The 6 Dumbest Things You Have (Probably) Done on Twitter


Since 2006, Twitter has witnessed an incredible rate of growth in popularity. Unfortunately, things weren’t always so pleasant as foolish acts of stupidity are performed on a regular basis at a global scale. In this post, I spotlight six of the most infamous atrocities to ever occur on Twitter. Let’s hope that you had nothing to do with any of them.

  1. Name Squating

    2. Like domain names, email addresses, and Facebook vanity urls, it wasn’t too long when the hoarde of opportunists arrived at the Twitter scene in 2006. Like the guy who shows up at Best Buy at 11 am on Black Friday, there was no hope for bagging any of the biggest prizes like @sexyguy, @irule, and @thebest.

  2. Setting up Auto-DM’s for new followers

    3. When I first started using Twitter, receiving a direct message was sacred experience for me. I mean, I don’t know 99.9999% of these people in real life, so why would they send me a DM anyways? I was intrigued. I was captivated. Then, things became down-right lame. There I was, sitting in front of my beloved Gateway laptop realizing that Twitter was utterly failing before my eyes. With Facebook, I never received any message saying,

    “Hey, dude! Thanks for adding me on Facebook. Let’s frolic around together in our games of superficiality!”

    So, please people. Don’t send me automatic DM’s whenever I follow you.

  3. Clicking on links from @britney_fd_videos

    4. Hmmmmm…”Check out my sexy video! http://butt.ly/clkme” Oh, yea! I gotta check this out!

    “Buy viagra online? Try Prozac today?” Wait a minute…Where’s the sexy video?

    Don’t worry. Try clicking on more links. Like your mother always said, you won’t succeed if you don’t keep trying!

  4. Creating a custom URL shortener

    5. Yes, of course. @TheRealKami will surely agree with you.

    After the devastating end to Cli.gs and Tr.im, what hope was there for you to place any trust in current URL shorteners like Bit.ly and Ow.ly? So, what did you do? Well, you took it upon yourself to be the one to perform plastic surgery on overly-long URL’s. Bravo, Einstein.

    Like many great ideas, things looked golden in the beginning. Your Twitter followers were awed by your reckless defiance of Internet norms of behavior. They kept telling you how great you were and what an inspiration you were to them.

    But creating your own custom URL shortener is a fool’s journey into oblivion. First, the links won’t be as easily recognized and may even be ignored as spam. Also, since Twitter made Bit.ly its official URL shortening service, you have nothing to worry about Bit.ly ever closing. Worse of all, who cares about branding? Just stick to Bit.ly.

  5. Following Alyssa Milano on Twitter

    6. Of all the celebrities you can follow on Twitter, no one is as awful as Alyssa Milano. Worse yet, she’s an avid LA Dodgers fan, which is a worser crime than adding your mom on Facebook. I was amazed at how patient I was as I casually ignored her occasional dimwitted Tweets, believing that it will only improve with time. Boy, was I wrong.

    It gets worse...trust me

  6. @reply to yourself

    7. I’m sorry, Patrick. I really admire you for playing for the 49ers, but what you did on Twitter recently was down-right dumb.

    The Facebook equivalent to this would be to write on your own wall….And reply to yourself.

Honorable Mention: Lindsay Lohan

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room in the universe to list all the dumb things that have occurred on Twitter. Fortunately, the comments section below is the next best thing.