Read My Lips:
I don’t tweet for “stars”.
I don’t now, and I never have. While being faved is appreciated, I’m just as happy if responds with a joke or tells me they laughed, or retweets something they think is funny. I don’t deny I LIKE to get them because it is easy to get feedback that way, but even that has become questionable, as I’ll get into below. Sit back, this is probably going to be long…
I’ve ALWAYS tried to inject a bit of humour into my Twitter stream. I’ve been doing it for a year and a half. Early on, I wasn’t using Twitter so much as Facebook to make jokes, but I found Facebook was just not the right environment for short wisecracks - too many people get all worked up when you make a joke, and it gets overly personal. So I moved my “being-a-smartass” mode onto Twitter.
I’d been here over a year before I discovered Favrd. When I found it, I thought it was wonderful because NOW I could get some feedback when I made a joke: Those little stars meant I made someone LAUGH! They actually LAUGHED at what I said!
Except, it quickly became apparent that was not the case. I learned pretty quick that some stars had strings, and if you REALLY wanted lots of people to star your tweets, you had to go out and do a lot of starring and gladhanding and politicking… something I was not willing to do. It was about venting sadness and pain in my life and turning it into humour in order to make the days a little easier to get through, NOT about sucking up and getting into some kind of ranking game.
I DO check still check my stars and I do still enjoy the feedback they give, but recently I’ve noticed I’ve been getting fewer and fewer - certain people who used to read - or at least, STAR - have simply vanished. I check and see they are still participating in putting favourites on other people’s tweets so I know they haven’t stopped giving their pointy little pieces of feedback… they have just stopped giving them to ME.
And that’s what’s brought me to the point I am at now.
All the uproar lately has brought out into the open something I’ve been feeling all along… people aren’t reading and faving tweets for the joy of it… it is no longer about sharing laughter. It’s turned into competition for some… it’s gone from people being HAPPY anyone laughed at their tweet to people getting ANGRY because someone DIDN’T star it.
I understand this to some extent - it IS human nature. As soon as you attach a perceived value to things, some people will cherish it, but others will become obsessed with it. Add to that those lovely human emotions of envy, jealousy and mix in the need of some to “win at all costs” and it becomes a recipe for disaster.
Disaster you say? Surely that’s hyperbole, PolarBear!
No - because the disaster I speak of is that people use it as an excuse to be shitty to each other. You get people who won’t star a funny tweet because that person doesn’t follow or star them. You get people who start to irrationally hate those who get more stars than them. You find people who star not because a tweet brought them joy but because THEY hope for a star back, and when they don’t get one they get upset. You have a group of talented and funny people surrounded by others who have absolutely CONVINCED themselves that they are just as funny, and those others begin to feel as though they are entitled to the same number of stars, and the same amount of attention, regardless of the fact that they’ve only been here a week, or a month and simply don’t have the same kind of talent for universal humour.
And something else: just because I don’t find you funny doesn’t make ME a bad person. That goes for everyone. I’ll tell you this right now: almost every person on Earth find their own jokes HILARIOUS. The people who love you will ALSO tell you you’re hilarious if they think that’s what you want to hear. The only true, objective feedback you get is from strangers - they have nothing invested in you, and if they don’t laugh, they won’t have to sleep on the couch later.
That’s where so many people are screwing up how I used Favstar/Favrd. I can’t tell any more - did you LAUGH or are you starring hoping I’ll star you back? Are you actually reading what I said? Are you following me to accept that laughs I am trying to share with you, or are you there for a political reason, hoping I’ll do something to “promote” you with stars or Follow Fridays or lists or retweets?
Of course, all of the above leads to something that irks me like nothing else - the star begging. Some people have put so much value on the star itself that they no longer care about the meaning (that someone laughed/was moved by a tweet) and simply want the symbol. Star begging doesn’t make me angry - it makes me sad. In my opinion, it is unseemly and desperate. You don’t NEED stars to be funny. You don’t NEED stars to laugh. You don’t have to have every tweet on your popular page over 50 stars, or over 100 stars… take it for what it is: a place where people can see your funniest tweets, whether they have 25 or 125 stars. Why are you begging for “just a few more” to get a tweet over some imaginary mark? Does it make you feel better? Does it make you superior to other people who have fewer stars? Does it mean you are funnier? Does it REALLY? All it takes is one browse down the 100-star Favstar page or the Favrd leaderboard to realize the “how funny something is” has NOTHING to do with “how many stars something has”.
What that means is that all the pettiness - giving and taking away stars, refusing to give stars to the “dicks that don’t star you”, being jealous of people who are funnier and/or get more stars, creating multiple accounts to star oneself (and don’t ANYONE think I am referring to @debihope specifically, there are numerous people who have done this that I know of), one-upmanship taken to extremes - it’s ruining the fun for EVERYONE. I really have no issue with people who have a genuine complaint about someone’s behaviour airing that complaint, as that is simply the nature of human relationships, but when all of this grief comes up over something so obviously meant to be fun, it really defeats the purpose of any of it.
Everyone needs to change their perspective right now… what you need to do is this: ASSUME GOODWILL. When someone doesn’t star your tweet, it isn’t because they hate you, it’s because they’re a human being just like you and have feelings and families and things to do and might be having a bad day or might be busy or might just not be in the mood to give stars, which is their right. ASSUME GOODWILL when someone doesn’t @ reply you - they aren’t ignoring you, they just don’t have anything to say back. ASSUME GOODWILL if someone doesn’t find something you say funny - they don’t hate you and they are not being mean to you, they’re giving you feedback to give you a chance to change what you’re doing - they’re still following you, aren’t they?
Please, just stop it. It isn’t the stars or Favstar that are ruining the fun and the funny, it’s the behaviour of the people. You need to start being decent to each other.
And remember the tenth commandment:
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOURS’
ASSSTARS.
Count on the Bear to cut straight to the heart of the matter.
I’d like to add that a big part of the problem, as I see it, is that users of sites like Favstar and Favrd are using stars in a manner for which they were never intended. It’s sort of like trying to cut down a tree with a sledgehammer: can you do it? Absolutely. Best tool for the job? oh hell no. That’s not a Favstar issue, it’s outside of what Favstar can, or should be expected to do.
The other thing I’d like to inject is how wrong it is that @debihope has been made the poster child for all this angst and discontent. To date she’s given out 76,336 stars. Counting back to the day she created her account, that’s about 375 a day, or around 11,000 a month. It might be hard to believe, but it’s not unbelievable. If you disagree with that, well ok, but I’ll assume you’ve never had a child do 12,000 text messages in a month, outgoing, with T-9 input on a gimme cell phone. Compared to that, I can easily believe that someone can click an icon 370 times a day with plenty of time to read what they’re clicking, especially if they’re all conveniently aggregated. I may not star that many tweets on any given day, but I’m pretty sure I read easily that many, if not more. I enjoy @debihope’s tweets. Maybe you don’t and that’s okay, humor is a highly subjective thing, but she really doesn’t deserve to be burned at the stake for giving out stars. There are some I could name who, in my opinion, have done far worse without getting crucified for it.
I’ve heard some legitimate concerns and issues raised over the last two days and I think it is important (well, for those to whom Twitter is important) to talk about the problems as they see them without the mean spirited stuff that’s been flying around. What we need around here is a little more “I respectfully disagree” and a lot less “OMG you suck.”