I don’t know why, but I just do.

The problem is I don’t like Twitter that much.

I mean I don’t like all the boneheads out there who use it for nefarious purposes like marketing, coaching and inspiration.

Bastards.

I prefer to use Twitter for things like this..

That’s Merlin Mann, aka @hotdogsladies. He usually tweets funny stuff. He has almost 190,000 followers on Twitter yet hardly follows anyone back. He seldom answers anyone either.

My hero!

Here’s some more..

Sometimes I try to be like Merlin..

But I’ve never broken a thousand followers. It was around 600 for the longest time and now it hovers around 800, most of whom I don’t know and I doubt they read a damned thing I post.

I know some of you do though.. thank you!

I’m not all about the followers on Twitter anyway. Well, if I had like four or something it’d be disconcerting, because one of them would be my wife, two would be my cats and the fourth would be a lady in Wisconsin who wants me to click on her ETSY page but what I mean is that I have around 800 and I bet most of them don’t know I exist.

This is because the main tactic on Twitter seems to be to follow people solely to get them to follow you back, which is a tactic I’ve never engaged in, which is the main reason I’ve never risen above the 1000 follower mark.

But I just can’t do that. If you’ve done it then I’m not saying you’re a bad person, I’m just saying you oughta sell cars.

I seem to go through phases where I won’t follow anyone back for a while, then a certain mood strikes me and I follow everyone back, but I don’t read anything they post. Then I use Friend Or Follow to see who unfollowed me after I followed them back after they followed me first, and I unfollow them if they unfollowed me.

It’s more fun than angry birds!

I’m especially pleased when I get some guy following me who sells real estate in Boise and has 42,387 followers, because I just know he wants to get a good laugh from my comedic gems and he certainly doesn’t want to sell me a condo.

So I follow him back as a courtesy and about a week later he unfollows me. His tweets always say things like “fixer-upper on the east-side near a Wendy’s and Cleveland Elementary school!”

It’s too bad he unfollowed me because I really wanted to direct message him to meet me there at noon on Sunday for a showing.

Of course we all know that these type of Twitter users sign-up with an automation program that does all of the following and unfollowing for them, so no, they don’t know I exist. They don’t know you exist either. But the bots do.

Bots are the things the automation program sends out to monitor tweets and follow people en masse, and the more you tweet the more of this you get.

So THAT’S why I haven’t broken a thousand followers, it’s because I don’t tweet enough!

This must change, so I’m going to tweet more. As I do, the bots will swarm in and follow me, and a lot of them will unfollow me even after I follow them back, but some won’t.

I know you won’t either, so follow me. I’ll even read your tweets and then, once we know each other better, we can head to Boise and check-out that fixer-upper.

FOLLOW.. Rhodester, Herb Caen, Hotdogsladies, Mystic23

I sent out a tweet the other day. It went like this..

“The fact that I continuously get sent links to join Christian singles groups reinforces my suspicion that spammers don’t target demographics.”

I said that because anyone who does the slightest bit of investigation would see that I’m married, and have been for a long time, so singles groups, Christian or otherwise, are pretty much the last thing I’d be inclined to join.

But spammers don’t take the time to select a target demographic. They just send links to anyone about anything, as proven by the fact that my longtime wife continuously gets exhortations to enlarge her penis, as I’m sure all of you girls do. What’s amazing about that, is her email address is coffeesister@gmail.com – so they’re sending penis enlargement ads to coffee-SISTER.

This is nothing new, of course. We’ve all been getting hit by spam of all kinds since it started up years ago, and it’s showing no signs of abating. In fact, spammers are finding new and creative ways to send us links to inane stuff.

Shortly after I sent that tweet – the one about spammers not using demographics because I keep getting links to Christian singles groups – I received a twitter reply from someone that went like this..

“@rhodester, meet thousands of like-minded singles just like you at http://likemindedsingles.com!”

Now, it’s not like there was some person just sitting there waiting for me to tweet about singles groups. It’s just an automated bot that was set-up by someone, and it waits for tweets – from anyone – that have the keyword “singles,” then it sends that response to them. It didn’t take into account that I was actually poking fun at spammers and pointing out how they don’t take into account their target audience.

Can you say “irony?”

The pain-in-the-ass factor regarding this method is that it’s getting to be rather prolific, whereas last year it was quite sporadic. I’d get something like that once-in-awhile once upon a time, but now it seems like I can’t tweet something without getting hit. Twitter lets you block spammers, but of course it always comes from a different source.

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ME – “Hello Twitterville, how are you? I’m starting off this nice day with a steaming cup of coffee and a croissant!”

BOT REPLY – “@rhodester, order coffee direct to your address from http://coffeetoyouraddress.com!”

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ME – “That blonde sitting over there by the pastry cart must be Russian, her features are quite stunning in an eastern European sort of way.”

BOT REPLY – “@rhodester, plenty of Russian mail-order brides are looking for strong, virile American men! Http://Russianbridesforyou.com.”

————————

ME – I have to take @coffeesister to the hospital, her head just exploded when I scoped out the Russian chick.”

BOT REPLY – “@rhodester, you too can pursue a nursing career from the comfort of your own home! Sign-up at http://onlinenursingcollege.com.”

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You get the idea, and I’m sure that if you use Twitter, you’ve gotten these too. This is because spammers not only continue to hit our email addresses as they did in the very beginning, but they now hit our Twitter, Facebook, blog comments and just about anything else that we use online.

We even have them in person here where we live, which is right on Market Street in San Francisco.

I walk a block to and from the train station everyday, and there’s this gym that opened up last month that’s only three doors down. As I walk by, the dude standing out front attempts to hand me a flier advertising their deals. It wasn’t so bad at first, because I’d just politely say “no thanks” as I kept walking, but geez.. it’s been a month and the same dude tries to hand me the same flier EVERY DAMN TIME I WALK BY.

I can’t figure out if he has a really bad memory and hasn’t noticed I’ve declined the flier 148 times already or if he’s just trying to wear me down, but it sure is annoying. I no longer say “no thanks,” because I’m now just a zombie, forging ahead with a glassy stare as a flier is thrust into my face. Whereas I used to brush it aside with a genteel declination, I now give no acknowledgment to its existence.

So, in a way, that dude is a sidewalk spammer.

We have a lot of those here in San Francisco, but that’s the only one that’s just outside my front door, and that I repeatedly endure day after day.

“But Rhodester,” you say.. (you can call me Dave, though).. “There are children dying of hunger all over the world and you’re complaining about some guy trying to hand you a flier?”

(I take it back.. call me Rhodester.)

I’m not complaining, silly-head. I’m just observing that spammers are everywhere these days.

It’s gotten so out of hand that our brains are turning into a mushy gray goo, and we’ve grown complacent to the onslaught of unsolicited advertising to the point that if we no longer had it, we’d feel an empty void of some kind.

I have to admit that despite my annoyance, if the flier-dude isn’t out there tomorrow and the gym were to close down, I’d experience a sad, quiet loneliness in the depths of my tattered soul. I’d feel as if something were missing, and I’d find myself yearning for the attention once again.

I feel the same way about the Twitter-bots too. I LIKE the replies! I LIKE the fact that someone, even if they don’t exist except in a script somewhere, is paying attention to ME!

I LIKE the blog comments that say, “Hey, nice blog! Can I add you to my blogroll?” and it’s signed “usedcarsforcheap.com” SURE!! BRING IT ON!!! ADD ME!!!!! SPAM ME!!!!!!!

PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

INUNDATE ME WITH LINKS, ADS AND FLIERS UNTIL I DISINTEGRATE INTO A QUIVERING MASS OF GELATINOUS GOO!!!!!!!!!

..AND THEN INUNDATE ME SOME MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!

After all, I have plenty of money to spend on your product now that Frank Woo, Director of Hang Seng Bank Limited 0f Hong-Kong has informed me that the old Christian widow died and left me the sum of no less that 251 million pounds in gold doubloons, but he needs my help getting it out of the country because of the “recent turn of events.”

“@rhodester, have you thought of investing in gold? Gold is at an all-time high right now, so cash in at http://golddoubloonsinvestmentscheme.com!”

I decided to have a little fun on Twitter, so I changed my profile picture and started tweeting..

Some people got the joke and responded accordingly..

Some others did not..

My pal Joel wasn’t the only one. I had about 15-20 unfollows and blocks as a result. Twitter users have gotten conditioned to blocking “spam” so much that a handful of others later asked if my account had been hijacked. It couldn’t have been a joke! Rhodester would NEVER do that!

Oh yeah?

You know how we’re all sick of those automated direct messages that say something along the lines of, “Thanks for the follow! Check out my blog, etc.” ?

Well, one time I had this guy following me and I liked his profile.

It was funny.

I went on to his blog.

IT was funny.

So I followed him back and shot a direct message to him, being careful to use his name so he wouldn’t think it was automation. I said, “Hey so-and-so (forgot his name now) thanks for following me.. your blog rocks and I’ve subscribed, just wanted to let you know.”

He didn’t reply – but he DID unfollow me.

So I blocked him.

And then unsubscribed from his blog.

Asshole.

He was, I’m guessing, so conditioned to automated DMs that he just automatically dissed every DM in turn.

The point of this whole thing?

The point of my spammer prank and the story about the asshole DM guy?

Things aren’t always as they seem on the surface.

Maybe this really IS me..

And maybe I really DO want you to check out my pics and vidz!

CLICK HERE