A Follow Too Far

There are some weeks when I have no trouble coming up with ideas for posts here.  Sadly, this isn't one of those weeks.  Instead, it is rapidly turning into one of those where I struggle to think of anything remotely interesting to write about.  It isn't as if there isn't interesting stuff going on: not only do the various sex scandals rumble on, but now there's the 'Paradise Papers' revelations, yet more buffoonery from Boris Johnson, (which this time could cost someone their liberty), whilst another cabinet minister, the horrendous Priti Patel now must surely be on the verge of being sacked having apparently run her own private foreign policy initiative while on holiday in Israel.  Yet I don't feel inspired to write at length about any of them.  It probably doesn't help that I still feel incredibly irascible - it's been another day of snarling at other drivers and shoppers.  While I don't think I was quite as bad as I was yesterday, my mood wasn't helped by the constant and frequently heavy rain.

Then there's Twitter.  It's a curious feature of the service that anyone can follow you.  Unlike Facebook, they don't have to have to send you a 'follow request' and you don't have the option of rejecting their follow as you do a Facebook 'friend request'.  Sure, you can block them, but that's not quite the same thing, as you can only do that after the event.  The fact is that there are some people I don't want following me in the first place.  On Monday, for instance, I had this nutter follow me.  When I say 'nutter', I mean one of those people who is convinced that they are the victim of multiple conspiracies perpetrated by various public bodies including the police and justice system, not to mention several multi-national corporations.  Maybe they are, but I doubt it.  Quite why they have followed my Twitter account, I don't know, (I actually haven't been Tweeting much of late), but, for some reason, their presence among my followers has unnerved me somewhat.  Obviously, as I haven't followed them back, I don't have to see any of their craziness in my timeline, but just the knowledge that they are following me, reading anything I tweet, makes me feel uneasy.  As I've said, I could block them, but I've always felt it a bit, well, rude to go around blocking people who, to be fair, aren't actively harassing you, or anything.  I don't even do it to people I've followed who start tweeting stuff I find objectionable - I just 'mute' them so that I don't have to read their shit.  The great thing about using the 'mute' function is that they don't know that you've done it to them, thereby avoiding any further embarrassments or unpleasantness.  With luck, though, my failure to follow this character back will result in them unfollowing me in a few days time.