Four Types of Annoying Twitter Users

Now that I’ve been on Twitter for all of four weeks, I think I’m qualified to start engaging in a little amateur Twitter anthropology (Twithropology?). There are a bunch of different Twitter types out there and boy its sure fun to name them. I post this not in judgment, but in observation, I’m no Twitter Saint either. Still, who doesn’t love a good navel gazing list, so here we go with the first batch of four:

The Krugelhorn The name comes from a mixture of Paul Krugman and the Flugelhorn. Basically, a Krugelhorn posts links to the most obvious main stream of columnists without the benefit of any analysis or perspective. You wake up on Monday and you read a tweet that says “Paul Krugman of the New York Times on Health Care Reform”. Really? There is a columnist named Paul Krugman? And he publishes a column on Monday’s and Friday’s? Plus he has something to say about health care reform? I did not know that. That guy ought to win the Nobel Prize or something.

Krugelhorns can also be found tweeting, Ezra Klein, TMZ, the DailyKos, pretty much any mega-site that dominates an area of content is going to generate its share Klugelhornian posts. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t tweet these sites, I can be a little bit of a Krugelhorn myself at times, but at least try to read the column first and pull out a juicy part.

The Pugilist – The Pugilist comes out of nowhere and picks an aggressive, in your face “@” fight probably with the intent of increasing their ranking on Twitalyzer or Klout. You’re happily tweeting away, you post something, then all of a sudden you get a tweet saying ‘@Yourname Well of course you realize this reflects your centrist conventionality.’ Or better yet ‘@Yourname This is all a plot to place the head Bristol Meyers Squibb as Secretary of Health and Human Services’ or ‘@Yourname, You know we alll have the responsibility for social justice.’

You get the drift. You’re just sitting there and someone starts messing with you. Weirdly, if you respond the person gets nicer, then they start following you, then they list you in their #FollowFriday and they start acting like your best friends. It’s a weird way to build a network to me, but I guess it must work for some people.

The Freedom Flamer – Usually these Tweets are in all caps or include the word ‘Obamacare’. I’m not saying all conservative tweeters are idiots, and in fact I’ve had nice interactions with a few, but really what kind of audience is there for the 4,000th iteration of ‘READ THE BILL. READ THE DAMN BILL.’ Or ‘OBAMACARE, NO THANKS, I’LL TAKE NOBAMACARE’ (Noticed I combined the all caps and the Obamacare in that one). Are there people out there reading the Tea Party twitter feed thinking to themselves ‘Allright! That FistOfLiberty2012 really has a point there. I need to remember to use the word NOBAMACARE at my next regularly scheduled book burning.’? I have to hope not.

The Flirty Girly – Have you seen this post ‘I’m so sore, you know, down there, from all that … fun, wink, I had last night.’ The profile picture is of a pouty 17 year old using the hand held cell phone to take a down the cleavage shot. The weblink is to a porn site or something. Yes, I know these are mostly spam but some are not. These are really barely over 18 girls trying to make a buck using their cell phone cams and Twitter. I think there was a time back in the Genesis days of the internet when all these posts were exactly what you think they should be, namely some Russian Mafioso spamming twitter to generate traffic to his porn site of beautiful Latvian girls. Now, I sort of believe them and I think at least at times, this sleazy Flirty Girly thing has become a revenue model for real people. It’s not that I’m sex negative, and there are plenty of actual porn starlets (Belladonna, Lexi Belle, etc) who write engaging, humane, intelligent tweets about their lives. What’s sad about this low rent version is the desperation or the laziness involved. I mean you’re selling your ass on Twitter? I’m assuming hitting it big here means making $20,000 a year.