21st Century Schizoids

Hello.
I'll come straight to the point; have you got another account? I have, but [in the words of Monty Python] it's all part of growing up and being British. Or American. Or Dutch. Or on Twitter.

I'm sure you have good reason to have a second [third, fourth...] account: perhaps you run your own business and don't want to spam normal Twitter friends with plugs for your diamante ladders or new novel about a child wizard who supports Scunthorpe... whatever; I did another account.

I recently saw "@followers:26k/following500" tweet that they also followed other "sources" for work purposes - this must make a lot of sense when you're a journalist and many of your tweets are announcements; but I've long suspected other big accounts of 'glove-puppeting'. This is where they have another @ to big-up the main one or diss rivals in extreme cases, or follow loads of other tweeters to find out what's going on without ruining the pristine "look-how-cool-I-am-I-only-have-to-follow-100" profile. Perhaps there's an app for it, who knows. I pity them, it must be awful.

An example:
Account with 30k followers and following 50 suddenly tweets "will you all STOP going on about Margaret Thatcher!"
"All"?
Do you remember what your timeline looked like when you only followed 50 people? If you follow 700 [as I do] and hopefully all of them are humans with something interesting to say [or RT by someone else], it's hardly going to cause a strobe-fit.
No, something's going on I reckon.

But that's them, what about us?
I started this other account ages ago and wanted to follow different people and be more ruthless unfollowing and blah blah blah it was fun for a while but didn't make me any happier. Then I started a different other account with my partner for "business" - like having two mobile phones, one for work, one for friends. Things I've found:

a] It's ridiculously easy to get followers for followers sake without going the dreaded TeamFollowBack route. Click on a recommended account, check they're not tweeting "win free 10-hour colonic scrub" every 30 seconds, see if they follow as many as follow them and press the button. It might take a few days for them to notice, but you've reeled them in...

Note: this is fun for a little while but only a little while; bit like playing solitaire or completing a jigsaw puzzle - the bits are already there, so no skill required.

b] You find yourself minding your language.

c] The account has an animal theme, so lots of animal-related accounts followed. Sadly, with animal accounts come animal cruelty stories and pictures of animal cruelty stories. I admire campaigners for animal rights of course, but a constant stream of horror, graphic images and descriptions became very disturbing very quickly. And I found out loads of new examples I hadn't previously heard of, making it even worse.

d] Some accounts are pure accidental comedy gold [I'm not joking about the diamante ladders for instance]

This is the thing with Twitter: ultimately it's about who you follow, not who follows you. Yes, those big accounts are always #FFing each other and they might not reply to you, but they're usually big accounts for a reason. Try a second account for yourself; it could be the release of frustration you need to get over writer's block or somesuch - as long as you have fun with it. What will become of our new venture? Gawd knows, perhaps we keep playing Follower-Jigsaw until it reaches 100K and sell it; like those TeamFollowBack guys...

I'd love to hear any of your other-account thoughts and experiences. x