I rather like it now.
Also, did I mention that Milo Ventimiglia uses Twitter and replies to lots of messages?