Posted by Mark in As I have already mentioned I recently joined twitter and at the moment I am still trying to grasp the concept. Yesterday we had an article which showed why we need to watch what we do and say in social media space. The twitter conversation, characters and the plot was all created by us. It was all hypothetical but today we have a real case scenario. As I was looking around twitter to find some good links to read I came across a profile that was bashing everyone on twitter. Some of his remarks were very rude and downright disrespectful.
The user was frustrated and angry at twitter because for some odd reason he lost a bunch of followers. Please take a look at the image below to see his rage towards twitter and other users. I am not sure if you would respect this person or firm, but if I were an employer this certainly wouldn’t be my ideal applicant, and at this point their brand is without a positive brand image.Â
Take a look at the image below,
The point is to be personal and have fun in social media but always keep yourself under check, always. If you follow this user you will see that the user has deleted all his tweets and says will not return back to twitter. Of course those tweets are gone from the web, right? Wrong! In one way or the other what you do on the social web will affect you.
It is hard to build a brand on social web but it is pretty easy to see it tumbling down within matter of minutes. Share your thoughts.
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ahhh it feels good to not be confined by the 140 character limit. When I saw the tweet regarding the missing followers I went to see what was going on and noticed that this person still have over 24,000 followers. Perhaps its a numbers game to some but if you have quality tweets (for whatever you came to twitter for) then they will come. But this clown through a virtual hissy fit like a bitchmade jackass and threatened to cancel his accounts. My response to that is “do u pay for twitter? This is not the mf bank so if your leaving just go” How ridiculous.
But it takes a lot of different people to make the world go around. Somebody has to clean up the rest stop bathrooms :: shrugs ::
He got caught when Twitter nuked a bunch of spammers.
Thanks for posting it just as it happened!! The remarks he made about his followers were totally un-social!! I would never NEVER do business with this person!! Again, thanks for the post.
The sad thing is that he actually had some useful tweets in between his occasional rants. He used to have another site that was quite honorable: @HelpAnimals, among others.
The thing that blows my mind is, he still had over 20+ thousand followers. For him to flip out on his admitted 0.58% loss is really a sign of a serious mental problem. A prime example of someone who should turn off the computer and spend some time in the sunshine.
As the person who took the most widely distributed screenshot of this meltdown, all I can say is Twitter meltdowns are my bread and butter.
Keep them coming, corporate world!
I was following this dude, until his meltdown this morning. He had lots of potential there.
As someone rather new to this get up and go interaction, I like that in a world of thousands of thoughts, everyone of them has weight and the ones that you put out there speak loudly for your who you are.
I personally feel that if you get the rants, raves, and such, you get a true sense of who someone is.
I wasn’t aware of this account nor the events, so first thanks for sharing both the story and the unfolding tweets.
What people seem to forget is that social media is just like any other part of everyday life – what we say and do reflects on us at that given time.
There have been a few high-profile cases like this recently (the Ketchum/FedEx carry on, for one) and there will no doubt be more to come.
The problem with taking this approach online is that it truly does last a lifetime. Human memories are frail – Google memories are unforgiving.
Hilarious. I’ve conjoured the perfect visual reel of his 29 minute descent into madness.
This was really sad to watch. I though he had some great stuff on his blog and he posted interesting tweets most of the time. This was like a huge tantrum that really got out of control and was so unnessary. I hope it was just inappropriate anger and not something more psychiatric.
Many karma points lost there.
@AstroSpace followed me, I didn’t follow back… it’s obvious that when someone who is already following 30,000 people starts to follow you they are just in it to get followed back and build their following. Not my cup of tea, so I think there’s no loss with his / her departure really. I thought his tweets were pretty ordinary, but then again, I’m picky
I agree with jlabean though – 24,000 followers down the gurgler is a waste.
I was watching live and enjoyed it thoroughly. I’m glad you have a shot of the whole thing, but you need to add the part where his account was erased and he said, “I feel different now”. That was my favorite part.
Anyway, I never knew such a thing was possible. I can’t wait until we get copycat hissy fits.
I’m so glad I haven’t got the brain circuit that makes me want to gather high numbers of followers. I do enjoy the company of respectful strangers talking about things I share a passion about, especially geeky things.
I don’t need to create a mass of followers to sell my business and personally don’t think the idea of shepherding people ready for the sell works either.
Thanks for the thoughts!
As someone who tries to let things slide off her back, this one raised an eyebrow, for sure. For a moment there, I thought this “Twhissy fit” was a ploy for RT-publicity, if you will, but when I realized this character seemed serious, I unfollowed. There’s no room in my world — even if it’s a virtual world — for negativity and drama. Good riddance.
Right on Gina! What a “Twissy fit”. Clearly this twitterer was all about numbers and completely disregarding the followers and why they were following in the first case. Astro and space news! I am quite content with my 67 follwers. We are a tight-nit group!
This person who had so many followers and followed so many obviously wasn’t paying attention to the communications. I knew that Twitter had purged spammers, and was delighted. Why didn’t this person also know?
lol… what a lemming. what believer!
twitter let him down… bah wah ha ha ha
when Obama lets him down he won’t be able to leave
I do empathize with the hazards of social networking and twitter is truly the anal porous of that universe.
[...] [source : applicant] [...]
Although handled totally ridiculous, the guy is right in his thoughts.
Twitter improperly handled his account and by their error as the service
provider he lost thousands of people from his community, which he may have put
put thousands of hours into building. If he was a paying customer, do you think
Twitter would have handled it differently? They don’t care he left, in fact he just
saved them money. This howvever is a clear example of why Twitter needs to monetize fast.
No one can afford negative press or losing community.
That being said, they guy went off the deep end about how he handled it.
Twitter.com/jasontryfon
@Jason I think his follower was more built upon “follow anyone that follows me” rule and I am pretty sure the number of followers that got booted out were spam accounts. if you are following 20K people based on anyone who is following you I would say 4000-8000 follower accounts might have been spam account.
I guess we will never know but as you said, the user took it a little too far.That said, there should have been a better way to handle the situation on his/her part.
All this social Web stuff is pretty young. No one really knows if the social implications of the technology behind is what we really want. Maybe it’s time to think about more accurate privacy policies, to protect yourself, your employer, friends, etc.
[...] from Twitter searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems probable. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
What struck me odd about this story is that @astrospace unfollowed me this morning. Don’t know what that means
Here’s how I see. When astrospace melted-down he still 10s of K followers. With that many there’s no way he could track which were spam and which not, so when Twitter does spam purging he’s going to see a relatively large drop in followers.
But when he went-off on Twitter he was just diverting anger toward them that he’d been spewing for several toward his followers. He came back to laying waste to his followers in the end by calling them all unworthy and then — demanding that his account be closed. Reset. No more 10s of K followers.
It’s all meltdown.
i’ll miss the astrospace.
‘in my case, sir, that is not saying much.’ I remember telling the astrospace. i hope i didn’t drive deeper into whatever it was. maybe there will be a movie?
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
Wow…I have to say, people who are THAT prone to melting down in public should probably go back to pen and paper.
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
[...] searches, what was said when, but the theory of a meltdown seems the likely story at this time. The Applicant blog has more details on that opinion, having spotted the story on Thursday. Meanwhile, we discovered [...]
I had just writen an article a week before exposing this guy as a autofollow spammer, and exposing his political agenda.
I had no idea he’d go on such a downward spiral, but like many of these Obama fanatics, who believe the new president is the messiah, he has a few screws loose.
Good job on the article, I think it is a good example.
I should point out that he was a spammer from the beginning, though, and gained 90% of those followers through autofollow spam techniques. If anything this just shows how any half-wit, infantile nutcase can quickly gain thousands of followers without deserving them, using deceptive spam tactics.
I know one thing I won’t twitter about again – politics! It caused people to unfollow me. Then that made me feel kind of bad. Hehe, I felt bad that they didn’t agree with me about politics.
I must post this in a way “@astrospace” will not know who I am. Forgive me for that. I fear his retaliation.
He is not from the USA. He lives in the UK. How do I know? If I told you, he’d know who I am. Let’s just say he did me a “Twit Favor” without my asking. Then cozied up to me. When he did’t get the type of attention he wanted – he threw a fit. I blocked him.
Strangely immediately thereafter my private email account was attacked by hundreds of spam messages a day when before there were none.
The animal sites he promoted are his own. All the “STS-Number” accounts are accounts & pages he made up. He has nothing to do officially with NASA. He sits at home alone with his cats and dogs and works the net to get you to his other many sites to shove cookies on you. This is how he makes a living. You one day pop onto a site to buy something and he gets the credit.
He is now back as @astronautics trying to make people believe he’s some official NASA representative for Twitter.
Be aware! He’s not what he portrays. He will screw you over in a flash. In my opinion, he’s not a nice man.
Again, I apologize for masking who I am. I do so because honestly – I am afraid.
Thank you,
A fellow Twitterer
Love the earlier comment “People that prone to melting down in public should go back to pen and paper.” It’s sad that people think they’re hurting others when they are only bringing negative attention to themselves.
Definitely not a building block for empowerment.
I am amazed at how people seem to feel that their on-line persona/avatar cannot be traced back to the “real” person. In today’s techie world the comments we make for millions to see carry more weight than conversations we have in person. In the “real” world, a meltdown might be viewed by a dozen people but a meltdown in the virtual world is not only seen by millions, but can be word-for-word sent on to others in an instant. It is this speed which we love, and this same speed which can topple people and companies in an instant.
My grandfather had a story he would tell us when we did something extremely boneheaded. He described hammering a nail into a piece of wood every time we did something naughty. Then he described us taking out a nail when we did something good. Of course this left a piece of wood with lots of holes, showing the effects of our errors on the whole. In a lot of ways, this image is truer today than ever. We can never totally retract anything we say or post online, because there is always an image of it someplace, stored somewhere, or already making a 4th or 5th trip around the globe.
Branding your business, as said earlier, is easy. Destroying it is so much easier!
I do agree that you need to maintain some sort of professionalism when using sites like twitter (no cussing etc.). However, I dont think this particular meltdown will really hurt the user in this case. He has some sort of space news website and from my experience, space enthusiasts are a little quirky and probably enjoyed his rant.
[...] There are plenty of other ways not to use Twitter, and there have been other articles in the past on this subject. Are a few that provide some more good examples: – How not to use Twitter for Work – Top 5 Ways NOT To Use Twitter – How Not to be a Key Online Influencer – How to lose your job in 140 characters or less – How not to use Twitter – How not to use Twitter (different) – It Takes Seconds To Kill Your Brand Image In Social Media [...]
[...] There are plenty of other ways not to use Twitter, and there have been other articles in the past on this subject. Are a few that provide some more good examples: – How not to use Twitter for Work- Top 5 Ways NOT To Use Twitter- How Not to be a Key Online Influencer- How to lose your job in 140 characters or less- How not to use Twitter- How not to use Twitter (different)- It Takes Seconds To Kill Your Brand Image In Social Media [...]
[...] Do not throw an online temper tantrum, or call your followers “white trash pseudointellectuals.” [...]
[...] Do not throw an online temper tantrum, or call your followers “white trash pseudointellectuals.†[...]
It’s been interesting to watch his tweets today and wonder what’s going on in his mind.
On the other hand, the weekend’s spammer purge wasn’t perfect and a number of us have noticed spammers, one or two we’ve blocked, come back, and a discrepency between Twitter-web and Twitter-third-party-clients follower counts. Or follower numbers not quite adding up.
Separate the two different things here.
There is still a bit of a spammer problem that hasn’t been solved completely by the weekend efforts.
Seperate from that, astronautics has a few different things on his mind, obviously.
Since this was written the person who ran astrospace on twitter has undergone two other name changes @astronautics and his current one @spaceastro. Everytime he has a mental meltdown he changes his name. There is currently a petition to have him entirely removed from twitter and spare his followers further abuse. Apparently he is a British marketing/spam guy out for a buck, and not a space expert or affil. with NASA or any other agency. A kook!