Screenwriting Manifesto

Someday Twitter will get its bits together and stop the flood of sexbots and other spammy followers that glom on to users accounts. That, or Twitter will become the next Internet wasteland, like MySpace. Already, many of my Facebook friends don’t see the point of also having a Twitter account, and with Facebook users have much more control of who gets into their inner circle. Come to think of it, I’ve never been spammed on Facebook.

I still find Twitter useful, or at least, the idea of Twitter. But I don’t want to give any hint of legitimacy to spammy followers, so I block them. Daily. And sadly, it’s getting harder to tell who is a spammer and who is just a dumbass tweeting random, misspelled, grammatically dubious crap on their Twitter account.

So if you aren’t a spammer (or even if you are) and you’re wondering why I blocked you, these are the red flags:

• Your user name is a mash-up of random letters and numbers…and so is your “real” name. lucyxw_w3894, I blocked you.
• Your avatar is either the generic Twitter avatar or an impossibly sexy girl…even if your name is Dan.
• Your website is a shortened link so I won’t know that shor.ty/ALKD348/ leads to makemillionsinyourunderwear.com until I click it.
• Your bio is nonexistent or talks about how you turned your life around with one simple website|product|deity
• Your tweets all happen to be about current trending topics
• Your tweets don’t make any sort of chronological sense — you just got back from a day at the beach and now you’re taking the kids to school.
• Your tweets are famous quotes and sayings, often cut off at the 140 character limit.
• You promote or believe in something I criticized. Aren’t you even paying attention?

If you are a real person and you have several of these flags — why? What the blazes is wrong with you? And, you get blocked. I don’t have time for spammers, and I don’t have time for people so stupid they look like spammers.