Don’t Facebook What You Tweet

Don’t Facebook What You Tweet

Want to know a quick and easy way to get on my crap list? Post your tweets to Facebook. All of them. Don’t even filter them out, just let your mental diarrhoea pollute my newsfeed. Because sure. I wanted to know every single bland detail of your daily life. Twice.

Here’s the thing: Facebook and Twitter are two very different beasts. Facebook is populated by everyone you know. That girl who used to live in the dorm next door, a guy you hung out in Bolivia a few years ago, your weird cousin Judy. But the list of people you follow on Twitter is carefully curated. Essentially, it’s a way to exchange information and have an actual conversation about topics that matter. For me it comprises journalists, musicians, intelligent friends, news sources — people I find interesting and/or reliable.

I have 1500 or so friends on Facebook. (I probably should do a little spring cleaning there). But I follow just 400 people on Twitter. And I have a tonnes of friends who tweet that honestly, I just can’t bear to follow. Because Twitter is, for many, a stream of consciousness, a diary composed 140 characters at a time. And believe me, I don’t want to sneak into your bedroom and unlock your diary while you aren’t home.

When dump all of Twitter’s mental mental garbage onto your Facebook page, you’ve forced me to break and enter into your psyche. That’s cool and all, but it’s literally resulted in me removing people from my ticker and de-friending others. Because I just can’t take it.

Another problem is the redundancy. If you tweet little tidbits that are worth reading, I already read it. On Twitter. So don’t make me look at that shit twice, and don’t make me have to unfriend you.

The Twitter feeds of friends I’ve chosen not to follow, or at some point have removed, are just waterfalls of drivel. Oh you went to the gym and had a good workout? I do not care. You’re meeting the gals for dinner? The entire internet does not need to know. Tired today? Please stop talking. And even if you’re funny, even if your Twitter feed is chock-full of useful information, rife with insight, and just a pleasure to read, you’re not supposed to like a tweet. That’s not how it works. You’re either going to reply, or you’re going to retweet. And you’re going to do it on Twitter.

Hey, and while we’re at it, I’m going to need you to keep the hashtags on Twitter where they belong. Because really, on Twitter they’re tools to search for a certain topic. Or sometimes they’re a way to add a punch line or a kick to a statement. But guess what? They’re meaningless on Facebook! So is your stupid @TWITTERPERSON.

And don’t even think about pushing your Foursquare check-ins to Facebook. Then at least I’ll know where to find you.

User Manual is Gizmodo’s guide to etiquette.


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