Phantom Follows

Strange days indeed.  I had another of those instances this week where I found myself following someone on Twitter, despite the fact that I hadn't followed them.  Earlier this week I noticed multiple Tweets from 'Lloyds Bank Business' in my timeline.  Now, at first I just thought that these were the regular ads which turn up, unsolicited.  But because there were so many of them, I opted to 'see fewer Tweets like these', adding that I found them irrelevant.  The next day, they were back, except that this time they were retweeting other people that I didn't follow.  'It's as if I was following them', I thought, adding to myself, 'but that's ridiculous as I don't follow banks and businesses.'  At which point, the doubts set in as I recalled other instances where I'd started seeing unexpected Tweets in my timeline, only to find that I'd apparently followed these people.  Previously, I'd rationalised it as my having somehow accidentally followed them, by clicking on that 'follow' button while trying to click elsewhere.  Unlikely, but possible as at least one of the accounts involved seemed to be the sort of thing I might follow by choice, so might have looked at.  But in this case, there is absolutely no way that I could have done that as I know that there is no way that I could ever have been anywhere near the 'Lloyds Bank Business' account.  But a quick check on the 'Followed' list in my account and, lo and behold, there was 'Lloyds Bank Business' as the most recently followed entry.  Needless to say, I immediately unfollowed them.

Still, it remains a mystery.  I don't know if anyone else has had this experience - are these phantom 'follows' a thing?  I remember a few years ago that I started finding these videos that I hadn't ever watched in my You Tube history - it turned out that I wasn't the only one.  They were all from the same account and all seemed to be soundless short films of cars driving along.  Anyway, the 'explanation' was that they were embedded videos on sites that had been visited, but which had played 'below the fold', so weren't actually seen at the time (and, being silent, hadn't been heard).  Not that we can use the same explanation for this Twitter business.  Mind you, I'm beginning to think that I should make a New Year's Resolution to look at Twitter less.  It has already got to the point where I rarely post anything there, just look at other people's Tweets.  The trouble is that other people's Tweets are increasingly irritating me, (the number of accounts I've muted is growing).  That and all the crackpot shit which trends - just looking at the trending topics risks being exposed to yet more of these foaming-at-the-mouth loons.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, social media has provided every crank in creation a potentially global platform, so that idiotic stuff that just used to be confined to a deluded few can now reverberate around the world, uniting these isolated fruitcakes into coalitions that can seemingly influence news agendas and politicians - just look at the rise of Trump and his MAGA cult.  So, the less I see of this shit, the better, (especially for my mental health).