That Reena Girl

• Um, who is this again?

08-02-11

Things You Need To Stop Doing

I write a lot about trends I notice, trends I like. But when you work in social media, you also get bombarded with the most annoying trends on the Internet. Consider this an open letter to the Internet in general regarding things I do not wish to see anymore.

1. Lol-speak

I often imagine what it would sound like if my dogs could talk, what their tone would be and what they would say. However, I’m pretty sure since they are both adults they would not ask me if they could “haz” a treat (not to mention, one of them can already say “I love you”. For real). I Can Haz Cheezburger is cute; I’m OK with Lol-speak as captions on cute pet photos. But where I draw a big, fat line is when 1. You pretend to be your pet online and 2. You insist on talkinz lyke dis.  It’s bad enough you have a whole separate profile for your dog, however I am also guilty of this, but in my defense…

Does my English Bulldog have a Facebook Page? Yes, because he’s ridiculous looking. What do I post there? Photos and videos of him looking ridiculous. Do I pretend I’m him when posting updates? No, because he’s a dog and I’m a person with a pretty decent grasp on the English language… and because if he could update Facebook I’m pretty sure he’d talk major sh** about me. He’s kind of a jerk.

(Don’t be fooled by how cute he looks when he’s sleeping, he can be a total ass)

2. Ridiculously long hashtags

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the point of a hashtag on Twitter is to create a clickable, searchable term. Often they are used for humor (my favorite example being #firstworldproblems) or to participate in a discussion. But almost every day when I look at the trending topics, there is at least one that is pretty much an entire sentence. Example: #icantbelieveitwhenguyssaythingslike

A hashtag is not supposed to take up ¾ of tweet. You are not using your 140 characters wisely or allowing your careful crafted message to be shared as easily.  I’m guessing that the majority of these are caused by someone forgetting how to use a space bar and throwing# in front of their update. Somehow their followers assume this is intentional – “OMG! #isototallyhateitwhenmymomtellsme to pick up my room too!” – and spread this nonsense across the Twittersphere.

Some Twitter users are clever enough to work around them, working them seamlessly into their update.  But most people don’t get the point of hashtags, tack them onto the end and then, in order to fit the max character limit, abbreviate everything until it barely resembles English.

So, please, moving forward #keepitshort, #keepitsimple and #stoppostinguncessarilylonghashtags.

3. Calling your blog a “bloggie”

This is more of a personal one. I’ve been working on a social monitoring project and this term keeps coming up. Listen, amateur bloggers of the world. It’s a BLOG, not a bloggie! No need for to make an already kind of silly word even sillier. Do you update your “Facebookie”, post on your “Tumblrie”? No? Then stop calling your blog a “bloggie”!

If you take it to the next level of annoying by calling it –and I’m not joking, this is really common—a “bloggie woggie”, it takes all my self control to resist the urge to punch my computer screen. OK, if you’re 14, you get a pass. But as an adult, trying to get people to read blog posts you’ve worked really hard on, you should probably not instantly kill your credibility.

I hear the words “bloggie woggie” and I automatically assume your blog is chock full of updates about conversations you have with your cat, how much you wish Edward Cullen would take you away from your sad existence and detailed regurgitations of everything you’ve already posted on Twitter, that I didn’t care to know the first time.

Maybe I’m just being really particular here, but for some reason, it just bothers me. It also makes my job much harder.

Now if only I were The Oatmeal and could illustrate this in a brilliant web comic/infographic…

UPDATE: Contribution sent over by my friend Dan. This proves I’m not the only one that feels this way: