Confessions of a Teenage Spammer

I’m writing this to apologize to the thousands of people I misled and lied to. Back when twitter was fresh, before the media hype and the boat loads of people came poring in, I did what seamed to me as a genius plan. I saw a number on my page, this number was my voice to the world. I caught on quick, the more followers I had the more traffic would get to my page URL and the more people would @reply back to me. I was very exploitative, I would follow anybody and wait for results, those who did not follow me back I would unfollow. This method got me to around 8,000 followers, and like the formula suggests I was following 8,000 people back.

One point last year I got fed up with having my twitter stream so clogged up that I unfollowed all the 8,000 people and just followed people I know in real life. This led to an instant decline in followers, within the first week I dropped thousands. It’s been months, almost a year now and the effect is still continuing. Every single day since the drop I have been losing followers, that means somebody somewhere on the face of this planet deliberately unfollows me. This makes me feel like a spammer, a low-life, and an all-around bad guy.

The truth is that sometime last year I went through an anti-anonymity phase, changing my twitter username from @anarchic to @thomasreggi. I wanted the twitter experience everyone else was having, transparent and low-key. I’ve had numerous ideas like blocking and unblocking everyone and starting from scratch, however this would just resulting more shady behavior.

I have re-prioritized my role on the Internet, I’m older and wiser and I understand the value of 1 follower v.s. 1,000 followers that don’t care. I understand the greater purpose of having a twitter account, it’s my journal, my life story, and my lifeline. I’m sorry for all the wrong that I have done, and the strain that I have put on the twitter servers throughout the years.

Spam is a big problem, and there will always be people trying to test a site and its users limits.