Don't unfollow me on Twitter. It's the ultimate diss

Warning: my Grudge Bank could buy out Goldman Sachs

So many birds have flown from my Twitter. Photo by Yucel Moran on Unsplash.

I don’t think I’m an annoying person. I don’t suppose anyone thinks they’re an annoying person, do they? No one gets up in the morning and decides, ‘My mission today is to annoy as many people as possible.’ Except maybe Laurence Fox and other rage-baiters.

But as you might have read in my piece on people pleasing, I actually go out of my way to be inoffensive to people, because I’m so scared of being disliked.

Yet I get unfollowed on Twitter at a rate that’s surprising, at least to me. I post at least once a day, I try to be entertaining and friendly and nice to people, I make jokes and puns. Yet I clearly upset some people enough that they’ll press a button so they never have to hear from me again.

10,400 people still follow me, but I’d say a couple of hundred have unfollowed over the past five years. That’s the equivalent of a pub’s worth of people who have been irritated enough to actively gravitate to my Twitter page and click ‘unfollow’. Which is quite something.

So who are these people, anyway?

X is full of my ex-followers. Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash.

It’s been interesting to analyse this mass exodus. Over the years, I’ve noticed that my unfollowers mainly fall into three categories:

1. Women

Remember doing this in Sex Ed at school? Photo by Charles DeLuvio on Unsplash.

Only about 10 to 20 per cent of my followers are women in any case.

Part of this is to do with atheists, who comprise most of my follower base - there are roughly two male atheists to every female atheist.

And some of it is to do with men wanting to date me, even though, as I’ve said on this blog, I am shit in relationships and have boobs which hang so low, I could do keepy-uppies with them.

But none of this explains why the few women who do decide to follow me often unfollow. And I think this is to do with me making jokes about sex and talking about it openly.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say all women are prudes. I mean, I’m not one, and my friends Cazza and Diamond aren’t either. But honestly? I can count on two hands the number of women I’ve met who have actually felt comfortable talking openly about their sex lives.

Unsplash is full of euphemistic fruit pictures. Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash.

And because women generally don’t feel comfortable, I think my talking frankly about sex makes them feel uncomfortable.

I’ve witnessed this first-hand in real life: playing two Asian female friends my comedy songs about penises, and having them stare at me mutely with a mixture of horror and concern.

These were comedy songs! But I didn’t get a single laugh.

On my hen night, my maid of honour, who openly admitted to being a prude, announced crossly, ‘There will be no penises on this hen night!’

And her female friend, on watching my Love Song for Jeremy Corbyn video, in which I make frequent and rampant love to the former Labour leader, pursed her lips and said, ‘This is a disgusting video, isn’t it? Don’t you think? It’s quite disgusting?’

‘Quite disgusting’… me feeding ‘Jeremy’ my beef curtains.

Whereas guys actively like women who joke about sex, possibly because it’s so rare. The flip side is the dick pics, unwanted overtures in DMs and sexual NGL anonymous messages. But as I said this week when asked if the latter annoyed me: I suppose they’re better than ‘Ari you’re minging, I’d rather shag my mum than stick it in you!’

Back to women: it makes me sad that a lot of them don’t like or get me, because I actually really enjoy female company. I love living with my lodgers and talking to them around the house, and I love hanging out with my mate Kia and emailing Caz.

But I have three times as many male friends as female, and 17 of my 21 patrons are men. Which makes me greatly value the few women who are in my life.

2. Celebrities

Being unfollowed by someone you thought was your friend sucks. Photo by Miss Zhang on Unsplash.