July 18, 2013

10,000 Tweet Milestone!


Yeah, so I finally hit my 10,000th tweet.

I may as well milk this as much as I can, because you only hit 10,000 tweets once.

I never thought I could be truly active on a social network for a long time, but Twitter gave me the opportunity to truly speak my mind on any sort of issue that I wanted to talk about. For the past two and a half years, Twitter has always been my "go-to" social network, and it has been the social network that I have enjoyed the most. I remember the reason why I started to use Twitter in the first place, and the main reason was because of my complete annoyance with Facebook, which I am not very active on anymore. I found that the things I saw on Twitter were much more positive than the negativity and phoniness I regularly saw on Facebook, so naturally, I gravitated towards Twitter, and I haven't looked back since.

I would say that about half of my total tweets were about footy/soccer. Whether it was about Toronto FC, Manchester United, or anything else that was in the world of footy, it's pretty obvious that by reading my tweets, a reader can tell that I am footy mad. The other half of my total tweets are about, well, everything else. Usually, it was about the things that go on in my life, whether it was about school or something else. I always tried to strike a balance between the readers that follow me for my footy tweets and the readers that follow me for the other things going on in my life.

I remember when I first started up on Twitter in the beginning of 2011, and looking back on it now, my early tweets were pretty shit, in the grammatical sense, and also that my tweets were very boring. Some of my tweets, when looking back, were also a bit cringe-worthy. I only talked to about two people since the start of my account, one of them I still talk to regularly to this day, and the other I don't really talk to now (let's just say, she got replaced). In the beginning months of my Twitter account, I would talk about anything and everything that came up in my mind, from dirty song lyrics to the attractive woman that passed me on the street that I really wanted to have sex with. Nothing was off limits. Hell, I even talked about what I truly wanted when it came to my love life.

The follower count started to rise, and I started to have more valued conversations with a number of Twitter users. Occasionally I would get the angry disagreement or hater trying to make me feel bad, but overall, the conversations I had on Twitter were overwhelmingly positive. From the Twitter account, it was also the basis for the creation of my blog, which serves as my extended thoughts that I couldn't fit into my Twitter account. Also, this may be a bold statement coming from me, but I would like to think that I pioneered the use of Twitter among my university friends. As soon as I started to use Twitter, one by one, my university friends followed suit, so go ahead and call me a trendsetter.

The months and years passed, I interacted with more people, my follower count kept rising, and I continued to tell my stories and talk about my experiences. And it all led me to today where after two and a half years, I finally reached that milestone of 10,000 tweets. I know a lot of people that use Twitter reach that milestone in almost no time at all, but I would like to have the vast majority of my tweets have some sort of quality and substance, and I also don't really like to bombard the timelines of my followers with constant tweets (except when a footy match is on).

As much as I truly love Twitter, I feel like these days, my tweets haven't been up to the standard that I want it to be. I remember back in 2011 and a good chunk of 2012 when I truly had free reign over what I wanted to tweet, but ever since, let's say, September 2012, I felt like my tweets were getting to be a bit boring, and I felt like I lost that free reign. I couldn't really tweet anything explicit anymore, except for a few swears, and my early Twitter followers know how much I love tweeting explicitly. Maybe I'm a bit more mature now, or maybe I'm not trying to offend and/or disgust all my followers. Actually, I'm afraid that one day I may write a careless tweet that exposes certain feelings about certain people. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to bring my Twitter account to its former glory. I'm going to try to be as witty, funny, and explicit (within reason) as I possibly can.

I just want to say that I value each and every one of my Twitter followers, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations I've had with you all over the months and years. Some of these conversations actually helped me through some tough times, and for that I am grateful.

Well, here's to 10,000 more...cheers!