Thread by @AlexandraErin

Downside to me being less active on Twitter while still gaining new followers is I apparently have a lot of followers who don't know what to expect from me.

Here are some big ones:

1. I don't follow people back because they followed me. I follow people I know and want to keep in touch with, and strangers whose content I want to keep up with.

2. I have my notifications filtered. I don't get a notice when you follow me (or when you unfollow and refollow five times to try to get a follow back), when you reply, when you tag me, etc. Twitter is not a good contact form for me.

3. I treat the follow, mute, and block buttons as ways to control my own experience in Twitter. I follow what I want to see, mute what I don't want to see, and block what I don't want to happen.

I don't often give warnings before I block because in my experience the most likely outcome is the person warned doubles down because who am I to tell them how to tweet? Which is a good point. You're free to tweet as you see fit. I'm free to block.

If you want to know what will get you blocked, frankly telling me how to use my Twitter account is on the list.

So is "jokingly" replying to a tweet to do the thing the poster complained about or asked people not up do.

I block 100% of the time for that. On anyone's tweets.

But the biggest thing I block for, the thing that makese block the fastest, is when someone following me replies to something I retweeted in a way that I find disrespectful to the original poster. That is an instant block. You won't get a second chance to do that, if I notice.

The "if" is because I have my notifications turned down so I might not see it.

Explaining all this is apt to "cost" me some followers, but you have to understand: I don't care? Follower growth is a goal of mine but it isn't my only goal.