Twitter is a Bitch!

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people"

Twitter discusses all of the above and more

We have all heard the famous line above and I am sure most of you agree with it. Now let’s try and apply the same logic to people on Twitter. The results are quite startling or obvious depending on how well you have been following trending topics on Twitter. Let me start from the end, I shall try to speak of people, then events and then ideas in the hope that my post goes from small to great! :)

How to become Mr. Popular?

Famous people in real life have no problem in attracting followers on Twitter but I shall first talk of ordinary mortals. I have mentioned this before and I mention this again, Twitter is a very lonely medium for many and it is quite a task for any ordinary person to build a small following.

So how does one really become popular on Twitter?

The answer lies not within Twitter but within the psychology of the human brain. Think about it, what is the most famous pass time of most people and also who is the most popular among your real life friends or family circle?

The one who cracks the best jokes or more decently put, people with a good sense of humour are always popular. Women even list sense of Humour as a trait above good looks when it comes to choosing a mate. And most favourite pastime? No it is not sex or soccer, it is gossip. The one with the most interesting gossip tit bits to share usually tends to form the largest circle of friends or shall I take the liberty to call them bluntly the circle of bitchers!

Humour mixed with gossip is the dope on which Twitter runs!

On Twitter, bitching is a favourite national pastime; be it a politician, sportstar, filmstar or any person of any merit, he or she is out in the open to be judged, bitched about and made fun of. Combine humour and bitching together and you have the killer combination. Now go look at the people you enjoy following on Twitter, apart from the usual real life celebs the people you most enjoy following fall under the category that I mentioned above. The humorous bitchers!

The unsophisticated among that lot are labelled as Trolls.

Sadly what the Trolls lack is a refined sense of humour and most of the time don’t know where to draw the line of decency.

Eventful Happenings & People!

Look at the list of trending topics on any day, chances are there are people in the list who the entire nation is bitching about. Whether the person is really worthy of being bitched about or not does not matter. If you don’t do it you are not part of the eventful informed up-to-date crowd.

No individual will ever Trend on Twitter unless he or she is part of an event!

So be it a Sonu Nigam starting a rock band or a Rajdeep Sardesai saying a simple goodnight or an Amar Singh dropping his pants, they are worthy enough subjects to be bitched about. And yes there are the real events too that make the trends, like the unfortunate Tsunami in Japan and stuff similar to that, but chances are, the trending topics on any given day are mostly dominated by humorous and bitchable stuff where everyone can add their wisdom.

Twitter is a collective dump yard of wit and sarcasm.

Now that I am almost done talking about People and Events I will take a small detour before I talk of Ideas. I shall delve into the pitfalls that await the ordinary mortals as well as the demi gods that we follow on Twitter.

Faking Wit!

Humour and the art of the rhetoric is a skill that many don’t possess naturally but with the desire to blend into the happening crowd we have a lot of fakers online. The impersonators who copy others tweets and pass them off as their own. This is a phenomenon observed not just in Twitter but also in Facebook. I have noticed highly qualified and distinguished people also fall for this trap. Trap, yes it is a trap, let me tell you why.

Remember that story about the kid and the lion or was it a tiger? The first time the kid called for help to save him from the tiger everybody rushed to help him only to see that the kid was faking it, the same happened the next couple of times too and when eventually the tiger really did turn up the kid cried for help and no one came because they thought it was a hoax again. The kid died in the end, what a sad story.

Same fate awaits all the impersonators, your followers will blindly like your status updates and tweets until that day when they realize that you have been plagiarizing content and then even if you post something original by chance no one will ever believe you. It’s the most dangerous trap you could ever walk into and I can already see many of my dear friends already on the brink of becoming that kid from the jungle.

Plagiarizing tweets and status updates is as good as signing your online death warrant!

There is a simple way to escape this death warrant; all you have to do is mention the source. It sure will increase your credibility and won’t take away anything from your originality. Ok, enough talk about the mortals, let’s talk of the demi gods now, the celebrities.

The ‘I love you’ syndrome!

How many times have you encountered a celebrity showering love on their Twitter followers? Haha! Chances are you feel that love almost every day. Ram Gopal  Varma often wonders how and why celebrities share so much love on Twitter. I shall explain why.

Twitter is a relationship more sacred than marriage!

Once a fan starts following his favourite star on Twitter a sacred bond is formed. The bond is as strong as a marriage. And to keep that marriage alive the stars need to tweet a lot and stay connected forever, the idea is to be genuine and sincere and the easiest way for them to reciprocate this following is by saying ‘I love you’ once in a while just like any married couple does. Once upon a time Shahrukh Khan used to give orgasms every night to his massive amount of followers only to disappear suddenly one night leaving thousands distraught. It is a good sign that he is trying to rebuild his relationship once again with his fans on Twitter. Take the case of Amitabh Bachchan, he is a true gentleman, knows how to maintain a relationship even marking dates for each of his tweets like entries in a diary, shows the big man's sincerity and dedication towards his fans. Salman Khan is another gentleman with a wild side who knows how to keep his fans entertained and never uses Twitter to promote his films unlike many others.

Take the case of Farhan Akhtar, who suddenly resurfaces on Twitter after a gap of two months and before that a gap of some 200 odd days to shower some fake love on his followers. It is pretty obvious for any person with half a brain to see that he is here to promote his film. Why talk about Mumbai roads and other such mundane stuff while slyly trying to promote his film. Better to be real, like that famous line from the movie Good, Bad and the Ugly...

If you want to shoot...shoot, don’t talk!

It is no harm promoting one's stuff on Twitter but being genuine about that and not taking followers for granted is a must. They are like lovers waiting for their beloved and when the celebs vanish without an explanation and come back as if everything is fine then my dear you have no idea what is going on in my mind, you use me like a bitch and I will hate you forever. It's a trap, once you are in, you got to be committed in the relationship.

Oh, was that a bit too harsh, maybe I should have released a promo before the blog post warning you of the malicious content out here like the way Aamir Khan did for Delhi Belly. By the way, did you guys realize that Aamir has divorced Twitter and is now courting Facebook aggressively. At least he is clear about his priorities.

Ok, now let me move on to the last and most important section - Ideas.

Get Idea!

Hmmm! Do I really need to write anything here? All that needs to be done now is for you to Re-Tweet this post so that some of the greatness rubs off on both of us. I hope you get the Idea! ;)

Till then, Cheers!!!

Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

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