My Twitter account is a bit like my bicycle; it’s there, it’s mine alright, but it doesn’t get used much.

WordPress is the only reason I signed up to Twitter in the first place, but as I pointed out at the time, since I know hardly anybody else with a Twitter account, its value as a way of publicising my posts is somewhat limited.

Yes, I ‘publicise’ my posts with an automated Twitter announcement, but on the ‘out-tray’ side that’s as far as it goes. Somehow, I seem to have acquired no fewer than 16 followers, and even have reason to believe that at least a few of them are real people, but it’s hardly going to help me go viral, is it?

“I finally asked myself, ‘Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?’ No response. Figures” – Ned Hickson@NedHickson

However, I do look at Twitter every couple of days or so, and I’ve ‘liked’ some Tweets that I’ve found either amusing or uncomfortably close to the truth (or both). A recent Daily Prompt included in the WordPress Writing 101 challenge suggested that I might care to look at these favourites and consider what they could say about me.

Hmmm.

So, I dug into my Twitter account and discovered that I had ‘liked’ a grand total of 112 tweets. Of these, there are one or two that, for the life of me, I can neither recall nor understand what drove me to highlight them in the first place.

A charitable explanation for these outliers would be fat finger syndrome, although a more likely cause is ingestion of a red liquid that is sold throughout France in 75cl bottles. And by the case.

“Drink responsibly? Responsibility is why I drink” – C’est la vie@Robert_Beau

By far the most frequent source of my likes is @Wit_of_Wilde, which produces regular nuggets of the wisdom of the divine Oscar, including what is arguably the basis of this blog, and possibly my entire world-view:

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about”

But if you think that’s a cop-out, consider these words of G K Chesterton, tweeted by Danny Baker@prodnose:

“Solemn is the easy thing to do. Frivolous, that’s hard.”

However, if you take my likes all of a piece, the only possible conclusion is that you are dealing with an idle misanthrope with self-esteem issues,

Consider the following observations that have struck a chord with me:

• “I’m not lazy I’m just selective with my motivation” – mjkspeaks@mjkspeaks
• “Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer selective participation” – PudgePerfect@Emonalisha
• “I could be incredibly successful if I wasn’t so lazy” – DEEzus@mydmac

In my defence, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I may at times be less than pro-active: although I prefer to think of it as masterly inactivity. You could also say it’s a matter of being aware of my own limitations:

• “I have what would best be described as a can’t do attitude” – DaddyJew@DaddyJew
• “If you want a job done properly, pay someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing to do it” – Token Geezer@Token_Geezer

So, that’s a tick in the box for lazy. Now, what about misanthropic? Oh, there’s plenty of those:

• “Philosophers are innocent idealists who believe in the ridiculous theory that people, as a rule, like to think” – Laet Oliveira@LaetPO (needless to say, I have a degree in Philosophy)

• “Sorry if I upset you with all those irrefutable facts” – Jake Vig@Jake_Vig
• “I try to make my own luck. I call it thinking things through” – Tony@tsm560
• “See here’s the thing about some people: they’re morons” – God@TheTweetOfGod

Don’t take all this too seriously, however. It’s just a case of:

• “I don’t hate anyone, but I am particular about who I like” – Billy Cheese@BillyCheese3

And in fairness, I’m just as hard on myself as the rest of the world:

• “What else can I overthink today?” – Pugnado@LuvPug
• “I tried being myself once. Still recovering” – mynameisJimmy@jimmy_sharpe

Who knows, though, maybe there’s method in my madness:

• “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us” – Oscar Wilde@Wit_of_Wilde
• “Inner peace starts with outer shutting the fuck up” – Amanda Reckonwith@click4amanda
• “I like to remain distant so no one can ask me for anything” – CatMan@CuddleYourCat

In case you’ve found all this introspection a bit of a downer, let me leave you with the single funniest tweet in my collection. I don’t know why, but it just leaves me helpless every time I think about it:

• “I left your lame party because you expected me to drink red wine out of a chardonnay glass like some kind of fucking animal” – Inappropriate Charm @LackOfShame

Right, is that it? Can I go now?