How to be a kenyan on twitter

Twitter is a great social networking tool and all that bull jargon that gets thrown around when "expert" analysts try to sound smart about about technology they barely understand.
Kenyans on twitter are an interesting lot and having been actively on twitter for sometime i could safely say i kinda have an idea of how they(we) function. So i can, with a degree of confidence, tell the newbies how to join and interact nicely with the rest of the masses.

1. This is not facebook
When you join twitter you say goodbye to the notifications and asskissery that we have come to know as facebook. In fact, facebook is frowned upon on twitter and is just called MKZ(mukuru kwa zuckerberg), yeah, it's some sort of slum with 500million people stoking the egos of a couple hundred.
I guess this transition is usually hardest on the good looking 'hot' chicks. No more putting up a question mark as a status update and getting 20 comments in a few minutes. But don't worry so much, on twitter we have dibs. More on that later.

2. Your timeline
Your twitter timeline is your lifeline, so to speak. Once you get the hang of tweeting, the refresh button(f5) will be your best friend. You will do it almost everywhere and if your battery isn't up to it, your phone will lose charge by the early afternoon.
Most importantly, you will learn to express yourself in under 140 characters. I know there are applications like twitlonger that try to stretch that out, but it's usually as a segue from facebook, so eventually you will find yourself in the 140 character or less region.
So far what i've talked about can apply to all other twitter users in the world except the mkz part that is unique to kenyans
Kenyans on twitter are brutal an merciless
This heading tells it all. Kenyans on twitter are like a pack of caged, rabid, hungry dogs just waiting for the latch to loosen on the cage door and all hell is unleashed upon the unsuspecting, though rarely innocent, victim. They will tear you up, then take the pieces and tear them up some more. People around the world WILL see the massacre and tsk tsk tsk. Your tatters will be picked up by google and cached for future last laughs by the slower ones among us. But don't worry, this rarely happens unless you're a kenyan celebrity, politician, midget radio presenter who incites(d) or belong to a clique ripe for mocking, like say female from a certain private university.

Kenyans on twitter are anonymous.
'Anonymity is synonymous to longetivity.' That air of mystery around somebody you know yet don't know lends power to the kenyans on twitter. Like i said before twitter isn't facebook. You can only describe yourself in 140char or less and put up a link to your blog or wherever you want to point it.
This means you won't know shit about somebody unless they tell you. Most of the time all you have to work with is the user handle(username) and avatar(profile photo) also called your avi.
Basically this means in case of anything, read defamation, copyright infringement, bullying, you can't do anything. Ok, you have sway in the bullying part because of the terms of service i'm sure nobody bothers to read, but barely.

Morals don't count for shit!
It's true! Your timeline WILL be bombarded with breasts on tuesday and asses on thursday. You will be exposed to the type of adult content that makes old ladies wail and cover themselves with sacks and ash. Somebody will probably call dibs on the old ladies covered with sacks and ash and everything will be turned into a double entrendre.

Dibs
If you are an attractive lady and post a photo of yourself through twitpic or any other image service, somebody will call dibs. Hell, several people will call dibs. You will be DM'd and hit on from more sides than a bracelet at a blacksmiths. People will be bold and vulgar, and subliminals will be the order of the day.

Tweet smart
If you are in doubt of your intelligence, DON'T TWEET! Because you will be sniffed out, and remember about kenyans on twitter being brutal? Looks don't count here. You can say hi to guys/girls but keep it simple, you may never know who will turn you into a trending topic.

It's never that serious
Despite the lack in morality and deceptive brutality you have to remember this golden rule. Feathers will be ruffled, egos will be deflated, but extending a grudge beyond the timeline and into real life is really stupid. You should always take everything on twitter in jest. Don't lose sleep over something you may have been called because, unless you are a politician or public servant, most kenyans on twitter are there to have fun, bitch and socialize without the normal face to face social constraints of having to communicate with several people at once.

Who to follow
For a start, me! Just give me a shout out and i'll hopefully follow back....or anyone else. The important thing is to inform them you're following by interacting with them. Set your location to Kenya, or Nairobi, Kenya. It helps.

Positive negative reinforcement

I'll start(and end) with one of my common disclaimers that sound like "No offence, but…"

I'm in no way encouraging things like shoving your fingers down the throat immediately after eating, but if Ben doesn't know, he won't tell.

Have you ever looked into the mirror and thought, "Damn, i look good!"

Yes? Well, my friend, you just lost the battle. The thing about compliments I they should never be from the same source they're directed at. The moment you are comfortable with how you look, you lose the fight against complacency. Your body is the one area you should never ever see a perfect! IT must have that chink you are constantly working to improve. Why do you think fat people are fat? Because they over ate? Hell no! It is because somebody, probably themselves, told them they looked good. I'll touch on that in a bit.

Do you have a self-help book about improving positive self-image and all that hogwash about getting the best out of life? Yes? Throw that thing away, but first take a felt pen and draw glasses and a moustache on the author. This won't get you your money back or make you less cheated, but it might make you giggle and give you that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you deface something.

The problem with today's world is people are too fucking pretentious. You know, screw political correctness. It is main the problem with our society. I have seen cases where kids are taught that 'it's not about the winning, but the journey!' really? Doesn't that sound like something a loser would say to justify the losing status? Here comes another person all obese and panting each time they use their brain cell and somebody else has the audacity to tell them, "You are perfect the way you are, God made you in his own image". So the next time the fatty is looking in the mirror, he likes what he sees. Ah, now you are starting to see the picture.

Every day we are fed lies by conformists who have no right sticking their noses into our business. They tell us what is ok, what is not, trying to create a robot army for their capitalist masters. Ok, i could have picked better wording, but it's more fun sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

But seriously, by making it wrong to point out to a fat person that they are fat, aren't they the ones committing the crimes against the fatties? By making it or saying it's ok/normal to be fat, does it mean you are absolved from hypertension and heart attack? What is good or bad for your physical or mental well-being is not determined by your society. Social interactions improve our chances of survival which is good. But society doesn't have the power or right to make what is naturally wrong to be ok. Some things are that black and white. You may bring in the talk about "What matters is what makes me happy. Each to their own path of happiness." Does it make you happy when I call you a fatty? Never mind that sometimes I don't do it so much to make you improve, as to give myself some sort of evil satisfaction

Anyway a critic reading this would be quick to point out, this entry has no organized structure or point. And that the author does seem to have a bias against fat people, notably by the repeated use of the term "fatty". I'd tell that critic to take their crap and shove it back up that shithole it came out of. That is part of the problem with today's society, everyone is treated like an invalid and handled with padded gloves, and we learn to rely so much on what others think of us we all merge into one homologous(ha, i said homo) layer, where one person can't be differentiated from the other.

Did you know that telling me that I'm one in a million would piss me off? Yeah, because even though you're trying to make me feel unique, you just implied there are 1thousand other guys just like me which really makes me feel special! By following that line of thought we can safely assume that if i died, there are 1thousand other guys waiting to take over my space so comfortably, it would be like i never left. In my ideal fantasy I'm immortal, boring as living forever would be. Though then when on one of my quarterly excursions to Titan (the moon on Saturn) I'd be sure on meditating on the miracle of life…and living forever. But if i died i want people so depressed they engineer a way of bringing me back to life...and probably give me immortality in the process, I'd give them an exception and not eat their brains (that's a delicacy to zombies, right?) But again, I've digressed.

Positive negative reinforcement is the state/application/trait where you always strive to make yourself better by focusing on the negative things about yourself. Don't live on compliments. When i look into a mirror all i see are the man boobs (moobs), even though by societal standards i barely have any. But it keeps me pushing my body to stay fit. So according to myself I'm also a fatty fatty, and the fear of heart attack and hypertension (and herpes too) keeps me on my toes. You see now, it's not how others perceive you that keeps you alive and awesome, it's you that keeps you alive, so shrug off the compliments and see the horror that looks on from within the mirror.

Next time you see a fat person, call them out, you might have just saved their life. Plant that seed of negative reinforcement!

Disclaimer: Author is not advocating for the victimization of fatties, neither is he propagating the idea that some people are better than others (although he is).

Everyone is perfect the way they are, and the fact that gyms and the diet food/drink industry is raking in millions is purely coincidental.

Of things bloggers and others mainstream

Recently bloggers have come under fire from critics in the media(kenyan newspapers especially). I heard sentiments of narcissism, attention seeking and all that.
I guess all i can say is fuck it! You know, people are free to their own opinions, but i wonder what really bothers them about our blogging? I never put up an ad in the local paper demanding or forcing them to check my blog, neither did i spam the social media asking people to comment. And as far as i know most of the bloggers i know dont do that either.
So when some overworked idiot from some local newspaper chooses to get mileage off bloggers by insulting them, hell yeah i'll feel insulted. We all have our reasons for writing, some of us do it because it's therapeutic and as a hobby, others do it [and i'm not naming names] because if they don't come up with something at the end of the week, they might lose their jobs, have to don heels and find a suitable variation for "me love you long time."
But it's cool, from a different perspective, criticism serves to ensure we raise our standards and pick a couple of pointers. Besides,i figure i can see where they're coming from; i'd also get jealous if i found tens of bloggers who write more interesting material than i do, have better structured content, better grammar, churn out entry after entry easily, are less stressed, and most importantly, do it for free? Fuck yeah i'd get pissed, and i'd vent it out in a national newspaper, assuming i worked for one of course, and cross my fingers hoping nobody noticed the online version of the newspaper also published my article, which in essence turns it into another useless blog entry.
At least i'm sincere about why i write. By that little rant up there i have saved myself thousands in terms of shrink services, saved my friends a lot of bitching...and *drumrolls* showed a couple of dumb writers, the only reason they still have a job is because most of us bloggers don't really want to get paid for our writing. I guess it's about time the mainstream media writers got called out over their habit of plagiarizing material off blogs. You can't have your cake and eat it...but i guess the more appropriate saying would be the one where you bite the hand that feeds you.
And at that point, i guess the air is clear.