This is my policy on handling Twitter followers. It’s really simple, and it’s driven by my desire to not be used as an ego-boost for people with nothing to contribute to society. You may think this is arrogant, or that I am an asshole; my response to either of those things is, “Hello, have we met?” You may think it’s foolish and that I am leaving followers on the table that might help me promote myself, to which… well, look, I want to promote my work, but I have standards.
So:
There are people I follow because they are informative or entertaining. It does not bother me if they don’t interact with me, because I understand they get a metric assload of @mentions. It does not bother me if they don’t follow back, because we’re not pals. Their value to me is in what they say, and I’m perfectly content with just letting them say it.
There are people I follow because they are my pals. (Duh.) Since they’re my pals, they follow me back. (Duh.)
There are people I follow because they have caught my interest for one reason or another. I may unfollow them later if they don’t follow back, or they may move to the first category.
Lastly, there are people I follow back because they have followed me, and are real people who are either friends of friends (in which case I’m going to give them a chance to be friends, obviously) and/or are following me because of my work on SBN or TOG or just because they’re interested in what I have to say and it would be fucking rude NOT to follow them back. Besides, they may end up falling into another category as a result.
However, there are also people I will immediately, without hesitation, block as soon as I see they’ve followed me, and I’m more than likely to use the “Block and Report Spam” button when I do it. Spammers go without saying, of course. Networkers… if your profile talks about your use of social media, and/or if it’s obvious from perusing your profile that you’re just gathering followers for the sake of gathering followers because you, being a dumbass, think that’s important… blocked. Get the fuck off Twitter while you’re at it, you goddamn leech. If you’re following me just so you can pimp your business or whatever… blocked, and possibly reported as spam unless there seems to be a valid reason why you may have targeted me. (I’m an asshole, but I can at least understand certain attempts to market to me.) And I may even block you even if you seem to be a real person, but you have never interacted with me or follow anyone I know… because if you have absolutely no connection to me, I will assume you’re just trying to get a followback to pad your follower count.
Finally, if your account is locked, you follow me, I immediately follow you back, but you don’t acknowledge my follow request in a reasonable amount of time… I will assume your intentions are no good and block. If I’m not around when you follow me, I won’t follow back until such time as you interact with me, but I won’t block either. At such time as you interact with me (and I’m around when you do), I’ll then follow back, and you’re on the clock as if I’d been around when you followed me to begin with. (This one annoys me, as it’s my opinion that if you follow someone, their followback should automatically come with the presumption you wish to accept their follow request. Get on that, Twitter.)
You may notice that it seems like it’s an either-or proposition, and you’re mostly right. I love the block button, and use it liberally… but if you’re not someone I think deserves to be blocked, then I almost certainly feel you’re someone who deserves the courtesy of being followed back.
