Change Of Heart

I have lately started doing a thing that I once swore I wouldn't do- something that I hated. I'm pretty active on Twitter, but for all of my effort since I got very serious about it, I have struggled to attract a very sizable following. I suspect that a part of it is my antipathy towards chasing trends. Twitter is heavily composed of trends, and it happens to be a big way in which anyone gains a following beyond their own friends.

I never have much gone for writing tweets for trending hashtags, and I always hated seeing them from those who I follow. I always tolerated it, but I hated it. Finally, I had a conversation with a friend who had done it, and he talked about the practical gains in followers he'd made based on things like live-tweeting wrestling matches and doing this thing called Hashtag Wars from a show called "@Midnight". Several days a week, they post some combination of two things, and the goal is writing funny combinations of them both. A recent one was "Failed Sports Teams", so you write examples of what that would be.

My approach, and that of most people, is to engage in wordplay. You take already existing things, like the Arizona Diamondbacks, and find some way of tweaking them, such as replacing Arizona with "Dustin", thus making a hopefully hilarious reference to the former "Saved By The Bell" actor. I love wordplay, and I really would like to do better on Twitter, and so I have managed to overcome my early reluctance.

It's not all good. Any of the people observing the game play out or participating in the game can help you by favoriting or retweeting you, or by following you. The big prize is getting such attention from the show itself, perhaps even getting mentioned on the air. I find, as I do in many cases, that they don't exercise the same judgement that I would. Often I have been frustrated to have my tweets ignored in favor of what I consider to be inferior ones. I have not get gotten retweeted by the show, let alone put on the air, but I expect that sooner or later I will. I shall persevere.