In an attempt to remedy my Facebook problem, which seems in line with yours - people who know me can see what I post, therefore I can't post what I really want! - I created a Twitter account where I only followed the few friends that knew me very well and so would either be amused by or ignore my shenanigans, and then followed, you know, celebrities and the like. I then proceeded to use it to post whatever flippant comments I wanted to, regardless. Over time I amassed more followers, some of whom knew me, and some of those whom at some point in time started bitching about the way I use hashtags. Because sometimes I like to be #gratuitous. At that point I was like #fuckem and "If you don't like my hashtags, you can unfollow me." I think at the point where you (general you, not specific you) are complaining about your real-life friends' use of social media in real life, and over such minor, nit-picky details such as those - just unfollow them. Clearly you care far too much about regulating their use of the internet, and I'm not going to change the way I post on an account I created specifically so I could feel free to post whatever I wanted however I wanted because my hashtags annoy someone. But I've also somehow amassed followers just by tweeting at other people I kind of know on Twitter! And you know what? These anonymous people don't find me annoying. They tweet back at me. They ask me about my life. Sometimes, they even find me funny. (I like being funny.) Today for instance I posted "swoon" which spawned a conversation with a near-stranger (an internet friend?) about why I was swooning in which I got to propose that I was probably a serial killer. Because on this account I'm free to be as ridiculous as I want, and say whatever I want to. I think the brevity of the medium helps with this. If I had to write longer posts I would try to make them more meaningful. Twitter is perfect for sending flippant little quips out into the world. I suppose part of my solution was deciding I didn't care if everyone liked me - but it's a lot safer to do that in an online medium where you mostly know no one, and the ones you do know you trust to like you anyway. But Twitter. If you like being silly and flip online and often have little snarky things to say....try Twitter. I'll follow you. And I promise, I won't bitch about your hashtags. (Or, you know, whatever.)
First off, thanks for this post, it's got me thinking. Your idea to create a Twitter account is a very good idea but I don't think it's something for me. I like being silly but I don't like the pressure of having to post something every once in a while just to keep the followers interested. What I do have however is the need to vent thoughts somewhere. I'm still running with the idea in my head of starting a webcomic of some sort. But I am at the I-need-to-do-a-lot-of-work-to-become-any-good-stage of that. Nobody will care is a sentence that does a lot with me. I now try to make stuff in Illustrator every now and then to practice, hopefully I'll be out of that stage before my retirement.I suppose part of my solution was deciding I didn't care if everyone liked me - but it's a lot safer to do that in an online medium where you mostly know no one, and the ones you do know you trust to like you anyway. But Twitter. If you like being silly and flip online and often have little snarky things to say....try Twitter. I'll follow you. And I promise, I won't bitch about your hashtags. (Or, you know, whatever.)