Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Strategist from Columbus, Ohio.

Have we really taken the fun distraction from the day that is Twitter and so quickly bastardized it into something less substantial than it already was?

I’ll be the first to admit that Twitter is often a lot of noise. Looking at my last 10 tweets, six of them consist of me bitching about this very subject matter, one is a “LOL thank you” @reply, one is me complaining that getting out of bed this morning was hard, one is me pointing out that I almost poured coffee on my cell phone instead of in my coffee mug, and the other is me answering someone’s inquiry about where to purchase MS Office and suggesting OpenOffice in the interim.

So… that’s 1/10 of value. And that 1 is only useful to that person and maybe a handful of others.

So obviously, I am not the kind of person who only Tweets links to scholarly articles and and talks business and maintains this super professional appearance on the site. I use mild profanity. I have lots of absurd conversations. I generally use the site as a pleasant distraction from my day. As do most people.

But have we really gotten to the point ALREADY where reading regular ol’ Tweets isn’t distracting enough? Now we have to have COMPETITIONS?

(If, by some miracle, you HAVEN’T seen these… click. And click. And weep.)

Now in the morning where I used to read about what Central Ohioans and the rest of the world are talking about and sharing with one another, I see this:

douchebag1: OMG Help me win my twitter death match! Tweet this: @twitdeathmatch I vote for @douchebag1
douchebag3: I award @douchebag1 +17 points! #stupidpointgame
douchebag3: LOLZ I forgot to vote for @douchebag1 for @twitdeathmatch
douchebag2: @douchebag3 HOW COULD YOU NOT VOTE FOR ME?! -1 point for you, jerk #stupidpointgame
CherylHarrison: *pulls trigger*

Now, I’m not one to be above stupid memes. I’ll jump on a fun hashtagging wagon and spam the hell out of my followers anyday. But the competitions? The games? The TWARS AND TWOMPETITIONS AND TWALS?

WTF?!?!

</rant>