Man, I can’t seem to tear myself away from Twitter for very long this morning. Usually by now I’ve written a blog and chatted with a few friends and maybe done some cosplay sewing or writing or something. Yeah, I’ve gotten a little of all that done today, but for some reason I keep going back to Twitter.
What keeps us locked on social media? Why do we keep hitting refresh or view (x) new tweets or some such thing? I mean, sure, some of the people I follow I genuinely want to know about…but some are news pages, and some are people I’ve followed that I’ve never bothered to unfollow (generally people who don’t post anything other than book ads–not that I don’t advertise my own book from time to time, but I’ve learned to try to keep it at a minimum…not constantly).
Facebook isn’t as bad, unless one or more of my friends are online. Then I’m just messaging back and forth, learning about their day or sharing mine. But Twitter…man, some days I need a twelve-step program. Even now I want to log back in, to check and see if there’s anything worth retweeting or replying to. I want to see what the trending hashtags are, and see if I want to be trendy and use one of them.
For live tweeting it can’t be avoided, obviously. You have to be on Twitter, and you have to refresh frequently to keep up with the other live tweeters. But in day-to-day life? I don’t know about that, man.
I also get caught up in how many of my tweets get liked or retweeted. Just this morning a celebrity liked a tweet that I sent in reply to one of their tweets. If you’ve read my piece on Talk Nerdy With Us about “social media fame,” you’ll know my opinion on that–yet I still get excited.
Good thing for me that it will soon be time to get ready for work. I’ll have no choice but to leave the Twitterverse behind for a while as I take my shower and get dressed. Then, once I’m at work, Twitter will have to disappear until I get my lunch break or go home.
Bye-bye, Twitter. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.