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A couple of months ago I had written a post titled “How to be famous on Twitter in India”. While writing that, if memory serves me correctly, I had close to about 1000 followers (equivalent to the number of IIPM students uploading their CVs on naukri.com as we speak) and been in the “public” eye for just about two months. A lot has changed since then.

Some of you sent e-mails thanking me for those guidelines helping you build your follower base and the faux sense of power and accomplishment that comes with it. Some of you went on to love the use of TharoorMan! as a character (who I haven’t revived because of his being busy in renaming Kerela as Kerelam – inspired no doubt by the Chicken McNuggets jingle titled Chicken Khaane ka Naya Stylum) and some of you decided to pimp my name around to even more people, which has now led me to be in the enviable position of having to please 2150 followers (roughly the number of Micromax phones that have stopped working since you started reading) all of whom seem to be united by a cause of accessing my trite bullshit on their timelines. And as much as that satiates my ego, I want more people to rise through the ranks of the mediocrity that is Twitter and make a name for them online. Just so that it reduces the stress on the likes of us.

Thus, as a supplement to my How to be famous article, I now present to you another list of Twitter guidelines, netiquette even, to truly set yourself free and bask in the glory of sheep-herd mentality fame-dom.

Don’t kiss people’s ass or be sweet to them for no reason: You know, maybe it’s just my Delhi mentality, but unless you’re a Jew helping out another Jew in a concentration camp (you see what I did their Joel Stein?) I don’t see any reason for you to be nice to people. Especially, if you were bitching about the same people when they weren’t following your ass. So what happened all of a sudden? Why are you saying shit like welcome? Why are you using Wikipedia to try and pretend to have shit in common with people you actually have nothing in common with? Why aren’t you that sweet to people who have a lesser number of followers than you? Why are you uploading postcards with people’s names while you were on a holiday? (WTF? What kind of a holiday were you having anyway? How vella does one have to be to be in an exciting new land to bother about people who are left behind online?!) Look, everyone knows the game. We’re all here for our own gratification – we follow people who say shit interesting enough, consistently enough, and for long enough. Ass kissing ain’t going to make you any more interesting. If anything, it’ll just make you look like a guy walking around Amsterdam with his cock out the pants hoping someone would jerk it just because the city has a red-light district. So seriously, shut the fuck up, and be normal.

Don't bait someone or send the same joke to multiple people: Now again, I know I spoke about creating your Twitter champions when you are starting out as a newbie, but you need to do it in style. First, don’t send the same fucking joke to five people. Not only do you look like a fucktard for sending a crap joke to five people, all of whom will make a mental note about your inability to come up with shit, you also end up ticking off their ego. If you want to send a joke, for fuck’s sake make sure it is funny. And if it isn’t, atleast send it to just ONE of the Twitter big-wigs so that they think they’re getting personal attention. And what’s with the baiting incase no one RT’s the joke? You think saying shit like your stupidity rapes my ears has any effect on people? No. We’ve been around longer, we’ve seen how shit goes down. It doesn’t sound smart, it only makes you look like a jackass who is desperate for attention and will goto any length necessary to be able to get it. If that’s your thing – try Uday Chopra. You’ll probably be able to better relate to the unsolicited butting-in type behaviour.

Join a clique, or stay friends with them: If you’re Punjabi, your ass is as good as Dalit on Twitter. Cliques, in their order of prominence are Tamil > Mallu > Bombay > Bulbs > Delhi. Now here is the thing. In order to get your ass noticed, you will need to impress atleast the Tamil / Mallu clique. As soon as you ask someone who are the interesting people to follow on Twitter, the usual suspects will come tumbling and you can take it from there. It might seem awkward to you to see so much chatter on your timeline which you can make absolutely no sense of, but just think of it as your first Chemistry class, or an attempt at trying to pee without wetting the seat. Either way, if you don’t get pissed off, it will atleast be educational and provide insight into other cultures, as long as you don’t try and butt in and stay away from dissing Rajni and Mohanlal. And even if you ABSOLUTELY loathe their conversations, just remember that it pays to keep your enemies closer.

Vary your jokes: Now, most men on Twitter are either funny or trying to be funny. Thus, a lot of jokes are cracked on a day to day basis, and you will soon realise that everyone has their own strengths. Some are good at wordplay, some have an anagram ki dukaan while others, like me, like celebrity bashing. That said, you must always try and vary your jokes as much as possible. If you’re going to do wordplay, make sure you intersperse it with some sarcastic jokes about headlines in the newspaper. If you want to please the more intellectual crowd, do anagrams and obscure Western pop-culture references. But if you are willing to settle for being considered low-brow, cheap and populist, there is no better way than to follow some Bollywood celebrities and rip them apart, one tweet at a time. You might not get the hi-jinks crowd, but the sheep like fans shall come to you in droves.

If you want to kiss ass, list them: Listing, for some reason that I haven’t figured out yet, seems to be a big thing on Twitter. I have no remarks or jokes about this, except saying that it works. I have tried it first hand, and it has, without fail, eased up the person whose ass you are trying to kiss. So don’t get into that stupid “I’ll only follow you if you follow me” rubbish – I don’t know why you give a shittum about that still – and stick to listing.

Pimpage is fine, as long as it's worth pimping: Look, everyone pimps. I personally have a policy of pimping an article thrice, especially if it gets a decent response the first time. If it doesn’t I don’t pimp anymore. I don’t think it is something to be ashamed of or why people frown upon it – but I do have a problem if you’re saying shit like “Guys my article will be done in some 10 hours! Give me time! Wait for it – it will be #EPIC GANGSTA!!” First of all, who gives a fuck if it’s 10 hours away or three? We’re not paying you – and it’s not Dominos pizza. Are you writing for us or yourself? If you’re doing it for “us” without making a living off it, you’re pandering – and that’s pathetic. Second, do you realize how stupid you look when you pimp for two days that your masterpiece is coming – and when it finally hits it’s worse than a Devang Patel album?

Be cool, pretend to drop your gems (if you really think they are gems) as if you just woke up one day and decided “Aah, I think I’ll knock this out the way in 15 mins while brushing my teeth, cooking Eggs benedict with my morning hard on and finger fucking my girlfriend”.  If not, and you’re really trying that hard, chances are you’ll only look stupid.

Stop the now following business: People have some keeda which makes them go “Now following: Person X”. Stop it. If you genuinely like the person you’re following, keep it subtle and tell your friends in private. If you do loud proclamations to get someone’s attention – it just seems silly. If you’re interesting enough the person will follow you back anyway. You’re not the Queen, no one cares.

Don’t be afraid of celebrity unfollows: And finally, don’t be afraid is some Twitter “celebrities” end up unfollowing you. I can’t stand it when people cry about such shit. First of all, they’re human too. Second, so what if they don’t like you? Is that how secure you are about your existence? Would it matter if an earthquake struck this very moment? Were they paying you on a per tweet basis? And look at it this way – why did you want them to follow you anyway? So that they could mention you once or twice and some of their sheep hoardes noticed and started following you to see what the fuss was about? Because if that was the case, then you most likely got their sheep anyway – and they’re not going anywhere – so sit tight and stop crying as if Messi broke his leg. (That really isn’t funny, but I figured I’d make a football reference here to please the fucks that still have flags on their display pictures. TAKE THEM THE HELL OFF!)

So yes, follow these guidelines. They’ll be the best things you’ll pick up since the U-Like guide in 10th grade.


Image courtesy www.mbaeducationinindia.com