ShortcutsXFew things cause as much despair as the news, courtesy of online service Qwitter, that your Twitter following is abandoning youIf you are interested in testing your resistance to psychic pain, may I recommend Qwitter? This is a service that emails you daily to impart who has "unfollowed" you on Twitter in the last 24 hours – who, among all the new friends you have acquired online, has decided they no longer want to read your hilarious 140-character posts. If Twitter is the bright, open heartland of limitless conversation, then Qwitter is the abandoned wheelie-bin behind the boarded-up kebab shop of failure, a place where the limitless conversation ends.
The email arrives heralded by the strapline "Your latest Twitter Qwitters!" – has there ever been a more unwelcome exclamation mark? – and your eye is immediately drawn to that day's number. Today it was small: just one, a T-shirt company. Why was a T-shirt company following me? More to the point, what did I do to make a T-shirt company unfollow me? Losing something a step up from a spambot (an automated identity that posts malicious links) is nothing; much worse is when the rejections come in groups. Last week I lost six in a day. Six entirely (as far as I can see) unconnected people decided they could live without my sun-bleached pictures of Dulwich park and excitable Spotify recommendations. To be Qwit is to be reminded that someone has stopped listening, stopped caring. It's as if they have, very quietly, put the phone down on you while you are still talking.
In the past I have unfollowed many people, recently jettisoning a number of blowhard wafflers, a young rapper constantly plugging his CD, and a maddeningly ponderous website editor. I've dropped people I have interviewed, worked with and even like, in an attempt to keep the online noise down a little. And not one of those decisions was personal – apart from maybe the website editor. I just wanted something else from my Twitter feed. So I know how ridiculous it is to feel bad about being digitally dumped. Yet this distancing still stings. What did I say? What did I do? Don't go, you feel like shouting, tomorrow I might tweet a blurry picture of my lunch or even say something mildly amusing about a Coronation Street character.
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