rashbre central: insidious robots among hipsters

Friday 1 April 2011

insidious robots among hipsters

time to go home
I was asked a couple of questions about twitter the other day. In responding I was reminded of a few of the daft things I did when I started using twitter.

I've never paid much attention to the number of followers etc, being more interested in deciding which people or organisations to follow to get information about things I'm interested in. When I started, the whole of twitter was relatively empty compared with nowadays, and it did take a time for some of it to click into place.

My @rashbre is therefore a chronological mix of some friends, some well known people and an eclectic mix of other 'follows' dependent upon whichever fad I'm interested in at a particular time. So there's high-tech, photography, bicycling, music, writing and a bunch of other topics that I track.

The thing is, my @rashbre account has far less followers than another one of mine called @frederickblogs (fred blogs) which I set up as a joke and which has only ever posted six or seven entries.

Then there's the little set of characters I created as part of the launch for 'The Triangle'. @trianglebigsy, @triangleclare, @trianglejake and @chuckmanners. They all get more followers than me, although they all have scripted tweets that blurt out at random intervals. Here's an example from @chuckmanners:

...I am also being folllowed - The sweater has a Danish pattern.
...gaffer tape on a bike saddle is a great way to hide things
...heading for the tube. easier to hide.
...hiding out in this cafe whilst the people who looked as if they were following me walk on by. Call me paranoid??
...theres some smoke coming up from that grill. looks suspicious.
...i think i am being followed along this street.
...this lock up garage looks like something an arms dealer would use.
...That guy across the street has different earphones in each ear. I think he's carrying a wire.
...Just found another Phone sim card in this rental car. That's the third one. Something suspicious about this.


Of course, the messages from Chuck are supposed to be a little bit paranoid, whereas the ones from Jake are more 'whimsical hipster bohemian'. I set them up ages ago and its surprising how when they turn up and interact with one another it creates a sort of vague backstory, which was the idea after all. I see @sarahlund is doing something similar.

And then my somewhat pointless @bubbleoOo which sends streams of bubbles into the twittersphere at random intervals. Simply things like ...oooOOO OO.O o .

Yes, it also has more followers than @rashbre.

And don't get me started on @mrtictac.

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