What Happened to All My Peoples?

/ Dora Hiers

Our four-year-old grandson calls his daycare friends “his peoples.” His accent is so cute with that North Carolina twang, that I admit to asking him about his “peoples” every time I pick him up from daycare just to hear him say it. 🙂

Whenever we talk about his “peoples,” my mind wanders to my “peoples” or my friends all over the world on social media. In case you didn’t know, I’m a big fan of Twitter, second favorite only to Pinterest. I appreciate that Twitter allows follows without the obligatory follow back, unlike Facebook’s friend policy. Also, the 140 character limit and the list option makes for quick scrolling at different intervals throughout the day.

Recently, I was using JustUnfollow.com to purge followers who immediately unfollow me or folks I follow who choose not to follow back for whatever reason. But, I must confess that I have never cleaned out my “inactive” followers, those people who haven’t been active on twitter for three months or more.

Yowza! The list was so long. I probably spent an hour “unfollowing” and I hadn’t made it to the bottom. Crazy.

Some didn’t surprise me. Maybe they just decided that Twitter was one too many distractions, or they’d only tweeted a few times and Twitter just wasn’t for them. But what did surprise me was the number of inactive users who had ten or twenty thousand or more followers.

What happened to all my peoples? 
Image Courtesy of Pixabay

Why would they abandon a Twitter account with such an impressive platform? I could only conclude that something traumatic happened in their lives, whether it was death, illness, or job loss. Who knows, but this process made me sad, and I found myself praying over the profiles.

Finishing that task will have to wait for another day. And it just might take me four more years to get it under control.

How do you feel about Twitter? How often do you purge your inactive followers or have you put that off like me? What’s your favorite social media hangout?

8 thoughts on “What Happened to All My Peoples?”

  1. Hi, Dora! I love your post. So thought provoking. I haven't figured out twitter yet lol. I share my book review posts there. I'll follow people I'm interested in. But how do you keep up with what they posted? It's like scrolling notifications on Facebook. I'm sure I miss a lot. I like Facebook, being able to get notifications and then scrolling through them so I don't have to look at all the posts on Facebook. That takes a lot of time. I've just recently found Pinterest, and again, I'm not sure what it's supposed to do. I have a few pins, but not sure what to do with them.

    I like your grandson's 'peoples'. I've enjoyed getting to know people through social media, blog, facebook, twitter, etc. I would never had gotten to know so many people without the internet. It is a lot of fun.

    You can purge inactive followers? I wouldn't even know how to find them lol.

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  2. Thank you, Sally! I appreciate you commenting to let me know. The basic answer is I use “lists” for easy, quick sorting on both Facebook and Twitter. That allows me to prioritize my newsfeed. Maybe it'd be helpful to write a blog series about Twitter? 🙂

    I share your sentiment, Sally. I have met so many wonderful people over the Internet (like you!), and social media interaction cements those friendships. In my opinion, that's worth the investment of time.

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  3. Wow! I can't imagine what made them abandon Twitter either. That's a lot of work to throw away!

    I'm glad to be counted as one of your peoples, Dora! And your grandson is such a cutie! Love hearing about him. 🙂

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  4. Yes! I totally agree. I wouldn't have met you or gotten to know you. I am so glad we got hooked up! And everything being instantaneous, it beats writing a letter and then having to wait for one back. Although, I think writing letters and sending cards (not e-cards) should make a comeback. They are a lot more fun to get out of the mailbox as opposed to bills and junk mail lol.

    I think a blog about Twitter would be very useful. At least with a facebook post you can write all you need to say. I guess twitter is used for directing you somewhere to see what you actually wrote, or something? But by the time you put the web address in there, you are over the character limit. I just don't get it lol.

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  5. So true! I'm not sure why we even keep a mailbox anymore. It's about as useful as a landline. 🙂
    That's the beauty of Twitter, actually, Sally. Short and sweet, and to the point. I will definitely plan a series of blog posts about Twitter basics here, but make sure you stop by Seriously Write on 2/26 for the first in a series of three posts about Pinterest for readers and writers. 🙂

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