Twitter's New Meme

Internet memes are funny little buggers; they can vary from how long they last, to what they can do. For example, Kristina Horner's forehead was a meme for a while. It was a pointless, insulting meme (note: a meme - pronounced meem... I know - is something that lots of people use/discuss on the Internet) and it amounted to nothing. The Brotherhood 2.0 project that exists around the lives of John and Hank Green began other memes, like 'world suck', 'the puff', 'the Katherine' and the famous 'Don't Forget to be Awesome'. And on Twitter...

Duncan's Dream. This is, in short, perhaps the worst of all, because it encourages spam. Entrepreneur and Dragon's Den star Duncan Bannatyne began this (someone else named it) on his Twitter account, and since then, lots of his followers have responded positively to it. It involves following all of Duncan's followers, with them following you back, so that you also end up with over 90,000 followers.

The problem? Not everyone wants in on this. I don't, for one. I don't care that people want more followers if the only reason they follow me is to achieve that goal. Duncan's Dream is a joke! What he may want may not be what everyone else wants. If I wanted more followers, I'd follow Bannatyne myself and join in on this little treasure hunt of obscurity and attention-seeking. Actually, scratch that - I do want more followers, but not because of Bannatyne. I want to be followed for the express purpose that people want to follow me, not because people me to follow them. If someone likes what I have to say, or simply that I'm a writer, or they know me or someone recommends that they follow me, then fine, I'm happy with that. That's how I'd like for people to decide to follow me.

Want to know something funny? Bannatyne wants his followers to follow each other, but he doesn't do the same thing. He follows less than 120 people. So... hypocrite much? He can contribute to their followings if he follows them, too. But will he? Probably not. Go on Bannatyne - if you really care that people follow your dream, follow all of your followers. All of them. Even the ones that keep following you every day. All the new ones, all the old ones. That's fair, right?

Twitter is so full of spam... now thousands of people are involved in it. Naturally, I express my distaste for Duncan's Dream, because it's getting me followers I don't want. Will I delete them? No. I want them to perhaps see that I disapprove of why they're following me.

This has been a bitter writer, on his way to Facebook where strangers can't bother me. My friends on Twitter don't bother me, of course. They're pretty amazing. Conversation with strangers on Twitter is also fun, if it's not an argument. But spam? Never!