Twitter Update #4

I have around 100 followers on Twitter and am currently following 112 people. I fully understand that for most people, Twitter is a promotional tool and is used for blatant promotion. Hey, I joined Twitter solely for promotional reasons. People need to be careful, though, because it can easily become spam and be counterproductive. Yesterday, I began to receive direct messages that contain a link to a "gift" with the suggestion that I send a "gift" in return. I received multiple gifts from one person and then one each from several other people. These are all people that I am following. It really annoyed me. I mean it really annoyed me. I have my account set up to receive an email whenever I get a direct message. So not only do I have all of these gift messages to delete, I must also delete the notifications for the gift messages. I think the gifts are supposed to be something fun, but I don't want them. I don't know anything about the application, which I have to download in order to receive and send gifts, so I do not wish to risk downloading it. I have heard about people getting viruses and getting their accounts hacked because of downloading various applications. I wish to have nothing to do with these gifts. Apparently one can opt out of receiving the gift notices, but one must give the gift application permission to access one's account. Um, no. The result is that everyone who sends me a gift is going to get unfollowed immediately. I want nothing to do with this. It is not often that something deeply offends me, but this does, probably because I have a deep hatred of spam and no patience for activities that appear to be time-wasting with no intrinsic value. I searched Twitter for mentions of the gifts and found a good tweet that I retweeted. I was very happy to find some people who also view the gifts as spam. The lesson to be learned is that while Twitter is a promotional tool, don't be annoying.