The Five Types of Tweets

I've been on Twitter for a few years now, and far too much of my brain power goes into it. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how frustrated and worked up I can get with the way people use Twitter. The fact is that not everyone acts how I want them to, which isn't wrong. In fact, the world is probably better that way. Not probably, definitely.

Anyways, in this post I will attempt to classify all types of tweets into FIVE TWEET TYPES (TT's). It's up to you to determine if that's a boob reference.

TT #1 - Status Updates: These are probably the most common types of tweets. Anything from "it's so cold in my bedroom" to "going out for the night to forget about how sucky my life is" to the classic and incredibly frustrating "#sadtweet" or #happytweet". These less than 1-140 character gems basically come from a lack of creativity, or a lack of having anything else to say. People like to tweet, but most of the time they don't have anything interesting to say, so they just go ahead and pretend that they're a celebrity which would mean that everyone cares about their current mood or what they're doing. While sometimes interesting and sometimes helpful, the vast majority of TT #1's are a simple waste of Mike Twitter's server space.

TT #2 - Attention Tweets: I've boiled this down into two subtypes. Subtype #1 involves the complaining and ranting tweets. That's the kind when something bad happens so the person decides that their problem is everyone else's problem and goes on a rant about how they're right and the other party is wrong, or how it's not fair that someone else got selected for cheerleading captain instead of them. Any twitcomplaint you see about hating being in class will fall into this subtype. Basically any time someone does something that the given person would have done differently, we are all subject to that person tweeting incessantly about it, all the while exaggerating every part of said story and trying to justify their completely unnecessary complaining. Subtype #2 is more refined complaining, this time more about not being able to get something that a person wants. Most of the time this deals with relationships. When a boy likes a girl but the girl doesn't like him because his whole life is comprised in these first two types of TT's. It can also have to do with grades, jobs, and many other things. These tweeters are somehow convinced that tweeting about not getting want they want will somehow make that thing they want become achievable, while it almost always does quite the opposite.

TT #3 - Family/Friend/Pet/Food/Drink Tweets: These tweets come when a given tweeter is excited about seeing a family member, a friend, or a pet that they haven't seen in a long time... or when they are excited to ingest a certain food or drink. Almost all of those tweets contain a tag to someone else's Twitter account, or an Instagram photo, or both. The lovey tweets about a romantic partner are contained in this subtype. A lot of times the intention of these tweets is to convince another person that you are really happy to see them, even though it may not be true. These tweets are almost always well-intentioned, although tweeting pictures of a premium grilled chicken salad and a vodka-cranberry isn't exactly why Mr. Nicephore Niepce invented photography way back in 1822. Although I can't say that for sure, I never did manage to meet the guy. Pretty sure he didn't speak English anyways.

TT #4 - Quotes: From song lyrics to movie quotes to Bible verses, these tweets are a large part of what you see on Twitter. While it's a shame that people can't be more inventive themselves, you certainly can't fault a person for letting someone else's work influence their life. There's nothing wrong with these types of tweets, provided you indulge in them very lightly. Nobody wants to follow the girl who's gonna clog your timeline up with a different Taylor Swift song lyric every half hour. This is also grounds for people to prove their intelligence. A simple Aristotle quote pushed to Twitter can take your online intelligence level up an entire point; you didn't already know that? Proceed to TT #4 at your own pace, but please just don't spell anything wrong. That is disrespectful, and also I hate it.

TT #5 - Obvious and Dry Analysis and Updates about Sports, News, or Politics: While there are certain people who offer interesting and insightful opinions about the above things, most non-professional tweeters really screw this one up. It's like the "THE STEELERS ARE KICKING ASS" or the "OBAMA IS RUINING AMERICA, HE'S WORSE THAN BUSH" or the "CAN'T BELIEVE HURRICANE SANDY FORCED HOSTESS INTO BANKRUPTCY"... alright that last one was my own doing. These normally come from people who believe that they know something about current events and they want to get their opinion in to let people see that they're paying attention.

So there you have it Internet, the five types of tweets, as thought of by Jon Anderson. Humor wasn't a type, but most funny tweets fit into one of the types anyways. Funny tweets that don't conform are the best kind, so I didn't want to include good tweets in with a condescending list. If you comprise a tweet that legitimately does not fit into any of these five tweet types, you can consider it a successful tweet and you should treat yourself to a favorite of your own tweet. It feels good, I promise.

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We Can All Learn From Grinnell College

Last night a division three basketball player named Jack Taylor scored 138 points in a single basketball game. That sounds impressive. It sounds impressive because it is impressive - but maybe not quite as impressive as you may think.

If you saw that headline and thought this wasn't a planned thing for even half a second, you should see a doctor. The whole system was designed to get this kid as many points as possible and make the news. It's not even the first time this school has done it apparently. They were fouling the other team on purpose and playing four man defense to let them score quickly, just so they could get Taylor as many shots as possible (he took 108 of them at the end of the night, which wasn't even an impressive shooting percentage).

A lot of sports analysts are appalled by this and saying that it shouldn't be news because Grinnell is basically ruining the integrity of the game just to get some play in the media.

I think it's brilliant. I would even go as far as to say that every other D-III school should be ashamed of itself for not attempting similar shenanigans. Grinnell College realizes how irrelevant they are in the scope of NCAA athletics. They don't play to win, they don't play to further the integrity of their athletes, they don't play for honest competition, they play to make a name for themselves in an absolutely ridiculous way. And if you can't get your name out there legitimately, what excuse do you have to not try ridiculous things to accomplish it? Waynesburg University is doing basketball wrong. Every D-III basketball program not named Grinnell is doing it wrong. Jack Taylor scored more points in a single game than any other basketball player in history ever did. And he's probably not even that much better than I am at basketball. This kid has no future. I mean just look at him:

Yeah, exactly. I'm confident that I could take this kid in one-on-one. But is my name on Sportscenter? Well yeah... actually it is... but that has nothing to do with anything I've ever done.

Sometimes in life you have to realize that you aren't all that special. But guess what, that's okay. You don't have to be famous or attractive or good at something to have a successful and happy life. Jack Taylor will be able to tell his kids that at one point he was mentioned in the same sentence as some of the greatest basketball players ever mentioned. Then he'll go off to his job at a gas station and his kids will head to school and probably get bullied because they're tiny and have no confidence.

Accomplishment doesn't have to be legitimate - it just has to be accomplishment. I encourage you all to accomplish something in the most loop-holey and pathetic way possible.

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No Topic Tuesday... on a Wednesday

Apparently it's not Tuesday anymore.

Most of my daily frustration comes from people's tweets - namely people with whom I attend college with. I have an honest question: has complaining about something in your life on Twitter ever made the bad situation anything but worse? It honestly bothers me when all I see from people is how much they like some girl/guy and they don't like them back, or how they want to do something but they can't, or just general talk about all the bad things in their life. I understand venting, but is social media really the place for it? Chances are if I have ever seen you complaining about your life on social media, I don't feel bad for you and I don't have any extra desire to try and help you out, I just kind of think that you're pathetic. I have problems too you know, but the only people that know anything about them are people that are my actual friends and actually want to help me out. Twitter is public. You wouldn't go out in the middle of Pittsburgh with a sign detailing why you can't get the girl you want because you curly hair or you aren't in good enough shape. I'm not going to say that nobody cares... but ... yeah nobody cares.

Twitter has made me like way more people less than it has made me like people more, because it seems that there is just a general lack of personality among my generation. That's too bad. Although it's probably good for us people that have some personality, because we stand out a lot more than them. If everything was perfect, there wouldn't even be a point of being perfect. That's a hard-hitting sentence.

You know that saying that 'quitters never win'? I've been questioning that lately. Watching football brought that to light. The other night the Bears were just getting stomped by the 49ers. They were down like 27-0 in the second half. The game was over. They kept trying to score and stuff and eventually did make the score a little bit more respectable, but they got a number of their players hurt in the process. Jason Campbell needs like 4 new body parts this week. Now I have a question for all my readers who play for the Chicago Bears: was it worth it? Was getting that touchdown really worth pushing a number of your players closer to retirement? A loss is a loss no matter how bad it was, but a leg can stop being a leg if you break it too many times. They should have just walked off the field in the 3rd quarter and taken the loss. Sure, the organization would have lost an incredible amount of respect, ticket sales would plummet, and their players, coaches, and owners would be criticized relentlessly for years, but they'd still be allowed to play the next week - and chances are they'd be in better shape to win that next game.

Quitting isn't a bad thing guys, sometimes it's a good thing. If you have no chance to get anything positive out of something, get the hell out. Losing is worse than not winning. You can always say that you would have won if it wasn't in your best interest to quit, and you'll never be able to be proven wrong. Sorry to crush the spirits of all the tweenagers who have been told never to give up, but this is real life - and quitting can be a big advantage in real life.

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No Topic Tuesday

I've been itching to write in here again, but no big topic has come to mind in recent days, so I just now decided to create "No Topic Tuesday", in which I write blog posts that have no theme, point, meaning, or really any positive qualities whatsoever. Seriously I just thought of this after I opened the new post. I had a couple sentences written down which were total garbage then this brilliant sub-par idea came into my head.

What's been frustrating me lately is how people can't spell. The problem with spelling these days is that everything is digital. I haven't written on paper in months. You know what that means? When I see a misspelling, it's mostly on a computer or a phone. That means the person that wrote it didn't really write it, they typed it. You know what that means? It means that I don't know if they spelled it wrong or just typed it wrong. I do know for a fact that Bob Pompeani knows full well how to spell "Pittsburgh", but he still manages to screw it up on Twitter all the time. He recently went with "Pitrsburgh", which is unreal to me. I understand, you're a middle aged man who came up actually like using pen and pencil to write. Guess what? That doesn't give you an excuse to spell shit wrong on your twitter account, which like 6,000 people follow. LOOK AT ME I'M 50 YEARS OLD SO I DON'T HAVE TO SPELL THINGS CORRECTLY ON DIGITAL MEDIA BECAUSE I WAS TAUGHT TO READ ON PAPER AND NOT ON A COMPUTER SCREEN. Go away dude.

That was a bold faced complain paragraph, and I feel bad about it.

Holiday breaks are coming up and I just bought an iPhone 5, which means I'm dead broke and I'm gonna feel horrible about myself when I go to Yankee Candle and spend $50 on seasonally scented candles to make my room more appealing to all the girls that will never be in it. But bring on the freakin' McDonald chili sauce and nuggets, no regrets.

Kansas is playing tonight. In basketball. Which means that I'm happy about sports again. I've always said that my love for sport is rooted in the fact that sports can't leave you or disappoint you, they'll always be there and they'll always be entertaining. This last Pirates season challenged that belief to be honest, but almost two months have past since that tragedy ended and I'm starting to feel better about sports. The Pirate and the Jayhawks make me happy, you know why? Because nobody I grew up with really likes them as much as I do. Humans have this natural desire to be important and to be individualistic. We want to be defined by something that doesn't define anyone else. I'm a happy guy due to the fact that I was born with 6 toes on each foot. It's true. I have two more toes than you. My psychiatrist told me to never tell anybody that, but I'm tired of living this damn lie.

Some people take sports way too seriously. A lot of people hate LeBron James. But do a lot of people know LeBron James? No. How would you feel if somebody somewhere watched you do what you're best at and started hating you for no good reason. That doesn't seem fair, right? It's probably more fair to LeBron since he has a quadrillion dollars, but the point stands. Don't hate an athlete until you know them. Or just think whatever the hell you want, I'm not here to tell you how to live.

Fact check: I actually am here to tell you how to live. Having 12 toes is really hard guys, don't ever grow two extra toes.

I did one of those full body twitches in class the other day. You know the kind when you're so bored and disinterested in class that your body just tries to fall asleep? Except the problem is that there isn't anything to rest your head on, and you aren't a good enough sleeper to be able to do it without a headrest? So your head starts bobbing and you get that feeling of weightlessness, so everything else inside of you like has a one second spasm? The resulting occurence is you looking like a total dumbass in front of 8 other college students. That happened three times yesterday. Dammit.

Good news is that I'm a bad ass and established my credibility amongst my peers in the third week of class by making fun of the professor to his face. Which did really bad things to my grade. If you ask me if I regret that decision, I would say yes.

Anyways, I've got nothing constructive to say from here on out, which I probably could have said at the beginning of this post and it still would have held true. Peace out jagaloons.

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Senior Year Seminar

Eyes... ears... testicles... lungs... senior years.

What are "things you only get two of for 800, Alex".

So that was sort of opposite Jeopardy I guess...

Anyways, senior year is like 3/8ths over and I realized that I haven't even offered my horribly destructive advice on the subject yet.

Senior year is like the moonlanding. Freakin' Neil Armstrong went crazy his senior year. I heard that Armstrong got so drunk at a party that he tried to jump off his house's roof to the moon. He got pretty close too. After he woke up from the coma he was in, he bought a spacesuit off Amazon and actually went to the moon. Dude was crazy. His professors were jealous and failed him. Then he screwed the Dean's wife and got straight A's, which absolutely doesn't make any sense.

Anyways, senior year is all about happy endings. High school senior year, literally nothing matters. By the time you're a senior, you already have the resume you need to get into whatever college you're going to get into. Either that or you're already destined for manual labor. Anyways, have as much fun as you possibly can senior year. If you don't have detention a few times you did it wrong. Back talk teachers, pull really bad pranks, and get into physical fights with guys way bigger than you. Seriously before you turn 18 you can do whatever the hell you want. You're a kid, which means you pretty much don't exist. Just have fun senior year, and be nice to your parents. You need your parents to like you. They'll be paying for your college and giving you a car. Do what they say, or just become a really bad liar.

High school senior year was like four years ago, so now we'll get into my real expertise.

Your first goal of senior year is to find a really cheap way to do everything. If you're into drinking, you should do that while saving as much money as possible. By the time you're a senior you're 21 years old and you can legally drink; it's ridiculous to think that someone would drink under the age of 21. What I've recently discovered is that because the legal drinking age is 21, as soon as you turn 22 you can't go to bars anymore. Walked into this bar on my 22nd birthday and the lady was like "hey are you 21?", I'm like ... nope ... so she kicked me out. So take advantage of the 356 days you have to drink. If you're lucky they'll be a leap day between your birthdays and you'll get that extra day.

Senior year classes are important.

hahahh.

The truth is you don't want to lose your mind. You need some brain cells for after college life when you have to be good enough at bullshitting to convince somebody that you can actually help their business. Life's really all about convincing somebody that you're worth their time anyways. Even if you are worth their time, you still have to convince them of it. No resume will ever convince someone of your worth. How do you get that accented 'e' on here anyways. Dammit. è. Oh hell yeah there it goes. I've written about this in the past anyways, read the college tips post for more information.

Make as many jokes as possible senior year. Piss off as many professors as possible, as long as they aren't professors that can get you jobs. You're gonna get crappy grades, but in 2 years you'll realize that your grades didn't really matter. Graduate on time with a GPA over 2.75 and become a good communicator. That is your only goal.

I have a lot more advice to give, but we'll save that for part 2 in the series. Just keep refreshing this page until that one appears.

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People Pleasing

Hurricane Sandy was a real bitch. Not only did she drown Atlantic City and knock over the Empire State Building, she screwed up all the emotions of people all around me.

So everyone keeps telling me that it might not have been the rain that has been screwing with all of us as much as its been just the ups and downs of life and the confusion of youth and the changes of life. It's been a lot easier for me to just blame everything on the hurricane though.

There's a life lesson for you kids. Scape goats. Whenever you have a problem or do something wrong, you'd better have something to blame it on that you had nothing to do with. You failed a test and got kicked out of your school's nursing program? Not your fault. How were you supposed to keep up with your school work when you were so constantly distracted by all the politics ads and mudslinging going on all around you? I read a stat today that says 18-25 year old Americans see an average of 18 hours of political bullshit per day, and that's not even me swearing that was just the quote of the stat. How are you supposed to know about STDs when Mitt Romney won't stop screaming at you? It's not your fault.

Always have an excuse. Never take responsibility for your actions. For me, I just designate one of my friends every month to blame everything on.

I do think that a lot of human unhappiness comes from trying to please someone, or everyone. It's not possible to please everyone. I've always said that if nobody is hating on you, you aren't doing life right. The only people that don't have anybody talking bad about them are people who don't talk or do much of anything with their lives - and that's not who you want to be.

In terms of relationships, I think a lot of displeasure comes from when you get into a relationship with someone and feel the need to constantly make them happy. If you being yourself doesn't make them happy, then is it really a good relationship? If you have to go out of your way and not be yourself to satisfy the person, is it worth it? Relationships can change people, and I don't think that's necessarily right. Granted, I don't know anything about relationships. Unless it's a relationship in Microsoft Access, I'm pretty good at those. Thanks Doctor Wang.
Obviously you have to work to please people to some extent. You can't just go through life doing what you want to do and not worrying about how it affects other people. Relationships require work and the best things in life are hard, but you get my point.

I hate writing more than like two or three serious sentences in a row.

China really sucks. I have this idea about dropping a bomb of amnesia powder on the Chinese government to make them forget about all the money we owe them. I doubt Obama is reading this post right now since he's probably pre-occupied with getting reelected, but when you do read this, you're welcome for the idea 'Rack, you can claim that bitch as your own I don't even care about the credit anymore.

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Gonna Try to Write A Paragraph with Boxing Gloves On

hgm , klc s ;xsfsgxs;n nkjh lo vikmbgjk bglki dx wow screw that I don't know how boxers do anything

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Election Week and Sandusky is Still Here

For every day that passes I get one day closer to leaving Waynesburg and embarking on the next chapter of my life. You can say the same thing for Jerry Sandusky, except that creep's next chapter is death. So that sucks. As you can tell it's taking me a little bit of time to get over the whole Sandusky thing.

It's taking me even a longer time to get over the fact that like 2% of people in life are entertaining and relaxed about things. We're in college, where nothing really matters all that much and yet people are still up tight and scared of fun. What is going to happen to life when we're in the real world and things are actually serious? Jobs, mortgages, families, that's real stuff that even I'm going to take seriously. If people are up tight and no fun right now, what are they going to be like for the rest of my life? It's scary.

Today in class I wrote the word "pube" real big on Nate's doodle sheet. Then Nate said that he thought he was having a stroke. Two different people were offended by these things. The one kid said his uncle had a stroke, so we shouldn't joke about strokes. I don't want to be rude to this kid who is clearly having a tough time with his uncle or whatever, but joking about stuff doesn't make the subject of the joke any more dangerous. Sure, sometimes you can evoke memories that aren't pleasant, but people need to stop making everything about themselves. Deal with life, and let us make whatever jokes we want.

Maybe that was harsh. It definitely was, but guess what, I didn't erase it. I promise not to say the word "stroke" in front of that kid ever again. As for the "pube" thing, I don't see why anyone would be offended by such a word and I solemnly promise to say that word at least a dozen more times this week in front of as many people as I can.

To be honest I'm just a bit frustrated with humanity today. There are just so many awkward, not entertaining, no fun, up tight people around. God made everybody for a reason and I shouldn't be bashing His creation, but why do I have such a problem with my generation? Maybe it's because I like myself too much. That definitely has a lot to do with it. I respect a person that can make a joke and not taking anything too personally.

This has probably been the least funny post I've written so far. It's legitimately just me bitching... sorry.

The election is tomorrow. All I really want from the election is for the price of pistachio's to come down. Whichever candidate can make that happen is fine with me.

If you read all of this I'm really sorry. Come see me and express your displeasure and I'll give you a free face touch or something.

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No Shaving and Breast Awareness

This post is about No Shave November and Breast Cancer Awareness, but the title had you thinking of other things, didn't it?

"No Shave November" pisses me off. There are two reasons for that. Number one is that I once knew this kid who could grow hair like nobody's business, like this dude had hair coming out of his eyeballs - and this was all the time, not even just during months where he elected not to shave. So anyways, no shave November comes around and by Thanksgiving this kid didn't have a face. He was like that tangela pokemon from ... well ... pokemon.


For real this kid had so much hair everywhere and it was really gross. That's reason number one why I don't like No Shave November.

Reason number two is because I have a donteverhitpubertyalarial disease and I've never been able to grow any good facial hair. For real I couldn't even grow a goatee until like a year ago. I was 19 years old and I had never shaved before in my life because I never grew facial hair. So when No Shave November rolled around all my big hairy friends would be like YO JON WHY DID YOU SHAVE IT'S NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. I'm like well guys... I'm actually so good at No Shave November that I took it to a completely different level, I made it a no-shave century.

Part two of this post is about breast cancer awareness. I'm not going to make breast jokes either because I'm way too mature for that.

So tomorrow we're ...

Sorry one of my housemates just came in and screamed something completely nonsensical and I lost my thought train... that kid is strange.

So tomorrow we're supposed to wear purple for breast cancer awareness. Actually I'm not even all that sure that it's breast cancer awareness, but it's some sort of awareness. (This is the part of the post where I toe the line of offending people) (-)(-) I just don't understand how wearing purple helps anybody. Is some rich guy gonna walk around and see everyone wearing purple and then be like "hey I'm gonna give a million dollars to cancer research because these kids are wearing purple"? I mean it's worth a shot I guess, it doesn't hurt anybody to wear purple, I just don't think that stuff actually does anything. Wouldn't we be better off asking everyone to give a dollar? Money talks guys.

Awareness doesn't cure disease, cash money cures disease. Hell it doesn't even have to be cash money, it could be credit money or paypal money or whatever. So I encourage everyone reading to wear every color that isn't purple tomorrow and give a dollar to somebody with breast cancer. That's how we change the world.

If you were offended by this post, I'm sorry. I'm just flustered. I survived Sandy and I thought I was out of the woods, but then someone threw an usk in the middle of that word and there's a child molester in Waynesburg. Bro-ham Sandusky is rotting in prison just 3.5 miles away from me. You know how scary that is for a guy that can't grow facial hair?

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