hip hop twitter etiquette
aight. after you read this, you may accuse mi of being “tweetier-than-thou”. do i give a fuck? no. because i LoVe twitter and am tortured by the latest wave of ebonical posts, constantly self-promoting ‘artists’, and spamming assholes. i know its tired, but ive assembled a quick list of things that will help you look like less of a douchebag-refill on twitter. these are listed in order of annoyance, followed by a helpful hint. *ahem* (mixtape DJ voice) LETS GO!!!
1. including your OWN USERNAME on a Follow Friday post.
unless it is a RETWEET of another user, including your own username in your HUGE list of names to follow is repetitive and just dumb. did you know that your name is ALREADY included in that list? how? because ITS POSTED BY YOU, dumbass!! FUCK! rappers are especially guilty of this, because they believe that including their own name will get them more followers. oh what a tangled web they weave…
2. incorrect spelling (c’mon yall. its getting out of hand)
listen! im not stickler for correct-spelling. i use words like “yall, sup, mi, tho, crackin, sittin, bro, breh, etc…”, but i also enjoi KNOWING what the fuck someone is saying whilst reading mi timeline! constantly seeing shit like “tanite we r purformin @ da sylk. hit me ^ 2 get own da guesslist, breh” makes mi want to cry. as i type this, mi good friend said something about the “ressesion” (recession). this type of incorrect spelling should be corrected. though its socially acceptable to be the “cool guy” who doesnt give a shit about grammer and spelling, fans who know youre intelligent enough to at least press the SPELL-CHECK button, may respect you that much more! check out the twitter page a highly popular emcee named Doey Rock. a good balance of wisdom, slang, promotion and correct spelling! =0)
3. incorrect use of HASHTAGS (the # you see attached to certain words)
hashtags.org defines a hashtag: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. heres a direct quote from thenextweb.com that fits perfectly:
There seems to be a misguided assumption among some Twitterers that in order for their tweet to show up in searches it needs to be filled with hashtags. It’s not uncommon to see these people write things like “I just tried to use #iPhone #Tweetdeck but it kept #crashing. Back to #Tweetie I go”.
Besides being ugly, this peppering of hashtags through tweets is just pointless. Anyone monitoring Twitter for mentions of the keywords mentioned here will see this tweet regardless of unsightly hashes. A search for “Tweetdeck” will show up all mentions of both “Tweetdeck” and “#tweetdeck”. By using hashtags, all you’re doing is using up your 140 character limit pointlessly.
in other words. filling your post with userless hashtags will NOT get you more followers. unless you can tell mi what META-DATA is, chances are, you dont even KNOW what a hashtag really is used for.
thank you thenextweb.com! i #couldnt have #typed it #better!
more to come as i find more annoyances. i LoVe you guys, but sometimes, as a culture – we hip hoppers look pretty fucking stupid when it comes to the things we do or say on the interweb. i say “we”, because im guilty of it too (just read more of mi blog). can we all step our game up?
20.Nov.09 
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lol…oops…i’m guilty of the first and the third. the horror! i will pay lots more attention now, fam
oh, i cant get past the hello kitty bling. im DEAD.
I gotta argue with #3…I’m a big fan of using hashtags as a way of underscoring punchlines…I never really paid attention to it in apps, but on the web, adding the # also changes the color, making it stand out in the Tweet. I also applaud people who use it to title their tweets that dont necessarily mean for it to Trend, such as #ThingsYouDontKnowAboutMe or #ILoveWeedBecause. It’s just one of those things you can do on Twitter that you can’t do anywhere else.
And as for misspelling/grammar choices, I’ll mention that the English language is a living, breathing being that changes as it grows. what’s misspelled today can be globally accepted tomorrow, and is even more prevalent since for the first time in a thousand years, the written word is as if not more common a means of communication than the spoken word. We’re using symbols as letters now. “Meet me @ 8:30 Or I’l h8 u 4Ever” is gonna be a perfectly acceptable sentence in about two hundred years. But I’ll still be pissed at anyone that cant figure out how to use theyre their and there properly.