COLUMN: Twitter still difficult for me

This column and the last one I wrote have a bit of irony in them.

I've been posting here about how I don't really like to say what's on my mind on Twitter all the time, but in columns, I do exactly that.

Irony or not, I have realized a few things about using Twitter over the past couple weeks. I like tweeting quotes from TV shows (particularly King of the Hill and Family Guy. Anything on Adult Swim is tweet-worthy now and then too).

I also like tweeting photos while I'm at shows or other events. While at the CD release show for Elliot Street Lunatic's album "Ghost Town Lullabies" last Friday in Lansing, I tweeted a couple of pictures.

I still feel a bit awkward about tagging certain people in posts because, like I said before, I'm not the funniest or most clever person in the world, and I feel like some people wouldn't or don't understand why I tagged them in a tweet. I'm self-conscious about it.

I do get a kick out of my friend Brett's twitter feed. Tweeting comically about his classes and the stupid things he hears people say become fair game for him. I'm not so soul-less. Another friend of mine, Austin, tweets constantly and has produced more than 30,000 tweets. Crazy, I say. To each his own, I guess.

I'm still sticking to the principles I set forth previously. My thoughts will, for the most part, remain in my head. If I tweeted a thought from my head, most people would think I'm weird. I have a really strange sense of humor. I love stupid humor like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore (all time favorite movies, by the way), but I carry myself with a pretty quiet demeanor, online and off. Sometimes a song lyric will get tweeted. I tweeted lyrics to Minor Threat's "In My Eyes" the other night.

I've attained 51 real followers and am following a little more than 200 people, media groups, record labels and bands. Some of the "followers" I've ended up blocking have been bots of the promiscuous type. That's just annoying, unwanted spam. Yay for the Internet! I was quite surprised, though, when the Twitter feed for famous Ann Arbor music venue, The Blind Pig, retweeted one of my tweets mentioning them. They're following me, which is pretty neat.

This Twitter account hasn't changed my life, nor have I not used it, but I'm going to use it sparingly. A joke here, a retweet there. Maybe even a favorited tweet or two. My life isn't so interesting that it needs to be constantly documented. I hope that's still true six months from now.