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For a lot of us, twitter has come to be the premiere social media tool. But make no mistake, twitter can be laborious--at least in the beginning. In order to really enjoy the medium, you have to put some time and care into putting together a good list of people to follow. A friend who recently joined twitter said he didn't like it because everyone wants to be followed and no one wants to be a follower...I understand his frustration. If you're interesting and can convey that over 'type' you WILL be followed, that's not to say you will amass thousands of followers but certainly enough to engage. The hardest thing about twitter, to me, is getting people to understand that getting followed depends on a lot of factors, many of which are not personal. I put together my own little list of reasons I don't follow people...as you can see some of them are rational, others are not.

1. The majority of your tweets are about celebrities. Seeing as how I’m famous in my own mind, I’m not sure why I’d want you to tweet profusely about some other celebrity (aside from me).
2. You’re under 25. I will be turning 28 next month and I am finding that the under 25 crowd is often a little more than I can take. I do follow some youngsters, I consider them to be grandfathered in. Nevertheless, Trick loves the kids, but @whymelawd doesn’t…necessarily.
3. You’re a woman. I’m all for vagina power, but twitter gives me access to men of all types. I like to take advantage.
4. Most of my timeline is already following you. This may sound like a weird disqualification. However, when you are following two people who tweet back and forth to each other their entire conversation appears on your timeline. Sometimes this can be overkill. Apparently, I’m not as nosy as I think. I don’t need to be in every.single.conversation.
5. Yeen talmbout shit. If your timeline is full of tweets like “yo follow me, I’ll follow you back,” “hey yall, I need more followers,’ chances are I will not be following you any time soon. Just tweet like normal and you will gain followers…unless of course “normal” includes tweets like “what a beautiful day outside” or “sandwhich for lunch, hmm DELISH!” Tweeting isn’t easy…but it ain’t that hard either.
6. You’re from the North. I have had my fill of Northerners on my timeline. If every tweet is about how disgusted you are by Gucci Mane or how you hate when people pronounce “you ain’t” as “yeen” or that “aint ain’t a word” the likelihood of me following you is slim to bitch please! Some of us are country. Get over it. *scrolls through 90 Gucci Mane songs on my ipod*
7. You retweet every compliment you get. As bitter as people on twitter can be sometimes, overall people are very nice. I get random compliments from people all day long about my blog or my picture or my tweets. I think it’s so sweet! But I am used to getting compliments, just as I am used to giving them out pretty freely. Apparently some people aren’t, because you RT every kind thing someone says about you. RT’ing compliments is tricky because sometimes if you’ve written something that people are praising it’s nice to let others know that feedback has been positive…it can help entice them to give your post a read as well. Other times, it just seems…well…weird and desperate. It’s the primary reason I typically do not follow celebrities like myself.
8. You’re not attractive to me [and yes this applies to women as well]. Sorry.
9. My timeline is already full. I don’t know if I will ever follow over 250 tweeters. It took me forever to follow more than 90 people. Then I got stuck at 150. Now I’m at 216. I may be interested in following more people but I’d like to keep up with the timeline I have. Baby steps!
10. You don’t have a profile picture. [See #8]

I will be completely honest, I really don’t care if someone follows me back when I follow them. In fact, a lot of times I PREFER to follow people who aren’t following me back. That way our relationship is exactly how I like my relationships…they give…I receive. So, if I’m not following you, don’t take it personally, it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t care about what you have to say. I respond to everyone, even if, as @thetillshow says, I respond “93 hours later.” Some of the people I’m NOT following give more interesting responses to my tweets than people I am following. But everyone uses their twitter account differently. This is just a little insight into how I use mine.

Follow me @whymelawd (or don’t…it’s up to you…)

I'd love to hear others' nit picky reasons for why they don't follow people...