As much as I have stated before that I have my problems with Facebook (detailed here) there is a bigger enemy in the social networking world: TWITTER.



1) Hash tags

Supposedly, hash tags are set up so you can search for something. Ok...then why do I also have a search bar? If you hash something like, I don't know, #eggs, I can still search for "eggs" and get similar results. The only difference is that I didn't get solely people that decided to hash it. (Side note: did anyone else just realize the whole hash brown and egg thing going on here that was completely unintentional?). But the thing that annoys me the most about hash tags is that it promotes horrible grammar. An idea like "you're the best" is always typed out as #yourthebest. The English professor in me fucking HATES that beyond insanity.



2) Trending topics

Don't get me wrong, it makes perfect sense to have trending topics. The concept itself isn't necessarily flawed, nor are some of the topics that trend. If someone just won the Super Bowl, I'd expect them to be trending, for instance. But how often are trending topics just stupid bullshit, like an old TV show rerunning, or 8 variants of the same thing? You don't need "Jersey Shore", "Snookie", "Situation", "Situation Shore", "Jersey Shore Snookie", and "Jwoww Jersey Shore" all trending at once. Actually, you don't need those particular things trending at all.



Note: The trending topics at the time of this post included "Pee Wee Herman", "Andy Samberg", "Weekend Update", "RIP Justin Bieber", and "Jason Born" - there are only 2 topics there, Bieber and SNL, yet they're represented 5 times.



3) Follow the leader

Twitter exhibits how so many people just latch onto the popular thing. If a TV show is trending, like spoken about above, then everyone feels the need to talk about it. Oh, Family Matters is trending? Time for me to post a tweet about how "I love Family Matters #familymatters".



4) Justin Bieber

The presence of this kid has turned Twitter into a Bieber fan board. I don't personally hate the kid as much as everyone else, but I don't find his music entertaining, I don't find his celebrity status to make much sense, and I DO find his fans to be incredibly annoying in Twilight fashion. I try not to associate with Bieber fans for this reason, yet as much as I try to avoid them, Twitter is a place I can always run into a dozen or so with ease.



5) Retweeting

The Facebook "like" system works much better in my mind as it shows that you support a concept. Maybe it's just me, but retweeting seems like you're stealing the person's idea and trying to pass it off as your own, and I've never been a fan of that.



6) Words of Little Value

How often do you read something on Twitter and it actually enlightens you in a way? Keep thinking, I'll still be here. Thought of something yet? Yeah, me neither. Damn near everything spoken on Twitter is absolutely pointless. I do not give a shit if you've just eaten a sandwich. I do not give a shit if you are heading out to go to work. I doubt anybody else does, either. Celebrities can get away with this as our culture is fucking FASCINATED with celebrity-life, but if you aren't famous, you shouldn't be tweeting about the most mundane nonsense. OMG, you just had another cup of coffee? You just had one 2 minutes ago! ROFL! Please let me know when you've had another, random person on the internet that I don't know!



7) Twitpic Overuse

Twitpic, yfrog, and all the others are a perfectly acceptable program if used correctly, but there are people that post way too much. They take those pointless tweets and instead, replace them with pointless pictures. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but not if it's just a picture of a ceiling or the gas station you're at today or something.



8) Groveling for a Reply

This is obviously more prevalent in fans of celebrities. Here's how it works when it's ok: a celebrity tweets a question to his or her fans, they respond, and the celebrity responds in turn. WWE superstar Goldust is someone that does this well. I have nothing against that at all, and in fact, I encourage it, as I'm always supportive of celebrities having a better personal connection with their fan base. It humanizes them and keeps them off their high horses. But the problem comes when people start replying to things that aren't even questions, hoping desperately that the celebrity will tweet them back, just so they can see the little "@theirusername" listed on their account. Take a look at how many replies someone of fame gets if they even post something like "I'm so tired". The celeb isn't going to see that you responded to them, hop on a private jet, fly to your house, and become your best friend. Most of these people that will reply-tweet multiple times to the same celebrity and cross their fingers will then go apeshit if they actually respond and you can guarantee that their next tweet is "OMG [insert celeb] just replied to me! Squeee!!!"



9) Spam

Good fucking lord, why are there so many posts about whitening your teeth?



10) Fail Whale

"Twitter is over capacity". We've all seen it. Twitter experiences problems all the time...so often that they shouldn't even use that dumbass bird up above as the mascot, they should use the fail whale. But that right there says a lot - that despite the reasons up above, Twitter is still so popular that the site can't handle it.





If the whale is a sign of failure, why does it look peaceful and happy?

That being said, do I use Twitter? Yeah. I have five accounts (primary one is @ToeKneeManGo for those that want to follow). Kind of hypocritical for me to tear it down and talk about how there are too many people using it despite the flaws if I'm a user as well, right? I'll admit it, but at the same time, I use it for marketing purposes, so it has always been more of a chore than a pleasure. In today's social networking world, you can accomplish more through something like Twitter than what you used to do handing out pamphlets and making posters to hang up around town. You'll likely never see me have a huge presence on Twitter because I can only find the power to check it maybe twice a day and most of my tweets come from the RSS feed of my Facebook status updates. The site is just way too fucking annoying.