Twitter unfollow bug: It’s real!
Originally published at The Preternatural Post. Please leave any comments there.
Role players will tell you, Twitter will arbitrarily unfollow people on your behalf. Until recently, the evidence was anecdotal, consigning the Twitter “unfollow bug” to the realm of Bigfoot, the Yeti, Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster, not the hybrid vampire in Twilight Breaking Dawn) and other legendary creatures. Then, this week, everything changed. On Tuesday, Tech Crunch broke the story that Twitter admitted they had a bug and that is caused some Twitter accounts to unfollow other users randomly!
Feeling vindicated? You should. Role players know the Twitter unfollow bug has been around for quite a while and some suspect it isn’t going to be any easy or quick fix for Twitter, primarily because of the randomness with which is seems to occur. In other words, if you get caught unfollowing you BFF’s 10 alternate accounts or that member of your group/family that never tweets anyway because you hit a following limit, you’ll still be able to claim “It’s wasn’t me! Twitter did it!” At least for a little while longer.
There’s a caveat, however. Just because it doesn’t look like you’re following someone to you…doesn’t mean you aren’t. In fact, if you read Twitter’s help center FAQ on the bug, you’ll discover that you can confirm you are following someone by visiting their profile. Apparently, visiting someone’s profile page and seeing the blue following button is a more accurate way of determining who you are following than checking your own follower list! Yes, it’s time-consuming, and in some ways both tedious and annoying to visit every profile of every person you want to follow. Then again….
This could be a great opportunity to go through your follower and following lists and decide who you really want or need to follow. If you haven’t done this recently, or perhaps never done it at all, you may discover some surprises.You may find some characters have changed their profile. Maybe they’ve acquired a spouse or child or relative or Pack or skill that you were not aware of. You may not even recognize some of them anymore.
After a awhile, most active RPers discover they have a character (or two or ten) that they don’t really use any more. Sometimes these were created for a specific storyline or person that is no longer around. Sometimes, once the RPer got into the character, they discovered it just didn’t speak to them and they did want to play that character. Instead of deleting the character, they just let it…stop. They didn’t do anything with it for a long time. Then, something comes up and they need a character. Rather than creating a new account, some role players will flip those dormant accounts to a new character. They may or may not alert that characters followers to what is happening. If they don’t announce the change the world or even if they did but you weren’t paying attention, you may discover you are following people you don’t know and have no reason to follow!
Go ahead and click on that unfollow button. You can always follow then again if the character turns out to be an alternate of your RP partner or needed for an SL. If you do it now, no one will ever now, because even if you get caught, you can blame it on the Twitter unfollow bug.