Did you brush your tweets?

10 Points To Help You Tweet Better (or Worse)

By Manas Gupta aka @Spooferman_

Etiquette, it seems, is as important in the cyber world as in real life. Not so surprisingly, Twitter, that infuriating yet addictive platform of 140-word epics, has its own set of etiquette.

Recently, I crossed the 5000-follower mark on Twitter (applause). I figured that the one qualification that mark bestows on me is I am no longer a noob (read Twitter newbie).  Of course why such a large chunk of humanity would follow me remains a mystery. My colleagues are pretty sure I am pulling off a CAG here and bloating the numbers. But that’s a different story.

(Frankly, at 33 I thought I was too old for this “shit”. Then I saw Amitabh Bachchan is also on Twitter. The man is like a gazillion years old and has a gazillion followers.  So yes, age —like your followers — is just a number. QED.)

This brings me to my proposed list of gyan. I decided to turn into a self-proclaimed expert on Twitter etiquette. And just because I seem to have some “vela” time in my hands today, here’s what I think you should and should not do on Twitter:

1.Stop interrupting conversations. Yessir! When two adults are tweeting, a third adult is unwelcome. Then it becomes a threesome.  If you do have something to say — hopefully a wisecrack with the stress on wise — then it’s done with a clichéd “sorry to butt in”. But the best way to interrupt a conversation is by.. er not interrupting.

2.Hashtags/trends. Anyone can trend a hashtag and I learned this the hard way. When people are following you, it’s your obligation to not spam their timeline. I did that a few times and was deservedly hit by a few unfollows. Sometimes an addictive hashtag may be too tempting to resist joining in, like #cricketmemories. All you can do is go slow on the retweets. Let the timeline breathe. Oh and if you participate in a #replacefilmwithcrap hashtag, you can legally be shot and then hanged or hanged and then shot.  (My apologies to all the people I inadvertently spammed in my quest for Twitter “experience”.)

3. Slys. A sly is when you pass an indirect remark about someone without tagging him or her. Is it the right thing to do? Not in my opinion. Does everyone do it? Of course. Technically, this entire blog post is a sly directed at various different people on twitter. You know who you are. Now, stop digging your nose.

4. Smiley overload. : ) Everyone doesn’t have an iPhone. :X Those smileys won’t load on browsers and Android phones. :/ Also, try using a language. Contrary to popular belief, most people on Twitter are literate. Stop this emoticon atyachar now. \m/ A few smileys are okay. But 5 smileys per tweets makes you certifiable.

5. Stop trolling. I still haven’t been able to nail down an exact definition of trolling. Apparently it involves rude tweets that provoke an argument or fight. I think what half of Twitter does falls in this category. Technically, it’s a no-no, but so is smoking and overspeeding. How you behave is your own call, though frankly, no harm in being polite. From what I’ve noticed, sarcasm is the weapon of choice on twitter. Try it. It’s fun.

6.BIO/DP.  Your bio says everything about you. Be informative and smart. Remember, on Twitter, everyone is an “avid reader” or “photographer” or “writer”. Be different.  Also make sure you’re not stuck on an egg DP or have chosen some ugly monster for the shock value. Using DPs of celebs or sport stars is just silly. Besides, I know Emma Stone won’t have 15 followers you know and Angelina Jolie won’t be sending me a personal tweet. How stupid do you think I am? Wait. Don’t answer that.

7. Follows and followbacks. (This one is specially for noobs.) Followers are like Bourneville. They are earned. You interact with folks or post good stuff which will get RTd and get you followers. Asking for a followback is a no-no. Also, everyone doesn’t follow back. If a person already follows, say 500-600 people, following any more will make it difficult for him to manage his timeline and keep track of tweets, so keep those expectations low. Also, don’t get too upset with unfollows. You can’t force people to like your tweets or agree with them, you know.

8. FAT Jokes: Do not, under any circumstances, make personal fat jokes. I learned this the hard way too. Exceptions are there. Celebs are fair game, as long as you don’t tag them. Self-deprecatory jokes on your girth and eating habits are welcome…as are generalizations. Some joke formats never die. “Does this jeans make me look fat? [add silly joke about genes here].  Also stay away from certain wards of industrialists. 

9. Go easy on group tags. These just spam mentions. For example, a certain Rocket Singh whose delusional about his sense of humour and wrongly believes he’s part of an intelligent species, sends me some ‘jokes’ every single day. Unfortunately, only he believes they are jokes. And he tags various other people in that tweet. That, my friend, is just rude. If you’re reading this post, stop already, will ya.

10. Stop harassing celebs. Technically, this is the same as trolling. But a lot of noobs try too hard to interact with celebs. A lot of them are sporting, like Gul Panag or Ranvir Shorey. But the sheer number of followers they have obviously makes it difficult for them to respond to every tweet. Heck, I even find wishing them happy birthday silly. SRK has over 4 million followers. If just 2% of his followers wish him on his birthday, that’s a whopping 80,000 tweets. How many do you think he’ll respond to?

11.Block button:  (Remember when this article mentioned 10 points? I lied. Sue me.) Lots of creeps and rude pricks out there who may spoil your Twitter ex perience. There is a magical solution to that called the Block button. Use it.

12. Don't copy man.

Frankly, I doubt if even I would follow all of this so-called gyan. There is just one small catch for staying active on Twitter —  Using your brain is mandatory. Sure, a lot of tweeps are flouting this rule, but don’t let that stop you. And remember the most important rule of Twitter: Having fun. 

PS: There are some rules about RTs and manual RTs too. But since every second tweep is forever cribbing about those, you’ll learn about these pretty soon. And I’m not even going to start on grammar Nazis.

That awkward moment

By Manas Gupta 

aka @Spooferman_

Internet lingo, it seems, is constantly evolving. Unfortunately, for people like me —delusional about still being young and dare I say cool — keeping up with the jargon can be quite a chore.

I joined Twitter a couple of years back and much to my delight, found an entire new world reveling in puns, wordplay and PJs, an ailment I'm often chastised for in real life by friends and family. I felt right at home, or so I thought.

Twitter, however, is a different animal. It's young, brash and bursting with energy and horny teenagers, who all speak in a language that pretends to be English but is way "cooler".

I got my first taste of it when confronted with a teenager who criticised one of my cringe-worthy PJs. Now criticism, as we all know, is a bitter pill to swallow, however rational you may be. When I politely asked this young man to explain, he came up with, "Calm yo titties!" I was stumped. Aside from the fact that this seemed to be an Indian boy speaking, nay writing, in a style straight out of Harlem, New York (yeah, call me racist), I was flummoxed by the reference to my er, nipples.

Anyway, I put that incident behind me and dove into the world of double entendres and silly hashtags on Twitter. However, before I could even fathom the reason behind #replacemoviewith(fill in the blank here) hashtags I encountered the phrase "woot woot". Yes. That is a phrase. According to the urban dictionary (yes, that is a dictionary), it is an "expression of complete approval or joy".

Now, I think of myself as a rational human being. (Okay, some of my friends may not think so, but they are not writing this article, are they?). But, for the love of God, (sorry, I mean Sachin Tendulkar) I cannot understand the reason for mimicking an owl to show joy. Have you ever observed an owl? They always look sad or angry or just constipated. Ever seen an owl smile? Heck, when he says "woot woot", he probably means "what-what, what the fuck you looking at?"

Sure, I've made my peace with the LOLs and the ROFLs and even (shudder) LMAOs. But even for someone whose made a career out of smartly murdering the English language, some things are just incomprehensible.

Another phrase that's the rage is YOLO. It means (hold your breath), you only live twice. Ian Fleming must be rolling over in his grave. Remember, at the start of this article I talked about being young? Sigh! Clearly I was mistaken.

Then you have emoticons. These are also called emojis. Huh? Why? Frankly, adding 'ji' after anything and not adding 'scam' after it should be a crime.  

Amid all this, what really takes the cake on twitter is something called 'that awkward moment'. It's not complicated. It really is all about awkward moments. But if you don't have them, you, sir or madam, are just not cool. In fact, you tweeting is 'that awkward moment' when you try to be cool.

Of course, some of these teens don't even know what really awkward moments are. I'm pretty sure Adam and Eve had the first awkward moment. An awkward moment is when you meet recently separated Siamese twins and ask, "can I join you?" However, when you stumble and fall flat on your face, that's not an awkward moment. That's just stupid. Also hilarious, unless you broke something or died. Then it's an awkward moment.

Frankly, I could go on and on about twitter lingo that makes me uncomfortable or look like a douche bag (yes another twitter favourite). However, that would make this piece TLTR. Too long to read.

PS: ROFL is what dogs do. Hence it's cool.