Five Types of People You Shouldn’t Follow on Twitter

For the most part, my Twitter experience has been good. I try to keep my timeline clean of drama and those who support it, but some people get past the filter. Fortunately, that “unfollow” button hasn’t been problematic for me. Unfortunately, there are some people on Twitter who make life hard for themselves and other tweeters. I’ve cultivated a list of types of people whom you should never follow on Twitter. Click that “unfollow” button on that negative/dramatic/Debbie-or-Dougie Downer/hateful person, boo boo.

Here goes:

1. Anyone with “Patriot,” “God & Guns,” “Gun Loving,” “Constitutional Conservative,” “Militant Atheist,” or “Anti-Obama,” in their bio. These people will just irritate you. They spend all day searching for words like “Sarah Palin is an idiot,” “Jesus saves,” “Michelle Malkin is a *****,” “I like Obama,” and proceed to troll you all day and take your tweets out of context. They tell their online cohorts and they descend upon your fortress of solitude. Militant atheists attack you for your faith-based beliefs while they evangelize their non-beliefs. You look at your mentions like how the last refugee out of a war zone looks around at their homeland wondering how this happened. Click that “unfollow” button on those people and make your timeline a peaceful place. Also, click “block”.

2. Misogynists. These men hate women. They will always make fun of some woman on Twitter or Instagram, pick apart her features and outfit, say how much she’s “trash” and how she’s probably a “ho” or “slut”. They’ll end it by saying that she’ll never find a man to love her. Meanwhile, the man doing all this tweeting looks like a cyst growing on Jabba the Hutt’s 22^nd chin and probably has a daughter with a woman whose appearance isn’t even half of the women he tears down on Twitter daily. Picking apart Beyoncé but your girl look like Susan Boyle.

3. “Feminists”. I have to put that in quotes. My problem with fake feminists on Twitter is that they seem to be more in it for themselves than serving any larger cause of feminism or equality – both women and men. Certain ones just sit online all day long and tweet angrily about anything – from a man paying a sincere compliment saying that the woman looks nice with a new hairdo (“HE CALLED ME PRETTY! HOW DARE HE?!” – I think some of these “feminists” actually hate men as much as some men hate women. Also, I know that street harassment is real but it ain’t ALL street harassment) to everyone laughing at a joke, but then hijacking the conversation to pontificate about how white women wrongly inject race and gender into their jokes. How did we get here? Noboby’s s’posed to be here! I’ve unfollowed quite a few of these narcissists who don’t actually help the cause of feminism. They’re just angling for a TV spot and a book deal. Those who do the work, from what I see, don’t have a lot of time to tweet about it. Because, you know, they’re working and effecting change online and offline, like Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady).

4. “Activists”. More quotes. There are real activists and I’m making friends with some who are out there making a difference in the world. HOWEVER, they ain’t all activism all the time. They have a variety of interests and tweet about them in addition to their activism, which is their passion. These “Twactivists” (does that work? “Twitavists”?) ONLY tweet about something related to their activism. And it’s not from them being on anybody’s front line fighting for something. Like, everyone could be watching Scandal and just enjoying the show, but they’ll watch and tweet blog posts about the underlying themes of the show and how we all should be conscious while watching. “Go Fleet and relax already. My brain is taking an hour off. Go away!” *Unfollow* *Block* (Internet activism can be useful to get some things to see airtime in media and maybe provoke a political change, but a lot of people only do online activism and consider themselves serious change agents.)

5. Idiots. These people are either negative all the time or wriet twets lik thi. They’ve probably shown up on @Luvvie’s dumbest tweets Tumblr. They are the stars of Worldstar Hip Hop fight videos or are fake “deep”. For example – “We need to value our own culture above that of white culture because their culture oppressed us for so long. Buy only black movies, even if they’re bad.” Uh huh. Quality, good stories, and good acting be damned? I’m neither supporting Nollywood, the Trois Series, nor Scary Movie 4 or True Blood after Season 4 (I’m just riding out the wave now). I am capable of being proud of my culture, my race, and still like things from white culture. I feel it makes me well-rounded. #TeamNickiMinaj #TeamLilKim #TeamIggyAzalea #AlwaysHereForFriends #AlwaysHereForLivingSingle #StayMad

This is a small cross-section of my list of people to not follow to make Twitter a better experience. Basically, just don’t follow anyone who is angry and “shock” tweets every day (including holidays) from 8 a.m. until 8 a.m. and you’ll be at least 50% ahead of the game. Who are some other types of people we shouldn’t follow on Twitter?

Tags: Activism, featured, Feminism, Feminist, Idiots, Misogynist, Misogyny, Politics, Twitter

Category: Politics