17 Rules For Principled Twitter
In 2009, a very good friend encouraged me to sign up for a Twitter account. I asked, why would I sign up for Twitter? It’s all Justin Bieber. He said, just get the @dailydirtnap handle and squat on it until you’re ready to use it. So I did.
I didn’t pay much attention to it until 2011, when I started making media appearances for my book, and my followers jumped up to a couple of thousand. Still, I had no idea how to use it, and I certainly didn’t have anything resembling a long-term strategy. I spent much more time on Facebook.
Even to this day, I don’t tweet that much. I’m close to 50,000 followers, which is great, but I’m not going to put clickbait content up like the Pomps in order to get a million followers. When I tweet, I tweet from the heart—it’s totally authentic, which I think is the attraction of my feed.
Mostly, I just passively read everyone else’s tweets. It’s a big part of my sentiment-driven investment process, and I’ve often told people that I would rather go without Bloomberg than Twitter. On Twitter, I know exactly what the market is doing at any given time—I don’t even have to look at a chart. I don’t need to see the market, I just need to know how you feel about the market. Without Twitter, I would have to do sentiment the old-fashioned way—I would have to call people up on the phone and talk to them, like I did in 2009.
I am far from the most successful person on Twitter, but I am somewhat successful, and I have a few rules which I always follow. These rules are not intended to get you the most followers; they’re about how to conduct yourself on Twitter with integrity and principles.
1. Never kiss ass. Some people, when starting out, will reply to all the blue checkmarks in order to ingratiate themselves with them and make friends, so they can get retweeted in the future. I have never, ever done that. It’s gross. And it’s not a game. I don’t kiss ass in real life, either. I follow people who I genuinely think are interesting and ignore the rest. This won’t get you a lot of followers, but it means you are principled.
2. Never ego-retweet. There nothing I hate more on Twitter than the ego-retweet. Someone tweets something nice about you somewhere, and you feel the need to retweet it out so everyone can see how awesome you are. There are some people who do this constantly. I never do it. And it’s not like I never get praise on Twitter, I get it all the time—I just never feel the need to tell everyone about it, because I’m not an egomaniac. I will make an occasional exception when it comes to my music.
3. Delete tweets. I’m not talking about deleting bad market calls, I’m talking about tweeting something out that’s untoward or ill-advised, then having a change of heart and deleting it. There is this culture on Twitter of never deleting tweets, not even the stupid ones, but changing your mind is a mark of intellectual flexibility. It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of. There’s nothing wrong with deleting a tweet.
4. Never tweet while angry. Correspondingly, about half the tweets I delete is stuff that I tweeted when I was pissed off, and had a change of heart, and deleted it. So if I’m angry (and I don’t get angry very often), I just X out the Twitter tab on my browser and take a break for a few hours. Tweeting angry is how you get into trouble. Though I will say that some of my funniest material comes from when I’m angry.
5. Hang ‘em high. I get a fair amount of trolls. Including some burner accounts who I think have gone after me three or four times. Most of the time I just block them (See Rule 6). But occasionally I make an example out of someone—but always in a humorous way. You put someone’s head on a pike outside your castle so people know not to mess with you. The key is to not be mean-spirited when you do it.
6. Block, don’t mute. People seem to like muting for some reason, but whenever I mute someone, I usually figure out later that they’ve spent the last few months raising hell in my mentions, and getting other people riled up, too. Blocking is much better. I don’t know if this is a lot, but I’ve blocked about 800 people over the years. You get one shot at me, better make it good. I’m not going to give you two shots.
7. Stay in your lane. I like baseball, and I have tweeted about baseball, but it never gets any engagement. I like politics, and I have tweeted about politics, but it never gets any engagement. And I get ZERO engagement on music. I’m a finance twitter account, for better or worse, and that’s what people like to read about. The exception is jokes, which we’ll get to next.
8. Entertain, rather than inform. People like to laugh. People like jokes. I probably tweet more sarcastic jokes than useful information on Twitter. Everyone on FinTwit is so damn serious, you need someone to keep things light. If you have a good sense of humor, use it. Humor is disarming—there’s nothing better a well-timed joke to break up a fight. There is nothing worse on Twitter than someone who takes themselves too seriously. And that describes just about everyone on this God-forsaken platform. Rule 62, people.
9. Admit when you’re wrong. Nobody does it! Which is wild, because it’s the most powerful tool in your toolbox. Everyone has these huge egos and either deletes the freezing cold takes or hope you don’t notice, and goes onto the next trade like the last one never happened. If I make a big call on Twitter, and it doesn’t pan out, I am the first to admit it. Which usually results in a handful of people telling me I earned their respect. Which brings me to:
10. Have no fear of being embarrassed. People tweet from a place of fear. They don’t want to say anything that could be falsifiable in the future. Be fearless. If you are contradicted at some point in the future, go back to Rule 9. When I was 15, I used to go to school dances and take off my pants when New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle came on and dance around in my underwear. I am still essentially the same guy. I dance like no one’s watching.
11. Compliments should be genuine. When someone has an achievement that they are proud of, and they post it on Twitter, you should acknowledge it—if you really mean it. It’s a good habit to get into. I mean, when I post accomplishments on Twitter, I really like it when people acknowledge it. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
12. Don’t be a first-order guy. There are three levels of financial tweets. The first level is to post information—like a chart. The second level of to post an analysis of the chart. The third level is to post a meta-analysis of the analysis of the chart. That adds a lot more value than just posting a chart. Having said that, you can get a lot of followers by just posting charts, which is odd, because anyone could look it up themselves if they wanted to. There are accounts with multiple six figures in followers that just post charts. Weird.
13. Never initiate force. Don’t attack people for no reason. Leave them alone. If you do, that’s inviting some bad karma. There are some folks in FinTwit that are going to smoke a turd in hell someday.
14. Don’t join an online mob. If someone is getting ratioed, don’t join the ratio. Don’t pile on, under any circumstances. If you do, you’re participating in the exact thing that makes Twitter hell. Also, don’t dunk on people, for the same reasons. Unless they’re politicians. Dunk on politicians all you want. They signed up for it.
15. Don’t be a tattletale. Occasionally I like the freedom to subtweet. There’s no reason to bring everyone into a conversation. Sometimes some mook will then tag the person in the replies. That gets an instant block from me. Snitches end up in ditches.
16. Don’t be passive-aggressive. If you have a problem with someone, reply directly to them and have a conversation. Don’t passive-aggressively like the contradictory replies to the tweet. That’s worse than just attacking them. I have a few friends that have a bad habit of doing that. They can see when you do that, you know.
17. The blue checks. Blue checks are blue checks for a reason. Most of the time, they have smarter things to say than everyone else. I would rather follow a blue check than an unverified account. With some exceptions, of course. Blue checks get a bad rap because a preponderance of them are journalists who live in a bubble. But that’s not always the case. For what it’s worth, I got verified when I had about 10,000 followers. Mostly because I am author.
Anyway, what inspired me to write these Twitter Rules was because the person behind a large meme account felt compelled to write a tweetstorm on how he achieved his success. It was the exact opposite way that I would have done it—it involved an inordinate amount of brownnosing and rod-gobbling. I may not have the most followers, but I have the best followers, and the smartest followers, and the most loyal followers. You might say that they are antifragile. And that’s another thing—make sure you playfully crap on your followers from time to time. They like it and it even makes them more antifragile.
I’m not sure why you’d take Twitter advice from a guy with only 50K followers, but it works for me.
Go fuck yourself,
Jared
Music Recommendation: Cosmic Gate – Crushed. I actually met these guys backstage at Nikki Beach in Miami in 2013. They were great—and they were chuckleheads. They’ve had a lot of longevity in dance music and they’ve always stayed true to their style. Cheesy, but good.
P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Feel free to forward to as many people as you like.