The 14 Stages of Twitter

Sorohan, Mike
Twitter has been around since 2006 and has arguably become one of the most influential forms of social media, claiming more than 500 million users worldwide.

Twitter is better than your Journalism 101 professor, because it disciplines you to create a coherent, concise, meaningful story in 140 characters or less—even if that story is simply “OMFG I AM SO DRUNK.”

Working with so few characters requires careful thought, reminiscent of a quote from former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, “That depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes, three days. If half-hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.”

But like most users of social media, Twitter users often go through a life cycle, illustrated by the 14 Stages of Twitter below.

Stage 1
You hear about Twitter from a friend or co-worker. You decide it’s not for you at this time, but you keep it in the back of your mind for future reference. You’re even smug about it, until you realize that you sound exactly like your 85-year-old mother who grew up in the Great Depression and says she doesn’t need a computer--or cable TV or a cell phone, for that matter.

Stage 2
Sometime later, you revisit Twitter and decide you’re ready. You create an account and generate your first tweet, something along the lines of “Hello world, I’m here!” or some other inane, forced thought. Nothing happens.

Here is where you make your first, fatal mistake, because with that first frivolous tweet you have learned Everything About Twitter That You Will Ever Need To Know: that nobody cares what you think, nobody cares what you have to say and nobody is reading what you tweet. This is The First Hard Truth about Twitter, and it is completely lost on you.

Undaunted, you press on, to:

Stage 3
Here you enter the Entry Level Insurance Salesman stage, in which you let family and friends know that you are on Twitter and that their lives will be forever enhanced by following you. And indeed, some of them follow you; one or two even create their own Twitter accounts. Congratulations! You have begun to create your Twitter Empire—you and all three of your followers. And it’s on to:

Stage 4
You decide to expand your Twitter Universe by following celebrities. And a certain excitement comes from that connection with a famous person on Twitter; it’s like you’ve been given a key to their front door—or at least a key to the door of a large room of cubicles in which celebrities stop by from time to time to poke their heads.

So you pick some celebrities. Actually, you pick a lot of celebrities. Movie stars; comedians; politicians; authors; singers; musicians; artists. Your “Following” group reads like an A-List of Who’s Who in the World, from Lady Gaga to Steve Martin. You are connected. And then, you make your next Fatal Twitter Mistake:

Stage 5
You reply to a celebrity’s tweet (also known as “fanning out.”).

You can’t help it. What Your Celebrity tweeted was so pithy, so eloquent in a mere 140 characters or less, that you believe Your Celebrity was talking to you. So naturally, you reply. It takes you three hours to craft your response, writing and rewriting, until you have 140 characters of perfection. After all, it’s a tweet to Your Celebrity—you want to make a good impression. You press “Tweet.” And there it goes!

You imagine Your Celebrity taking a break on the set of his latest movie, sitting in his trailer, pulling out his smart phone to check his account. And there, among his 793,598 followers, he spots your tweet. A smile comes to his face; he chuckles. He clicks on your account; he smiles again; he clicks “Follow” and begins to compose his reply to y--

After 24 agonizing hours in which you haven’t slept or eaten so that you don’t miss the exact moment in which Your Celebrity replies, you learn the Second Hard Truth about Twitter: celebrities don’t care about you, either. And they never did.

Humbled, you move on to:

Stage 6
Your infatuation with celebrities momentarily abated, you decide that the best way to attract celebrities is to become a celebrity. And to do that, you need followers. So you decide to follow everyone. And anyone.

In one burst of Twitter activity, you follow 300 people. Enough of them follow back to make your day. You feel validated—and it only took 14 consecutive hours in which you ignored both sunrise and sunset, your kids, your spouse and the housework. You repeat this process several times until you have enough followers to feel better about yourself.

Stage 6A—Buying FollowersYou might be tempted to inflate your follower list by purchasing followers from companies that charge upwards of $29.95 for 5,000. If you do this, you are a douche. Stop reading this article and go back to tweeting to your fake friends.

Stage 6B—HashtaggingYou also decide that another way to attract new followers is by “hashtagging,” i.e., tweeting to specific subjects by adding a # and a subject line. This is a great way to annoy people and get them to unfollow you. You figure this out after about two months.

Stage 7
Invariably, in your quest to find new people to follow, you discover that some women like to show their breasts and other body parts. Or other people’s breasts and body parts. And they don’t seem to be shy about it at all. They also like to tell everyone how much they enjoy anal sex. It’s amazing how much that occurs on Twitter.

If you’re a guy, you think this is great. So you follow them, even though most of them already have more than 70,000 followers and they only follow 34 and there is virtually no chance that they will ever follow you back.

And if you’re a woman, you discover that men you don’t know follow you. At first, you find this a bit flattering, until you get a DM (direct message) and see that this particular man has sent you a photo of his junk. Or someone else’s junk, pretending that it’s his junk.

For most of you, this is when you learn how to use the “block” feature.

Stage 8
You achieve a breakthrough of sorts. You tweet something that someone actually reads; more importantly, they favorite the tweet. Or even better, they retweet you. This is better than sex, which makes you exactly like most people on Twitter, who aren’t having sex either.

You now discover FavStar, which is a kind of tracking system for your tweets, others’ tweets; and notifies you if you hit certain milestones, such as 20, 50 or 100 “stars” (see favorites). It can be harmless; it can be addicting; and if you’re into rankings, you might just become obsessed.

And speaking of obsessed:

Stage 9
Like everything that feels good, being favorited or retweeted has side effects. This begins the Addiction Phase, in which Twitter begins to consume your life. Your time on Facebook drops noticeably. You sit down to look at Twitter for maybe 30 minutes at most; five hours later, you haven’t moved, your legs are cramping and you’re dehydrated. You vow to get up and move around—just as soon as you catch up on the 13,589 tweets you just missed by using the bathroom.

Stage 10
Not much different from Stage 9, except that you now find yourself thinking in 140-character bursts and incorporating “I’m going to tweet that” into your everyday conversation. You have no clue how annoying this sounds to others.

During this phase you add followers at a steady rate. You also occasionally lose followers. At first you are upset by this and wonder why; eventually, you don’t care. In fact, you don’t care so much that:

Stage 11
You drop the F-bomb for the first time in a tweet. Partly this is because Twitter pretty much desensitizes you to every offensive thing ever thought up by humans. Twitter Nation seemingly has no taboos—nothing is sacred; no word too offensive; no bodily function ignored; no topic off-limits. In that atmosphere, dropping the F-bomb seems downright mundane.

And so you drop the F-bomb. And you lose a number of followers as a result—thinning your herd, as it were, of people who still possess a moral compass. However, you also gain followers, so the lesson learned is: no lesson is learned.

Stage 12
Twitter has now taken over your life. You find yourself getting up earlier in the morning to check in first thing to see if you have any new followers. You wear out your iPhone battery. You wear out your iPhone. Your productivity at work starts to drop off. You forget your kids’ names (face it: you do that anyway, but now you have an excuse).

For the first time, you think about going cold turkey on Twitter. You come up with 15 reasons why you don’t need to be on Twitter anymore. You promise to revisit this issue in a few months.

Stage 13
You continue to spend a lot of time on Twitter—a LOT of time. But the doubts continue. You go through several Twitter Crushes, checking on certain people several times a day. You have a dangerous thought in which you seriously consider going to a “tweet-up,” in which you and other tweeters in your area meet at a bar or restaurant. You exercise self-control.

And by exercising self-control, you realize that your obsession with Twitter has become unhealthy. You vow to do a better job. It’s not easy. A few relapses leave you with the same feeling you have from eating a gallon of ice cream in one sitting—exhilarated in the moment, but kind of sick and regretful afterward. You decide there is only one thing to do:

Stage 14
Twitter has left you jaded, bored and antsy. It’s taken you a while—a long while—but you have finally accepted what you learned in Stage 2: that nobody cares what you do, say or think. And they never did.

So, armed with wisdom and insight of this First Hard Truth about Twitter, you commit Twittercide—you delete your account. In one simple action you release a burden from your shoulders. You rediscover your life. You luxuriate in all your new-found free time.

And then you think about starting fresh, with a new Twitter account. Because, Twitter.