Twitip

With so many websites, blogs and books available on how to use twitter effectively, I’ve yet to see anyone dedicate an article, post or page on “How to Fight on Twitter“.  And there’s a perfectly good explanation for that–you just don’t do it. When you have a huge social media platform like twitter at your disposal, why would you want to use your 140 characters to spread verbal garbage in a viral way? Shouldn’t we use this tool in a positive manner? But twitter fights are happening daily, in fact I’ve experienced two twitter fights in my twittering career and so this a tale of “Why NOT to fight on Twitter” and the three reasons why.

Since I also VLOG for the beauty industry, I get pampered like no other male Mexican alive. I review spas, beauty treatments and sometimes get to try new beauty advances like eye-lash extensions–yes, they exist. Well, there I was staring into the looking glass – not recognizing myself when I tweeted a before-and-after photo of myself with and without the extensions provided by Wink Eyelash. Several of my followers wanted details, “Where do I get mine?” “Give us the address!” and “Did it hurt?” But in the mixture of all the happy tweets came one lonely tweet that left me confused, dazed and bewildered, “I’m a married woman with children you PERVERT! Stop sending me this trash!” Did she confused me with someone else? See for yourself – click here for the photo I’d posted. I tweeted back, “I’m not sure why you think I’m flirting with you but I’m not.” And in a flash, several of my followers joined in and tweeted in my defense. The exchanges were flying higher than Amy Winehouse after a crackfest. I asked everyone to stop tweeting the woman and just blocked her. Well, in the morning, I had 10 evil tweets from her husband threatening to hurt me and my new eyelashes.

Three weeks ago, I received a call from a Literary Agent asking me for a meeting, as it turns out, she found me through twitter and had been reading my blog and now wanted to work on a “blog-to-book” deal. We met the following week, exchanged ideas and are moving forward with the project. After the meeting, and after keeping my followers in suspense, I let the cat out of the bag and tweeted about the book deal. I received so many congratulating tweets and since I follow my own advice on engaging with my followers, I tweeted people back saying thank you. But since there were so many, I did it in clumps. And if you follow me, you know me and my off-beat sense of humor; one group got, “Thanks for the support! This Mexican hearts YOU!” another received “Yay! You all ROCK now get back to work!” and the last group got, “Yay, Skanks! We did it!” Wouldn’t you know, I immediately got tweets that said, “Yay! I’m a Nando skank!” and “Nando skank for life!” but in the mixture was, “Don’t you ever call me a skank, you will speak to me with respect!” I didn’t recognize the name, but I replied, “Child, if you follow me, you gotta get used to the Mexican, I ain’t changing for no one.” And she replied, “I’m not a child, I am a grown woman and will be treated as such.” I clicked on her page, she wasn’t following me nor I her. What was she doing retweeting my happy-book-deal-tweet in the first place? (But that’s another article) I saw she had 30 followers and was following 150. I hate to be a twitter snob, but I had a feeling she didn’t know how to use twitter and mistook this forum as a Jerry Springer message board; I blocked her. Later in the day, I went back to her page–cause I’m a nosy Mexican–and discovered it was full of tweets to her 30 followers on how she “had to put a punk in his place.” I also noticed that she had a few negative tweets about other twitter-ers as well. I believe her bio said she was a motivational speaker and author.

I’m sure you’re thinking, is twitter really a place to call your followers skanks? Well, it is over in NANDOISM world – because I have the best followers ever… but just for the record, I haven’t used the word skanks since then – but the point is, even if you didn’t like what I tweeted, send me a DM, ask for an e-mail address, or even request a phone call, but to start using twitter to infect the information super highway with your negative thoughts and then to rally others in your cause is just bad. Twitter fights are wrong for three reasons.

1. Negative tweets discredit your  status. No one will really take you serious if your a dating blogger ranting and raving or complaining about your day. I don’t have time to read your negative tweets. I was casted as the main character of my own telenovella 34 years ago and don’t need your constant negativity. And in her case, an author? I don’t want to read her stuff.

2. Twitter Fights make you look petty. A friend of mine, @TheUngayGuy got celebrity twitter-er @KirstieAlley all wound up and fuming when he snarkly remarked about scientologists traveling to Haiti with e-meters rather than medicine. That twitter fight got ugly because Kirstie went mad crazy, used profanity and extremely vulgar language to get her point across – but in the end, it cost her thousands of twitter followers.

3. Just leaves a bad digital footprint. With everything being indexed and easily linked to your name, accounts, online persona, why leave a digital footprint the size of big foot associated with online fights? It may seem like a worthy cause at the moment, but in the long run, the very long run, it will leave a damaging effect that’ll haunt you possibly making you lose clients, followers and friends.

So the next time you feel the heat of a twitter fight coming on – take a deep breath, eat a donut, or just take a break from the internet because the cost is just too high. Have you seen twitter fights in your stream? How do you react to them?