Twitter

My husband works for Twitter.  It pays for the botox. I basically had to succumb to it.

So, Twitter is the coolest company in the world and I definitely love my husband more now that he walks amongst the elitist, coolest people.  It is probably ruining my marriage because he has to come home to my cooking on his days off, instead of indulging in the decadent catered meals that they serve morning, noon and night. And now he tells me that they have those little peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets in BULK BINS.  It's over for me.  But, marriage killer or not, I have to admit, Twitter is awesomsauce.

That said, in an effort to not bite the hand that feeds me, and simply chew its nails a little... I'm not going to lie.  I don't get Twitter.  I don't understand why its useful or interesting.  In my opinion, there's nothing worth saying that can be typed in 140 characters.

So, every now and again, I'll go onto Twitter and write something like, "Mashed or baked potatoes for dinner tonight?"  Or, "Wow, this old Tori Amos cd from 1993 has still got it."  And if my timing is right and the stars align, either my husband or my good friend Laura will respond.  Being that I spend at least an hour talking to both of them every day, our 140 character conversations aren't that riveting.  I mean, I could reasonably just turn and ask my husband what kind of potatoes he'd like with dinner.  Realistically I don't' even need to ask because he always prefers mashed.   I don't need to tweet it.

But, I admit, when Jay tweets a picture of our kids and I'm not with them, that's nice... and I definitely want to support the company that keeps electricity and running water flowing through our home, so I keep it.

But there is one thing that bothers me.  It's the retweets.  I absolutely hate how the retweets are presented. First, if I wanted to know what Harry C was saying, I would follow him myself.  Now, if Jay wants to tell the world that Harry C says that there's a BOGO at the Payless in Walnut Creek, I'd really like the tweet to come from Jay and say "retweet from Harry C" in small, muted letters beneath the tweet.  Not the other way around.  I find it off-putting to see Harry C in my feed because I don't know him.  And if I don't know him, I certainly don't care about his discount loafers.

So, I looked into blocking retweets.  Well, what do you know!  You CAN'T block retweets entirely, you can only block them from certain people.  Why in the world is that?  Doesn't  that just seem so mean?  What if my good friend Laura, for instance, was like, "hey did you see that great bogo that I retweeted?" And I'd have to say, "No.  because I specifically singled you out and blocked your tweets?"  I would NEVER!!!!!!  I doubt that I even follow 20 people, so I suppose that I could just go in and block the retweets of every single person, but what about someone who follows 5000 people?

So, Twitter, thank you for being awesome.  I like your bird.  I like your CEO.  I like my water bottle.  And I look forward to the day when we crack open that bottle of wine.  But, until you fix those retweets, we can only be casual friends.