There's no book you can buy on it. You learn it by being a terrible Twitter person like me, who has obnoxious private message conversations about tweeters you dislike while whining about other tweeters who hate you. DON'T BE LIKE ME. SAVE YOURSELF. For any bright-eyed newbie to the site, let me give you some tips on certain faux pas you can avoid so the Twitter professionals won't mock you. (FYI: No one designates themselves a "Twitter professional." That's too chilly for even Twitter people to say aloud.) Here are five things to avoid if you don't want to piss off people who take Twitter seriously.

Anyway, retweets are more special. When someone who follows you retweets you, that means they're taking your tweet and showing it to all of their followers. That's good, because that's how you get new followers, and everyone knows that the number of followers you have is directly linked to your worth as a human being. But some people want to retweet but don't retweet. Instead they copy your tweet over with quotation marks and include your name. Why? I HAVE NO IDEA. No one does. It's a mystery. It's particularly bizarre when they have to abbreviate the living hell out of your tweet to make it still fit by also including your name. For example, that's what happened to my pal, OhNoSheTwitnt:

Still a nice gesture, but why?

In any event, if you like a tweet and want people to see it, just use the RT button.

But as legitimate of a problem as plagiarism is, that's not what this entry is about.

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"Well, thanks for making me read a paragraph for nothing, jackass."

The sign of a bush-league tweeter is when someone overreacts to a similar but non-plagiarized tweet. Similar tweets happen all the time, especially on Twitter, where many of the jokes are born from that day's current events reporting. Similar jokes also happen because people play hashtag games. Do you know what that is? No? Really? Who's the old man here? Anyway, hashtags are just premises for jokes. They do them a lot on the @midnight show/feed. One was #SadToys. I tweeted "Hungry Hungry Orphans." Thank you. I liked it, too. Anyway, I wasn't the only one who tweeted that. It popped up again after mine, but that wasn't plagiarism, just coincidence, and people who cry "plagiarism" over small stuff like that make themselves look pretty silly. Especially when it comes to topical events. And puns. It happens, and most of the time you shouldn't assume the worst for things like that. Or you could do this:

At this point, I should probably thank OhNoSheTwitnt for assisting with article research, huh?

Just an FYI to those new to Twitter trying to impress your friends: No one wants to see tweets like this anymore, as one of my favorite tweeters has pointed out. They were cool for a time, but that time is gone. Don't worry. There's always new constructions to use for your Mad Libs approach to humor, and some of them might end up being hilarious. But not these, now. Please. You might as well go up to co-workers and do a Borat impression. (Again, not tooling on anyone above, and especially not Tony, who was way ahead of the curve and who got plagiarized mercilessly with that Mexican Candy tweet.)

Also, it looks super creepy if you star or retweet every single tweet they make just because they were nice enough to follow you. They know you love them. Take it easy.

Having written for the Internet for many years, I'm already hearing the comments. "Why is this just about women!" Well, mostly because I tried really hard to think of some hated dude on Twitter who tries to compensate for his lackluster material and terrible personality by selling his smoldering sexuality, and the only dude I could come up with is me.

"Hey, baby."

No. Men just can't get away with it, probably because women are too sophisticated to fill their timeline with some lame dude's shitty tweets in the hope that he will drop in a pic of himself in jean shorts every once in a while. But there are countless men who are totally lame enough to follow a chick just because she's hot, and it might get you followers, but if you're dropping sexuality without actually being funny, it won't do a lot for you. Your followers will mostly be lame guys who for some reason follow hot chicks on Twitter instead of just cruising Internet porn.

Now I'm hearing a different comment: "Not true, I know XY&Z women who sell their sexuality on Twitter who have some impressive followers in the industry." Yeah, that's true, too, because even successful men can be creeps. But if you're not talented enough to attract followers without using your breasts, do you think that LA producer is looking to hire you as a writer? But hey, if you're making your 900th tweet about blow jobs solely to land a production assistant job and a future of nonstop sexual harassment, then proceed.

Meanwhile, all the countless talented funny women on Twitter who don't need to do that will continue to hate you, along with the other grown-ups.

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