Did you just give me homework?

I’ve always loved reading. In school, I avidly consumed every book my teachers handed me and I loved them all – right up until the point the assignment questions started rolling in.

Way to ruin a good read.

The funny thing was, I’m pretty sure my teacher’s weren’t that interested in the assignments, either. If they’d really wanted to know my opinion on 1930’s race politics or morality in the face of survival it would have been different, as in better, as in not incredibly, incredibly irritating. But they had to do it as part of their job, and we had to reply as part of ours.

For some reason, various blogging gurus who have completely forgotten what it’s like to have a whole book ruined by a disinterested teacher forcing himself to hand out assignment questions have decided it would be great to advise everyone to ruin their blog posts in exactly the same way.

PLEASE DO NOT RUIN YOUR BLOG POSTS IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. You see, it’s not really my job to reply to irritating questions which ruin my reading these days.

If a question comes up, then by all means, shoot. But forcing yourself to end every single post with a little piece of tangentially-related homework and politely pretending (or not bothering to pretend) to care about the responses is not only patronising, it gives me flashbacks to when I was fourteen (not a highlight of my life).

So if you don’t have a burning question, just let it go. I’m more likely to comment and not-hate your blog that way.

Lessons in Social Media: STFU

You know how it’s great to have people around to talk to, except those who talk and talk and talk and completely monopolise the conversation?

And you know how social media gurus are always telling people to talk and talk and talk and completely monopolise the conversation as if we won’t do the equivalent of quietly excusing ourselves to the bathroom and accidentally not making it back?

Yeah, why do they do that?

I get that it was working five minutes ago, and maybe it’s still working today, but as we (the collective “we”) work out what to do with social media, aren’t we all learning to sort contacts into categories, some of which we completely ignore because they just talk. all. the. damn. time?

Aren’t we identifying those in our world as “close friends” or “family” or “model train enthusiasts” or “people who drone on incessantly like, seriously, he puts up a new blog post every day and tweets on the hour”, and then quietly not conversing with the excessive talkers in favour of being anywhere, anywhere else?

Here’s my idea: shut the fuck up!

It’s easier to add more if you’re not relying on a small number of readers to carry the burden of response AND if you have the resources to be awesome ten times a day. You’ll still get relegated to my “wow, do you ever breathe?” list, but I’ll tune in once in a while to add an “mm-hmm” to the flow of noise. (Which may or may not be worth the effort of being awesome ten times a day as opposed to just the once.)

Otherwise, unless you’re actually CNN you should keep a lid on it from time to time. And if you are CNN, man, same narrow set of headlines over and over, really? There is real stuff happening out there.

JustUnfollow: The Perfect App for Anyone Who Likes To Act Like A Highschooler

JustUnfollow.com is the greatest app ever. Since it matured into a “holistic friend management platform” it’s helped 5 million users find their “right friends” – from which we should presumably conclude that “right” friends are those who like to be “managed”. Which I guess makes me a “wrong” friend.

Happily, most of my friends are also “wrong” friends who don’t appreciate being ditched if they have a busy month and can’t tweet, and find it somewhat childish that someone would pretend to like them and then suddenly drop them if they don’t pretend to like the person back. Not to deny the basic reciprocity of human social interactions, but honestly, if you need an app to work out who’s still interested in you, maybe it’s not them.

Or here’s an idea. Follow people if you’re interested in what they have to say. Follow people if you are not in the least bit interested in what they have to say but recognise them as a friend or ally. And follow people you need to follow or there’ll be tensions around the family dinner table this holidays. Otherwise, don’t follow people. Oh, I know, it’ll never work.

Here’s a more realistic idea: use JustUnfollow to NOT be a childish arsehole. Use it to help you consider whether you really still have an interest in or relationship with one of the hundreds of people you genuinely thought you were interested in but, over time, kind of weren’t anymore, and not just to bitchily cut somebody for not grooming your ego.

And certainly not to autotweet.