Leaders and their twitter followers!
Recently, I came across this interesting phenomenon on twitter; People were fighting on twitter, using twitter and because of twitter–truly democratic na. I was not following the fighters but did check their timelines in academic interest. Among other things, they were also fighting over “Look, I got more followers than you” or as they call in Delhi “Janta hai mera baap kaun hai”.
In other related news, I recently earned 1000 followers. For a moment, I thought I should change my profile on Linked In to something like “That Bald guy on Twitter who has 1000+ followers”, then I thought distributing 1000 laddus in my society should be good enough to begin with. By the time, this post hit the blogger servers I had reached 1016 followers. The closest I came to being Sachin was when I was stuck on 999 followers, now I know how HE would have felt.
I also know of people who welcome their every single follower saying “Hey @dude, nice to have you here, look forward to interact” , yet to find out if they are equally nice in real life.
My sources tell me, that at a recent book launch, @AnAunty (handle changed to avoid twitter fight) introduced herself as “Hey, I am @AnAunty , got 4768 followers. Oh wait, it’s 4771 actually” . When people still refused to recognize her, she had to finally say “Hey, even @DakuRaja follows me, who has got 36745 followers and also featured on the cover of Outlook Magazine” . Thanks to Vinod Mehta and his two subscription requests email a day, some people had read Outlook and @AnAunty got her identity.
No wonder, post that event, the organizer said “Abe ye 4000 follower wali aunty apna mobile bhool gayi hai, jaldi de ke aa”.
We also login to apps which tell us “who unfollowed” and their names and DPs are imprinted on our minds forever and they shall be never forgiven for their ghastly acts. Some are so obsessed to regain them that they also mention the “important unfollower” in their tweets to make them feel guilty. Some naïve also ask “Hey, seems you pressed unfollow instead of RT :) ” .
Importance of “number of followers” doesn’t end here, we respond on twitter only if the guy has more follower than us or has a pretty DP. These days, you can still have some respect for not owning Honda City in Delhi but having 1000 twitter followers is a must.
Why not, having a “follower” on twitter is the closest some of us get to “being a leader”.
PS: Let’s not lose heart if you don’t have 1000 of them yet, just quit twitter.
