snowgoose

Disclaimer: If you have never heard of Twitter, this blog post will closely resemble gibberish or the rantings of a lunatic to you. Either stop reading now or learn what Twitter is.

“Do you check Twitter as you wake in the morning, and just before you fall asleep at night? Do you find your self compelled to share your life’s every detail with a bunch of total strangers online? Do you have more than 2 applications to monitor and use Twitter, on multiple devices?”

Well then you might have what is rapidy becoming known as “Twaddiction” (or will be after this blog post). If this is you – you have come to the right place.

A growing community of South Africans are living in a scary underworld where terms like tweets, twits and retweets are not obscure ornithological terms, but references to micro-blog posts, friends and the viral spread of information in bite size pieces. In this world, where almost any word can be prefixed by “tw”, we live, play, laugh, vent and even work.

The scourge of Twitter has taken the world by storm and is fast becoming just as popular (some brave souls even say replacing) traditional news, blogs and chat. A comparitavely slow starter in SA, it has nonetheless gripped our online community with an intense hold, with some poor sufferers unable to go even one day without tweeting.

So if you have attended a tweetup, have replaced “just Google it” with “just Tweet it” and are having to sell your Grandmother’s pearls to pay for your escalating bandwidth costs then listen up.

I have developed a Twelve step-programme to help you get over your addiction to all things Twitter. Yes, you read right; just by following this completely non-scientifically developed programme, you can become a normal user of Twitter and not feel the uncontrollable craving to tell your followers about events in your life before you tell your loved ones.

Lets all repeat these steps in unison and then sing “Kumbaya”:

Step 1: Admit you have a problem

Admit to your addiction and you are already half-way to recovery. Don’t hide your tweeting from your spouse or children anymore. They can hear the clicks as you furiously type your precious 140 character info-bytes. They have known about your twaddiction longer than you have.

Step 2: Put your trust in a higher power

Of course here, I’m talking about the Big G; the Almightly Google. Remember those innocent days where you researched things for yourself instead of just lazily tweeting a question and waiting for a response? Put your trust in Google and your twaddiction in their hands.

Step 3: Want to help yourself

The only requirement for Twitterholics Anonymous membership is a desire to control your tweeting. And of course an obscure screen name & manga-fied profile pic.

Step 4: Make a searching an moral inventory of yourself

There is no bot, app or cleverly named online tool to do this like there is for everything else in Twitter. You have to look within. How many times a day do you tweet? Come on, admit it – its more than you thought hey?

Step 5: Apologise for your actions

You know those people you refer to in Twitter as “child 1″ and “husband”? Those people love you. They have names and they are hurt by your twaddiction. Apologise to them. In person. A tweet like “@SnowgooseSA says sorry to @ShaunCusters for being addicted to twitter #twaddiction” does not count.

Step 6: Know you are not alone

There are other sufferers of this terrible addiction out there, united we shall overcome. I am starting a monthly Twebinar support group, DM me for details.

Step 7:  Enjoy the moment… 

Next time you are out with friends or have witnessed something beautiful or funny just savour the moment. Do not tweet it. But if you do, at least Twitpic it so the rest of us can see it too mkay?

Step 8 through 11: Rinse, repeat.

Okay, these were too similar to the other steps so I’m leaving them out. This blog post is now encroaching on valuable time I could use for tweeting.

Step 12:  Pay it forward

Once you have had a spiritual awakening and overcome your twaddiction, help others fight theirs. You could even become a motivational tweeter and post inspirational messages and tips. Remember to hashtag #twaddiction though so I can aggregate your tweets.

I hope these 12 steps toward recovery help you as much as they didn’t help me. You dont have to live in fear anymore, you are not alone! Even Hitler is in the grips of a violent twaddiction:

So say it with me people – let me hear you….

“Hi, my name is [insert name here] and I’m a Twitterholic!!!”

I live less than 2km from Vodacom’s HeadOffice; Vodaworld. I can see 2 cellphone towers from my house and yet I get no 3G signal at home. Zip. Nada. Nothing. This despite Vodacom’s coverage map saying that I have HSDPA coverage at my house.

Mind you, MTN is not much better. We get signal but it is intermittent and more GPRS than anything else. And Telkom, in it’s great wisdom, informs us we are too far from the exchange so cannot get ADSL and WiMAX is not available in our area yet. So we are left with the options of iBurst (also shocking signal) and Neotel (which is expensive and limiting).

Fantastic. This makes me very happy. It makes me so happy, in fact, that next time I see a billboard advertising “The Best Broadband in South Africa”, I am going to ram my car into it’s base and topple it on the office of the telecommunications giant in it’s shadow, killing all the fat-cat executives!!!! Those bastards lied to us. This is not broadband.

Bring back dial-up, all is forgiven.

Jon Bishop’s fantastic Scroobl describes my position perfectly.

People’s positive attitude and enthusiasm since the start of  “Two Thousand and Mine” has given me a good feeling about this year. But I was not even remotely prepared for the events of last week.

Even though it started (and ended) as a joke, the Nerdies 2009 was a huge ego boost. To be named the second sexiest girl-geek in SA is awesome! The side-splittingly funny ShebeeGee and her crazy crew of SteveMcD, ExMi, Byron, Lord Wiggly and SimonB had us all in stitches with the twists, turns and almost x-rated bits of commentary. I’m almost glad I didn’t win (even though the prizes are awesome!) cos I promised that if I did, I’d wear my Little Miss Twitter outfit, undies and all, to 27Dinner this month…. phew! close call!

I love not taking myself seriously and am glad that so many other people do too. Huge and hearty congrats to Sue Rutherford and Andre van Rooyen for being the official Nerdies – you both deserve it!

The real honour was being included on “King Blogger” (sorry Mike, I had to)  Mike Stopforth’s list: Ten (More) Young South African Digital Citizens To Watch.

Wow, I am surprised and amazed to be included in a post with the likes of Chris Mills, Adii and Charl Norman! In fact, I think that weird goose-like aliens must have kidnapped Mike, done some very interesting probes and brainwashed him into putting me on that list. Or maybe it is a typo (a big one as it’s hard to imagine someone trying to spell someone else’s name and ending up with Schneigansz).

Either way – it’s amazing and has made 2009 officially the best year ever so far.

Thank you twits, you rock the party!

An update: The nominations are finished and I have somehow made the top 10!

Please control your hysterical laughter – I am fully aware of how corny this is but wouldn’t mind winning to tell you the truth (I’m pretty darn competitive)

So…. go ahead and vote for me here: http://www.shebee.co.za 

Voting closes on Friday 09 January 09 at noon.

Why should you vote for me? Well, if for no other reason, I am a HUGE geek and more than willing to make a fool out of myself in public. 

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The sportsmen do it. The Hollywood types do it.  Heck, even the politicians do it! There is a “Hottest list” for almost any group of people you can imagine, except Geeks… until now.

Following th example of Wired.com’s “Sexiest Geeks” list,  fellow SA Blog-chick Sheena Gates has launched “The 2009 Nerdies”. You can now nominate the guy & gal you think rocked the SA blogosphere (Twitter included) in 2008…

But in SheeBee’s own words, it’s not all about looks : “The nominees should be nominated for their personalities more than anything else, this is onlinedom okes, shallowness is null and void here.”

See the nominees and vote for your own “Nerdy” on Sheena’s blog or use the #Nerdies09 hash tag for your nomination on Twitter.

P.S. Bribery and corruption is accepted as this is a very light-hearted, tongue in cheek event so buy SheeBee chocolate and nominate me!