How I made Twitter less annoying

Last Updated on September 17, 2014 by HodgePodgeDays

I’ve been on twitter for over five years now, I’ve previously blogged that it’s been a life saver to me. It’s a social network with the emphasis on SOCIAL. I’ve made more true friends on there than I dare to count, it’s fabulous, but it’s also pretty annoying at times.

It’s the Internet, so you do get complete loonies, perverts and trolls, usually I wear my big girl pants and deal with these pretty well, by rising above it; throwing a snarky tweet at them; having a whinge or just plain blocking them. Blocking is always a last resort for me, so if I’ve blocked you, you really have crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.

A few weeks ago I updated the twitter app on my iPad and it finally gave me the feature I’ve been waiting for, the ability to mute people. Why not just unfollow or block them you ask, I don’t want to, maybe I like the person but not their constant rubbish tweets, maybe I still want to tweet with them but I don’t want them clogging my timeline all the time. The twitter mute button has massively changed my experience for the better.

I have a three strikes and you’re out policy when it comes to twitter, this is a new thing, made up by me, but it works.

Step one: you’re annoying me, I make a mental note that this is your first warning. You might be tweeting annoying stuff, too many selfies, lots of retweets about the same thing, maybe you tweet every single detail of your monotonous day without irony or humour. Any of those (and more) can put you on a warning.

Step two: oh you’ve done it, you’ve irritated me again with your stupid retweets. I immediately turn off your retweets, I no longer have to see every single retweet you do about sausages, street food, football bantz or “inspirational” quotes, this may or may not be your salvation. It’s worth noting at this stage that retweeting praise and #FFs may also put you in this category. It’s also worth noting that I sometimes do those things too, but I usually put myself on the naughty step and consider what I’ve done.

Step three: agh! I’ve snapped, I cannot tolerate you on my timeline anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve waved my finger over that twitter mute button two or three times by now, this wasn’t an easy decision to make, but take solace in the fact you’ve been muted and not unfollowed or blocked, we’re still friends, it’s just that I don’t want to see or hear you and your stupid whiny voice ever again.

It’s like I’ve reclaimed my timeline, I can check twitter safe in the knowledge that I won’t be seeing whole rafts of annoying tweets from the same few accounts, it’s a delight. I never, ever fell out of love with twitter, but I did sometimes avoid it to stop me getting annoyed. So if twitter is getting you down, why not try my handy three step plan, it’s saving my social media sanity on a daily basis.