You may or may not think me weird, but I follow quite a few people on Twitter who make my blood boil. On a good day I can restrain myself to respond, but just like watching a car crash, I cannot not read them. I have recently decided to unfollow all Born Again Christians to save my poor heart rate from climbing too high, but I still sometimes secretly sneak a peek at what they have to say instead of having a second cup of coffee. I don’t know what it is and yes, maybe I need to see my therapist for it. Secretly I believe that I am not the only one though. Am I? Please say no!
It starts with certain words that people use, which can drive me crazy. Mind you, I know that is a very personal thing and it probably irks as many people when they read me talking about bubbly as when I read the word champers. I mean, come one – what are you doing to a beautiful word like champagne (Freudian slip as I wrote world instead of word first). It ends up sound like a mix between chipmunks and hamper and all together quite like JC Le Roux. Another one is rad. There are few people, in very few situations who can get away with rad. Just because you are born and bred South African doesn’t necessarily qualify you. I guess a lot of it is about context. It sounded cute when Dorothy quipped about Lions and tigers and bears! and added a charming Oh my! to it. It didn’t sound so cute when the girl from 50 Shades of Grey uses the phrase 79 times (this girl actually counted* and that’s the first book only!) and in various situations ranging from being spanked to great alleged sorrow because the spanking stopped.
Then there is the habit of calling people lovelies. Not even my favourite yoga teacher can get away with that one. That is not Twitters fault, but I should mention once and for all that I am quite allergic to most terms of endearment by strangers. Surprisingly enough I have only told a person once that I wasn’t his dear and I think I sounded so harsh that we both got a fright. Usually I will just return the favour and savour the secret knowledge that if I call someone honey or darling, you are at the bottom of my shit list and not my new best friend. I should add that in this case I don't love to hate these people. They just simply annoy me downright.
Twitter is different and if you are unfamiliar with the concept, you’d be surprised by how much junk one can write with 140 characters and why I still read it. There are the obvious, boring, mundane I had a banana for breakfast tweets, which I can easily ignore and accept that probably not the entire world is enticed by my excitement about eating Sushi on Sunday either. Then there are the ones that are clearly geared towards steering controversy, which I also usually ignore quite easily. But then are the ones that really hit me somehow. Yesterday a girl tweeted about a typo done in an article about a horrible charter accident in Hout Bay. The article talked about a diseased person, which was clearly a typo and she pointed that out in not one, but two tweets. Nobody likes a know it all, even journalists are allowed a typo once in a while, and I simply failed to see her point all together. If you read the article, surely you would get what they meant to say?! Which by the way was horrible, so who the heck cares that you spotted a typo?? Obviously she must have been as annoyed by the word ‘diseased’ as I was subsequently by her tweets. Am I annoying anyone yet? I could apologize for the rant, but I needed to somehow blow off steam by other means than talking about the travel agent of doom. And don’t we all have them - the things, people and words we just love to hate? What’s yours? Please share so I know I’m not the only one.
In the meanwhile I will try to simply unfollow this person and write a story about bunnies and kittens, better for my mood and for my heart rate.
*Read her review – very funny and very true and you may just feel inspired to read the actual book afterwards just so you can add your snarly comment.
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