Twitter: The Five Most Annoying Things You Can Do

In this week’s cover feature, “The Twitterverse”, we dive into the world of Twitter to spotlight some of the best things going with the social networking hub, and also uncover some of the worst things permeating the site.

We talked to tweeting Texans in Dallas and Houston to get their take on the social media phenomenon, tracing it from it’s beginnings in San Francisco all the way to the behemoth it is now, boasting now over 75 million accounts and counting.

There is no doubt that it can be a fun way to meet new and interesting folks and get involved in your community, especially in Houston. But the fact of the matter is that some users are still utterly clueless when it comes to interacting on the site.

Sadly, there are no classes you can take to learn how to use Twitter correctly as of yet, so we offer you these five ways you can make the Twitterverse a better place.

Before we begin, can we please pin down exactly what “FTW” means? Some
of you say it means “for the win” while others say it stands for “fuck
the world.” Personally, we prefer the latter for obvious reasons.

5. Foursquare
We
don’t care where you are at all times of the day, nor do we want to
know that you scored an “Explorer” badge at Ikea. Stop tweeting your
Foursquare updates like you are your own paparazzo. It’s actually
torturing us to the very core of our being to know that you are at
Fuddruckers with three other people who have also just tweeted that they
are with you. Please keep some things your own little secret, like
being the “mayor” of your proctologist’s office.

4. Amway Tweets
We
love free things, but we aren’t about to sacrifice a bit of our soul to
tweet that we signed up in order to win a new shiny piece of plastic from a
sketchy website. You sound like a spambot, and we block and report those
kinds of things as spam on the regular with a gleeful grin. Do you know
anyone personally or even through your vast and varied following of 86
people that has won an iPad in an online sweepstakes? We have unfollowed
people outright for less offensive crimes.

3. Think McFly, Think!
Don’t
lovingly tweet about wishing to be heavily involved in charity work
around town, and five minutes later blast the fat sweaty guy you see
walking down the street to delight your followers. Also, make sure if
you are going to use the #FAIL hashtag, that you spell check every
single word that precedes it. We hat when you do thot, 2.

2. Talking
About What You Are Eating
Big deal, you can afford Kobe beef for
lunch when we are experimenting with making ramen noodles for
breakfast. Just because you had the foresight to get a well-paying job
that allows you to visit restaurants that have working bathrooms and
don’t reuse disposable utensils doesn’t mean we have to know about it.
And don’t say “nom nom” when something tasted really damned good. If you
are a five-year old with a Twitter account, it’s adorable. If you are a
grown-ass man, it’s creepy.

1. TMI Doesn’t Make Us LOL
A wise
person once told us that the secret of being boring is saying
everything. We like you enough to follow you on Twitter, but we still
don’t care about how great your new foot lotion smells or when you are
going to bed. When you do that you aren’t adding an endearing dimension
to your personality for us to see, you are actually showing us how
starved you are for attention.