Keep Your Twitter (Real Life) Friendships Healthy By Cheating

It’s August 2014. Last night I was at a party, I’m a college student and sometimes I attend parties. This party was much like any other; you had the people who had consumed too much alcohol, the people who hadn’t consumed enough, and the weirdoes just taking in their surroundings (me.)

A grown man, 20 years old, confronted another 2o year old, (also fully grown) about something that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be a confrontational topic at a college party. Then it happened. The words came out of his mouth. It was one of those things where they say something and you just pretend you didn’t hear it, so you suppress it because there is no way they actually said it.

“Why did you unfollow me on twitter?”

Whoa, the question with no correct response. Does one question in 2014 carry more punch than that one right there? What do you respond with? Obviously you unfollowed them because their tweets either:

A. Suck

B. Happen too often

C. A &B.

Can you just say that to a person’s face though? I’ve been in this position, never was the person as butt hurt as the person last night. I think every time I was confronted I ended up unwillingly following the person back again. Real life pressures carrying over into my social media life, how could I let this happen?

There’s always the opt out answer when asked this question. “I didn’t know I unfollowed you.” Completely putting the blame on a twitter app that works properly 99.99% of the time probably isn’t the best idea, but for some reason it works. The person somehow is okay with the fact that you just lied about how you unfollowed them. They know you did, but their brain craves that follow, so they’re fine with you lying in person, to give them gratification online.

I think that’s why people take it so seriously; twitter is essentially your thoughts thrown out to the world. It’s one giant diary, if someone read your diary and didn’t like it, you’d be offended, that’s you at your core (granted we don’t put everything online, and some of us more than others) but twitter is you at your mental core. The thing is, twitter knew this. They knew that you hate all the people you follow but you enjoy their real life friendship (maybe), and since your social media relationship determines your real life one you need to keep it in a positive light (actually).

I actually discovered this feature by reading an article on the site, by Paul Cantor, who is an amazing writer, and you should go follow him on twitter, or medium, because he’s as good as it gets. I decided to take what he wrote and do a different interpretation of, so I’m doing my best Elvis impersonation journalistically.

There’s a mute button. That button you probably never use on your TV remote, but probably have used on a Nicki Minaj music video has made its way to twitter. You can remove someone from your timeline without actually unfollowing them.

Essentially it’s pretending to like someone when you talk to them, but not like them when you aren’t talking to them, except in social media form. This feature should end the age old (ok probably only 2–3 year-old) question of

“Why did you unfollow me on twitter?”

I really hope we see a decline of this question, I want my parties to go back to consisting of somebody arguing about the Blackhawks vs. Blues, or Hoodie Allen vs. Mike Stud, I really don’t want to hear about your twitter unfollow stories, so let me fully enjoy my time in college by utilizing that mute button.

Happy muting.