#Twatigue

I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a grumpy cow at the best of times, and until now I've always used “online” life as a bit of an escape from the stresses of real life. What happens, however, when the tables are turned and the virtual world becomes the irritant?

I’ve written before about my love of Twitter, and how it can act as a virtual watercooler for a hermit like me who hides away works at home all day. A recently study apparently declared Twitter to be more addicitive than heroin (don’t ask me to quote a source on that), and yes, for a long time now I’ve probably had to agree. And yet...around ten days or so ago, I “turned off” the timeline from my Twitter app, leaving only a column for @ mentions or direct messages open (you know, just in case anyone desperately couldn’t live without me).

I was probably spending way more time lurking than actually chatting anyway to be honest, and the list of apparent crimes of others that sent me into a rage seemed to get longer by the day, namely:

-LONG lists of #FF recommendations
-Retweets of long lists of #FF recommendations
-Nothing but bad news (ok, not necessarily a Twitter problem, but more a media problem in
general, but there came a point where it all just got a bit much and I had to hide my head in the
sand)
-The nagging feeling that I am permanently being sold something...
-THE SAME JOKES over, and over, and over
-“Fake” celebrity accounts doing the “RT this and I’ll follow you” – RTd by twenty different
people
-Twitter Parties/Hashtag games/Reality TV shows (and yes, I know I can be as guilty of the last
myself, so I do try and limit myself, and at least there is the option to mute)
-The urge some people feel to reply “publicly” to EVERY SINGLE COMMENT they have so that
everyone in their timeline sees every conversation. Especially if it’s praise of themselves.

So Twitter, we need some time apart. It’s probably not you, it’s me. I've been flirting with that google plus thing you know. It's much more peaceful over there...

(Hopefully a lovely Cypriot sojourn will help sort me out!)