Get A Life

Someone follows you on twitter, someone you have never interacted with before.  They like a few of your tweets and they hang around.  A day or two goes by and you tweet something divisive, and the person that followed you unfollows.  What do you do?

I would like to think most people would dismiss the whole thing and move on with their lives.  Not everyone in life is going to agree with you and the thing about platforms like twitter is that people use them to connect with people they do agree with, not those they don't.  People use them to be a place of enjoyment not a place of misery, a place of entertainment and time consumption, not a place of conflict.

There are those however who seem to labour under the assumption that if someone follows them they are bound to follow them for evermore.  People who seem to labour under the assumption that you have to agree with them and it is their life goal to have everyone agree with them.

Putting aside the ludicrous nature of such an endeavour, I find it somewhat amusing that some people are so vested in their social media presence that they actually get annoyed by losing a follower.  If you're that concerned about an arbitrary number declining then you might want to take a step back and look at your life.  I genuinely wonder about the mental health of people who seem to determine their life's worth by how many likes, retweets, and followers they can get.  At least for those whose jobs rely on their success on social media there is some excuse for their actions but even then you should understand key demographics and target audiences enough to know that if people disconnect from you because they don't like your content then they aren't part of your key demographic, and no product or service can appeal to absolutely everyone.

Some people take social media far too seriously though and that is a problem, more so for them than for anybody else yet they will be the last person to recognise it as a problem.  These people hound, harass, and at times end up stalking those who didn't agree with them and moved on with their lives.  The irony is, by using social media in this way they are essentially crying out for help but the vast majority of people on social media will recognise such confrontational behaviour as a red flag and will actively avoid engaging to provide any such help.

Social media brings out the worst in people and enables these neuroses to flourish.  Fixating on what people think who you have never met, never will meet, had little or no interaction with, and who you know nothing about is not healthy.