I thought the star talk had subsided, but I guess not.
I’m not boycotting Twitter or anything, but I do want to let the whole star thing from people I follow peeter out until I start tweeting again. In the meantime, just a few thoughts.
I think there are several goals people set when it comes to favrd and stars.
- Have tons of followers
- Be on the leaderboard
- Be followed by popular favrd people
- Make friends
- Find new funny people
- Refresh your own page, seeing if anyone thought what you tweeted was funny, then having everything you tweet get at least 3 stars
There are probably others, but I’ll stick with these for now. Stars are not the only ways to accomplish these goals. Let’s take a look.
- There are several ways to get more followers, if you don’t mind bots and spam. Actively following tons of people has seemed like the best method.
- Well, stars are pretty much the only way to do this. But can be indirectly influenced by #1.
- @ replying incessantly if they don’t follow is a good way to get attention. Even celebrity tweeters respond to @s once in awhile.
- @ replying and DMs are good methods.
- Follow Friday does that.
- A person can get validation from RTs, @s, DMs also.
Still, stars seemed to do all these things. You can take care of 6 birds at once. It replaced active communication, and became a passive activity. And then we abandon the goals we’ve set, and just focus on the stars. Accumulating and collecting them. It’s like Scrooge, hoarding them, only for prosperity’s sake. You get star-crazy. Then it’s the old comparison game. You see what the other person has, it is different than what you have, then you feel suffering. Your goals are no longer important, and you start blaming inanimate sites and the people who run them.
And there you have it. Instead of using this great thing for good, we broke it. The community seems in limbo. I say ‘nay’. If the community is important, we(you) should take an active role in shaping it’s future. Rather than post or tweet about it, make it a dynamic forum to get the conversation going. Just a thought.
