I realise I am a complete cliche for starting a blog within a year of joining Twitter but who gives a fuck, you don't have to read it. I've had a shitty couple of months and Twitter has been at the heart of it all. Both my nemesis and my saviour, if you will.
I used to have a different ID and was merrily going along gathering followers, swearing profusely and generally getting to grips with having to use astrisks to get my point across where mere words would not suffice. Then someone wrote to my employer to alert them to my Twitter use during working hours. Well you might say, fair enough, I shouldn't be tweeting in a personal capacity during working hours. You'd be right. I hold my hands up to it - nevermind that I don't know a single person who doesn't tweet, facebook, email, text when they should be entering a formula into a spreadsheet, writing a strategy document, developing a marketing campaign or whatever it is they do to earn a living. Anyway I got a slap on the wrists, a kick up the arse and I've learnt my lesson.
What frightened me was this. The Person who contacted my work sent copies of the letter and pages of my tweets to every member of the senior management board. They did this anonymously and left no contact address. They had clearly spent many, many hours, if not days monitoring my output on Twitter specifically pulling out the tweets they thought would do me the most damage. They had even gone so far as to highlight some with a Sharpie. You won't be surprised to hear that I know who is behind it and why they did it. Suffice to say, I don't believe I deserved it. My only crimes were to not be who The Person wanted me to be and to stand up for my principles. Hell hath no fury like a....no I can't say it.
I deleted my old Twitter account as soon as the shit hit the fan and then a couple of weeks later, rejoined as @bear_faced_lady. Word had got about that I'd returned under a new guise and it was quite something to be welcomed back and *hugged* and *kissed* and generally made to feel like a long lost friend returning from the trenches. At first I locked my account, frightened that The Person would start 'twitter-stalking' me again, but then I thought fuck it. If they're that sad that they have nothing better to do than sit in front of a screen feverishly monitoring the endless drivel I spout then frankly, they're welcome to.
I really like being on Twitter and I get something from it that I don't get elsewhere. I get to be coarse and crude or I can shout or cry and generally be the emotional blunderbus I don't get to be in real life (sorry, IRL). It was horrible to think that some one would take advantage of that bond of trust implicit in any kind of social network - virtual or physical. Maybe I have been too trusting and a bit naive in opening myself up as I have on the social web. Maybe, knowing the sort of person The Person is, I should have seen this coming and been a bit more canny. Probably, yes. But the thing is, I have friends on Twitter as well as followers, some started off as followers and became friends, some I've met and some I never will, but friends nonetheless. Friends the likes of which The Person never was and never could be, to me or anyone else.
So I think that really, at the end of the day even though it's a fight I never sought, in the battle between The Person and The Bear Faced Lady, I WIN.
