I have written about blog stats and how I used to watch them like I depended on them. I have also written that I don’t watch the stats anymore. Waste of time. I’m not selling anything and if it should ever get to the point where 2 lost people read, that will be good enough.
Coming ever so forcefully into the picture and stealing a little bit of the blog thunder, I believe, is Twitter and Facebook. I’m not really bothered by it cuz if people read here or there or where ever, they’re reading and hopefully being entertained, motivated or moved to give. Anyway, not really what this post is about, but a few days ago someone pointed out that I had 777 followers on Twitter. I chuckled and then went to take a look. It’s true….well, it’s up to 780 now, but who’s counting? LOL
See, it’s not so bad with Facebook cuz I actually know a lot of those people. I graduated with 430 people and although they’re not all on there, a bunch of em are. But with Twitter?? I literally laughed out loud for a good 20 seconds. I don’t know 780 people! The funniest part about it is what Twitter calls these people….FOLLOWERS. If 780 people “follow” me on Twitter, I will run around your block naked, with makeup and a blonde wig on. The word “follow” is used very loosely. I supposedly “follow” 496 people. OK!
Then there is Facebook. I have 340 friends. Again, we’ll use the word “friends” loosely. I promise ya I’ve only met 1/4 of them. I decided to count the Twitter folk and I’ve physically seen 32 of them. Not gonna do that with Facebook cuz sifting through 780 Tweeters was more than enough.
What’s my point? Well, I’ve watched enough Twitter to make some ill. I see who people talk to regularly. I see those who OBSESS over how many followers they have. I’ve seen em brag to others about having more than them. I’ve seen folks with 40 followers and folks with 1.2 million followers…and everywhere in between. What bugs me is this: Of the 496 people I follow, 4 of them do not profess to be Christians. That’s really my only Twitter strategy….if they follow me and are Christians, I’ll follow them back. Sometimes I’ll have conversations with them and sometimes not. Oh yeah, back to what bugs me….As I mentioned, I watch who these people talk to and it’s funny that NO ONE seems to regularly chat with more than 10-20 people. More like 5-10 for most peeps. But then ya have the pastors and worship leaders with thousands of followers. Would you think they would be the ones speaking to the largest variety of people? In my experience, that’s not the case.
Just like the country club that is most churches, they “hang” with a certain click and ignore the rest. I’ve held my own minor experiments, asking random questions to people with lots of followers just to see if I would get a response. I’ve gotten responses from Bart Millard, lead singer of Mercy Me, Pete Wilson, pastor of Crosspoint church…..I even got a response from Perry Noble from New Spring…..These guys are probably some busy guys, but had time for the common folk. But the vast majority won’t respond, but they will “follow” you. They follow you thinking that if they don’t follow you, you won’t help pad their numbers and follow them back. There are services so you can keep track of when people follow and unfollow you….I guess so you can beg them to not go…LOL I used to use the service, but haven’t in a long while. Like I said, I follow Christians and mostly Christians follow me. These aren’t the people that Jesus told me to seek. Seek the lost He said. But wait….if they’re that much into themselves, maybe they are LOST. Maybe so far lost that following me probably won’t help.
Well, whatever His plan is for them is not up to me. I just expect more from people who claim to be Christians. I expect them to be promoting Jesus, not themselves. I expect for them to be giving of their time. I expect that after they beg me to follow them to do more than try to sell me a book. I expect you to answer when I ask a question. Maybe I can help you….maybe I can learn something from you. I expect interaction….otherwise, what’s the point?
I’m just not gonna contribute to their egos anymore.
