Choose your own retweet adventure

Do you want more retweets? Do you want to understand how the simple act of typing 140 characters of less can spur someone to expend all that effort in pressing a button to publicise your views? Do you want to game Twitter to get more followers and otherwise live a happy fulfilling life, or do you simply sit outside of it all and want to see what the fuss is all about?

If you’re an active user of Twitter, then chances are you relish that spark when someone retweets something you right, “Yes!” you cry out to the cold dead night air, “My life has meaning”, whilst sat in your pants, the retweet providing a brief respite from an otherwise unstoppable torrent of weeping. Or you could be a massive celebrity so entrenched in your own anal passage that you assume simply telling people you got a haircut is enough to drive a million hormonal teens into a social media frenzy.

What we have here is a map of what can happen when you post on Twitter, or ‘tweet’ as those people not tinged by shame at the stupid sounding term call it. It is not complete, mainly because I live almost perpetually in the bottom right box and have little insight into the processes behind celebrity tweeting mindsets, instead cursed to forever doubt my own value. You can help a brother out here by linking to this and following @quantumpirate, consider it charity work, and I’m reliably informed that it does count towards community service if you’ve been naughty. It is also a work in progress, so any comments or suggestion are welcomed, especially if they include reference to how awesome I am.

Don't be scared, it is a flowchart and a bit sciencey but you've seen enough by now to know they don't bite.