Should I Follow Back? My New Rules for Twitter Friends

Recently, as I was going through my email, I saw several notices of new people following me on Twitter, so I clicked on their names and went to their profiles. I like to read people's bios first. I like to get a "feel" on what they are like before I make such a strong commitment to them on Twitter.

Anyway, one new follower was a nuclear physicist by profession. I had to wonder what this guy wanted with me. In order to understand his bio, I had to go to Dictionary.com five times. Honestly, I started to get frustrated. If I have to look up that many words in someone's bio, I have to re-think our social media connection.

I finally got a grasp on what this guy did for a living, but I was a bit intimidated. He is involved in studying the effects of neutrons colliding with protons and how this impacts the universe. My last tweet was whether or not it was safe to eat raw Pillsbury cookie dough out of the tub. Do you see the intellectual gap that exists between the two of us? How can I possibly tweet this person?

I was not going to follow him back, but then I thought that maybe he was with eggheads all day long and he joined Twitter to get a break from all that intelligence and that is why he found me. As I pondered that thought, I got a little ticked off, and my mind started to go off and develop scenarios about why he decided to seek me out.

Does this guy think of me as his escape from intelligence? Is he looking at me as proof of what happens when too many neutrons collide with protons? Did he need to see how the less-brainy survive on the planet? Okay, maybe I read too much into his desire to be my Twitter friend. Maybe, he just clicked on the wrong person or has one of those programs that just follows everyone knowing that a good percentage will follow back. Or, maybe, he just likes to converse with "normal" folk once in a while ("normal" here meaning non-genius not an indication of how my mind works compared to the rest of society). Feeling guilty that I was being a reverse snob, I decided to click the follow button and add the nuclear physicist to my Twitter friends. That afternoon, he de-friended me. I guess I was a mistake or he read the tweet about the raw cookie dough.

Don't feel badly. I have learned a great lesson from this somewhat humiliating experience, and I have now altered my Twitter rules:

If I do not understand your bio, I am not following you back. This goes not only for scientific geniuses, but people who want to tweet me in a language that I do not understand. I can pretty much translate any of the Romance languages if I had to, but throw German or Japanese at me, and I have not a clue what you are saying. Twitter may be global, but sadly, my language ability is not.

If your bio includes anything like <3 Justin Beiber or ♥Bieber or has the words "Justin Bieber" anywhere in there, I am not following you back. I am sure that the kid is talented, but anyone who is that gaga over him is probably not legal age and, therefore, not someone I want to tweet with -yes, even if I am related to you. The same is true for anyone who loves Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift. Okay, Taylor Swift is not an age thing. She just bothers me sometimes. There always seems to be a lot of drama swirling around her. I have no patience for drama be it in my own life or some overexposed celebrity's life.

If you have a problem with people swearing on Twitter, I am not following you back. I get tired of the holier-than-thou crowd who want swearing on Twitter banned. If you cannot deal with curse words, don't tweet. It's an open forum for people to express themselves. That is their right, and sometimes they are having a really bad day and swear words are the only words that make them feel better. Let them have their damn words! The damn words is what sometimes get us through the damn day and the damn year! Oh, I'm sorry. I got lost for a second, but it's a funny thing: I suddenly feel a bit calmer. Damn! Swearing is good.

If you want to help me make $2 million dollars in my first six months selling your product that requires me to join your MLM team, I am not following you back. While you may have a ton of testimonials from people who have made that $2 million, I have never met one of them in person, so I think you might be lying. Also, I don't think I would be your best salesperson. I do know how to take the word "no" for an answer, so closing that deal might not be as important to me as it is to you. Since we do not share the same passion for your one-of-a-kind product, we are probably better off not being Twitter friends.

If you want me to follow you to LinkedIn, I am not a Twitter friend. To me, LinkedIn is the anti-social media. It is the exclusive fraternity of the grown up world. In order to be a friend to someone - I'm sorry - a connection, someone has to introduce you to the person you want to be connected with. How is this social media? This is rejection taken to a new level. Why would I want this? I can be rejected on my own. Just look at my nuclear physicist. Okay, I guess LinkedIn is more about business networking than socializing, but see that is why I hate it. I am definitely more of a socializer, so I guess I shouldn't damn the whole site because of philosophical differences...but LinkedIn sucks. I'm sorry that slipped out...but it does suck.

Anyway, these are a few of my new Twitter rules. I may keep them or I may throw them away. It depends on new Twitter friends that come on board. If the nuclear physicist comes back and wants to be my friend again, I might give him another shot too. Who knows? We might become best buds and maybe, I might even invite him to have a taste of the Pillsbury cookie dough. Hey, friendships have been formed on less effort than that.