We've all felt the peer pressure. "C'mon! Everyone's doing it. Just try it. It'll change your life." And then you think to yourself, "Well, it could be fun. It's not like I'll get addicted or anything..."
I know I said it, disregarding what some would call an "addictive personality." I just let my life get consumed to the point where I needed it, all the time. And I couldn't stop. While I may have let this happen to me with Facebook and Myspace years ago, I sure as hell wasn't about to get on the Twitter bandwagon!
For months friends and coworkers tried to sell me on Twitter and how much it would help me get through my day. I could not have cared less. I just wanted a clean life where I wasn't constantly advertising myself on the Internet. That part of my life was over. At this point I rarely updated my status on Facebook and barely skimmed other people's updates (After all, it is hard to go cold turkey). Twitter could potentially be the gateway social network that would hook me in and give me way too much information about other people. I planned on avoiding it at all cost.
Then it happened, innocently enough. I was at work. I left my desk to pick up some documents I had just printed. Maybe I shouldn't have made idle conversation with people on my way back to my desk. Maybe then I wouldn't be where I am today.
When I got back to my desk, sitting in my personal email inbox said the following: "Welcoming you to Twitter" from Twitter. My initial reaction was, "This isn't happening. How could I have joined Twitter when I wasn't even near a computer?" Suddenly I noticed in the right hand corner of my FireFox window was a lowercase letter "t" which I now recognize as TwitterFox. Not only that, but when I clicked the "t" I had already left a few tweets. "How is this happening?!?!"
Apparently while I was away, two coworkers (who asked to remain anonymous), hijacked my computer and signed me up. Not only that, but they had taken it upon themselves to ghost write my Twitter, complete with a picture they stole of me from Facebook (Now I know how Lindsay Lohan feels when she sees all her fake impostors out there). Within minutes friends and other coworkers found "me," and started conversations with me over Twitter. Not wanting to give into temptation and tweet, I was powerless to stop it. I could only watch as I said the most ridiculous things imaginable.
Since them I've tried to come to terms with my life on Twitter. My picture is no longer there at my request. I still have yet to tweet for myself, but I do check my TwitterFox regularly. I've even gone as far as to follow people of my own choosing (I mean how else am I going to know Pat Kiernan is in Central Park or Mariah Carey's in her bathtub saying how she failed remedial math). My friends think I'm secretly into it because I bring Twitter up in conversation (and it might be installed on my phone), but for now I'm still resisting going down that slippery slope. Even though my coworkers may have enabled my bad habits, I'm holding out.
Honestly, I know it's probably only a matter of time until I tweet for the first time, but if/when it happens, I want it to be something epic like the following:
Until then, I guess we’re all left with entries like this...
To get more fakey tweets from Matt feel free to follow @BowtieMatt on Twitter. If you'd like to write about something just email me and you might be the next Summer Friday blogger!
Related Things:
- Read all the Summer Friday entries