I had a great Twitter conversation with some very lovely and talented women (Hello, @lauriewrites @phdinparenting @suzieswapper @alotofnothing and @temptingsam!) about if you keep track of who unfollows you on Twitter.
I do.
I know, I know. It is one of those things where you go, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF, YOU MASOCHIST?! IGNORANCE IS BLISS!”
And I agree, but I still do it on occasion.
I think of it as housekeeping.
(Thankfully I do my ACTUAL housekeeping more often than my social media housekeeping.)
(We won’t discuss by how large a ratio that number is, though. Heh.)
I like following people back. If someone is a real person and I can tell that they carry on conversations on Twitter vs. only pushing out information I almost always follow the account back. Granted, people fall through the cracks, but I always feel bad and rectify it if it’s pointed out to me. Also, I turned off notifictions to my email so sometimes it takes me awhile to follow back, but I try to keep up the best I can.
But I have a policy…if you don’t follow me, I don’t follow you.
Plain and simple.
The only exception to this is Nathan Fillion because, well…I loved Firefly and want to marry Castle.
Heck, I unfollowed a friend because he wasn’t following me. (Not that he noticed. He signed up, followed Snoop Dog and Tosh 2.0 and then promptly forgot Twitter existed.)
If people unfollow me, I don’t want to keep following them. It clutters up my stream and is annoying. Also, since I do follow most people back, I don’t want my follow ratio to be upside down. It looks bad. It used to be that you could mass unfollow everyone not following you with a click of a button, but Twitter decided that they wanted to plunge the knife in and twist it and they had their legal department contact all the mass unfollow tool sites with cease and desist orders.
Now you have to go through manually, one click at a time and unfollow people individually.
So, I occasionally gird up my loins and go to a site like Who Unfollowed Me to see who has clicked ‘unfollow’ to my account and dumped me.
People unfollow me often and 99% of the time it just doesn’t bother me.
People unfollow for tons of reasons and I am generally ok with that. I rarely unfollow but I have learned that isn’t the norm for many. I don’t let it bug me. My self-esteem is not tied up in my follow numbers. But there IS a situation I loathe and that hurts. I try not to look at the people I’m unfollowing but sometimes it happens and that is where the 1% of “YES IT BOTHERS ME” comes in…I see someone I REALLY admire or thought was a good friend has unfollowed me.
And then I go into the fetal position and throw chocolate at myself because dude, that shit STINGS.
The other complication is that crack whore we all love called Twitter. It has been notorious in the past for unfollowing people without permission. Some people will contact those that they know and that have unfollowed and inquire if it was a deliberate move or not.
I tried that once.
It unleashed such a psycho situation of hell that I vowed never, ever, EVER again would I inquire if someone deliberately unfollowed me. I just assume that they did it deliberately and try to get over it as best I can. Besides, I am not confident that people would actually be truthful in that situation. I truly think some people unfollow someone, hope they won’t notice and then pansy out and blame Twitter if they are confronted.
It’s a quandry and I haven’t really figured out a great method or way of handling it.
So, what about you? Do you pay attention to who follows you? Do you find out who unfollows you? Do you ask them why or just keep your mouth shut?
P.S. If you want to follow me, I’m here @looneytunes and I WILL follow you back. (And if I’m not? @ me and let me know. I’ll fix it.)
xo
P.P.S. Thank you for all the support and kind words regarding my sister and her medical situation. I went. It was really…tough. She is still in a pretty horrible state and has a VERY long road ahead, but we are hopeful it will be ok. My brother has been with her yesterday and today and they are looking at moving her into a long care facility soon to better manage her situation and so she is closer to her home and husband.