Wednesday, 28 November 2012

CONFESSION of a Kenyan Twitter Addict … TRUE STORY


Hello, my name is Leo.


To be honest, when I first joined twitter I hated it. I did not know who to talk to and everyone seemed to be too serious. I was never among the ‘cool’ kids because I had few followers. My lack of self esteem due to a low follower count prompted me to take some action and come up with some ‘Get Re-tweets or die trying’ strategies.


I did it all…. Contributed to some meaningless trending topic, re-tweeted porn on Titty Tuesday, abused people, stole jokes and pretended that I had a problem with my handset so that Safaricom Care would mention me with the infamous ‘Please re-boot your device’ tweet. All these strategies made my follower count rise significantly.


I never seemed to have enough though. Since I was a lonely soul (a life member of Team Forever Alone) I decided to invest the time I would have used looking for a partner to tweet. I had the urge to become relevant on twitter even though deep inside I knew that my real life sucked.


Twitter became my fantasy world. I could become anybody I projected to be. I could complain about my car (which I took on a loan that I am still servicing), twitpic my holiday(which our company paid for), criticise the government(even If I was not a registered voter) and belittle students even if I owned no business of my own.


The approval I got from twitter was an ego boost. Every day, some kiss ass specialist made me feel like I was doing something relevant in the world even if I was just a guy in my boxers who was stealing his neighbor’s wi-fi.


My twitter reputation elevated my status such that newbie girls thought of me as a cool guy. Since I had a large follower count I could easily flirt with them. In reality, they were out of my league but twitter (with the help of photoshop and instagram) made things much easier for me.


If I was feeling lonely and had a serious case of insomnia, I would just log in… Tweet about it and voila, my various crushes would send me some sympathy tweets. I felt like the king(even though I rarely got phone calls and nobody texted me in real life).


The discovery of memes was a life-changing experience for me. I could finally use pictures to deliver funny punch-lines without being actually funny. I developed a meme suited for every ‘dumb’ question from my followers. The fact that they got re-tweeted much gave me a sense of belonging in the world (even though I was still in my boxers stealing wi-fi).


If twitter was to be on my C.V I would describe myself as ‘Avi zooming specialist, Critic of anything done by anyone with a cause, latest series watcher, list reading and writing blogger, grammarnazi, Re-tweet specialist, PhoneOperating System referral, beauty analyst and fantasy sports team manager( KOT can all manage football better than wenger).


As we speak, I am still tweeting and worrying about my rising un-follower count. I am still complaining about the price of concerts I never planned to attend. I am laughing at people who make spelling errors. I am referring to people as ‘OOMF’ because deep inside I am a sissy that’s afraid of confrontation. I am still being less than productive in the work place. I am using my telephone in traffic because I have to report ‘Twitter big stick’.


Leo.

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