Everyone likes a good proverb (that sort of sounds like a proverb itself). Ok, even if you don’t care for proverbs or are indifferent about them, check out this list I’ve compiled of 10 original proverbs altered to apply to those with less than 100 Twitter followers. These are meant to provide peace of mind to those wishing they were more popular on social media, but there are also some gems in there for people with less than 100 Twitter followers who already couldn’t care less. As Horace Greeley puts it, “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches takes wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.” On that profound note, read on.
10. Two (hundred thousand) followers don’t make a (wo)man.
Original: Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Original meaning: Repeating someone else’s morally questionable action won’t prove anything or make you a better person (duh).
New proverb meaning: Having thousands of Twitter followers doesn’t make you a cool, respectable, or otherwise worth-being-around person (proof: Spencer Pratt has over 900,000 followers).
9. Keep your friends close and your enemies blocked.
Original: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Original meaning: Keep a watchful eye on your enemies- you’ll know what they’re plotting at all times.
New proverb meaning: If you have an enemy, block him or her. Your enemy doesn’t need to know that you’re spending the day at your grandma’s house (or whatever else you might tweet). For all you know, he or she could show up at granny’s house ready to wreak havoc. #BlockFrenemiesToo
8. An annoying follower never stops.
Original: A watched pot never boils.
Original meaning: If something takes a long time to finish or materialize, don’t obsess about it- it will seem to take even longer.
New proverb meaning: We all know what an obnoxious follower is like. We may even be an obnoxious follower ourselves. THEY/WE DON’T STOP WITH THE FAVORITES, RE-TWEETS, AND REPLIES. Who wants to deal with hundreds or thousands of followers if everything you tweet will elicit mean or not funny or not entertaining or grammatically incorrect or just annoying or all of the above responses from not-so-close friends or strangers?
7. Too many followers cramp the style.
Original: Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Original meaning: When too many people try to take the reins on a project or provide overbearing input, it often leads to less than desirable results.
New proverb meaning: Sometimes you just need to be selective when it comes to friends and/or followers. Having too many followers could make you seem desperate for attention or like you HAVE NO STANDARDS. In short, it could “cramp your style.”
6. Easy follow, easy go.
Original: Easy come, easy go.
Original meaning: If something comes too easily, i.e. without any effort or caution on your part, it will easily go.
New proverb meaning: The same goes for Twitter followers. Who wants hundreds or thousands of followers if they’re flaky, anyways?
5. All good tweets must come to an end (seriously, you only get 140 characters). Original: All good things must come to an end.
Original meaning: This one’s pretty straightforward.
New proverb meaning: All tweets are over before you know it. No tweet can be THAT funny or THAT witty or THAT awesome (ok, definitely debatable). Still, it’s silly to obsess over the number of people who see your tweets
4. One man’s follower is another man’s stalker.
Original: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Original meaning: People have different ideas about what is valuable and what isn’t.
New proverb meaning: Some followers just can’t be trusted. An innocent follower to one person could turn out to be a crazy psycho/stalker to another. Moral of the story: The fewer followers you have, the less likely it is that you’re being followed (literally) by a nut job.
3. You can’t judge a tweet by the number of times it gets re-tweeted.
Original: You can’t judge a book by its cover.
Original meaning: Things are not always as they first appear. Don’t jump to conclusions or be judgmental.
New proverb meaning: A tweet can be awesome, and not get any re-tweets. Similarly, it can be less than awesome and get a ton of re-tweets. For example, Ariana Grande recently tweeted “I should probably change my icon back” and it got over 9,000 re-tweets, and I recently tweeted “How to Lose a Sausage in Ten Days #ReplaceMovieTitleWithSausage” and it got ZERO re-tweets. Ok, so Ariana Grande has approximately 16 million more followers than I, and that might have something to do with the fact that she always gets more re-tweets than I, but the point is that you can be a super funny and/or witty and/or cool person and not get many re-tweets or have many followers. If “coolness” were measured in re-tweets, Bill O’Reilly would be the coolest thing since cookie dough ice cream (wait, does Bill O’Reilly get a lot of re-tweets? I don’t actually know).
2. Don’t count your followers as friends.
Original: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
Original meaning: Don’t get ahead of yourself.
New proverb meaning: A follower isn’t always a true friend (duh). Someone with 43 followers could have more genuine, loyal friends in real life than someone with 43 million followers (I guess we could verify this with Obama, who happens to have approximately 43 million followers). Anyways, don’t aspire to have thousands of Twitter followers. Don’t aspire to be famous. Aspire to be kind and compassionate and stuff. And aspire to remember your best friend’s birthday, whom I am assuming is one of your 43 followers.
1. If you want something tweeted right, you have to tweet it yourself.
Original: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
Original meaning: Sometimes it’s best to do things yourself, in order to have the most control over the results of whatever it is you are doing.
New proverb meaning: You have the potential to be a master tweeter. You are probably funny, interesting, and thoughtful (or you are none of the above, but that’s ok). That fact remains, whether you have 27 followers or as many as Katy Perry. And if you have as many followers as Katy Perry, you don’t exist (because she has the most Twitter followers out of anyone in the world). Get back to real life and your faithful, awesome followers, however many you have.
Cover Photo by marek.sotak Via Flickr Creative Commons
