The Problem With Blogging Chats

I love Twitter chats. If you have a spare hour they are one of the best ways to grow a large following at once and engage with loads of like-minded bloggers. After a few polls and lots of encouragement on social media, I’m thinking about launching a feminist chat in March, which got me thinking about all the features of chats which get on my nerves a little so that I can rather try to eliminate them or prepare myself to laugh them off from my own. So as much as I love chats, here are some things I could do without:

The Timings: Every evening that I’m not working I suddenly think about joining in a chat only to remember that most chats start on the hour and it’s now 23 minutes past so unless I want to be, like, third wheeling on your conversation I have to wait for 37 minutes to pass. But then by the time this comes I’ve started doing something productive like washing my hair or tidying my sock drawer so participating is strictly off-limits.

People Sharing Their Links Too Soon: If you’re leaving the chat early then fair enough share away but if you share your link and THEN CONTINUE CHATTING what are you trying to achieve? Well more blog views obvs. But metaphorically speaking. I’m all for shameless self-promo but I also want to my feed to be full of interesting discussion, not a stream of Times Square adverts.

Even worse than that is People Promoting Their Posts Using The Hashtag Of A Chat That They Haven’t Even Chatted In: I get that stats are hard but if you haven’t spent the last hour with your eyes aching from staring at a screen and elbows numb from being leant on because your iPhone charger doesn’t stretch to the sofa then your post doesn’t deserve the same airtime as mine. By all means promote yourself on the hashtag before and after the chat but not while it’s underway, if you’re not joining in.

The Questions: are rather too simple e.g. ‘when did you start blogging’ to which all the answers are just random numerical values that literally mean nothing to me, or they’re possible dissertation topics e.g. ‘what’s your opinion on white feminism in the modern world’. Twitter does not allow enough characters to voice everything I feel about some of these questions. Sometimes I end up writing mini essays on Google Docs but then by the time I’ve come to a compelling conclusion I realise that I’m behind by three questions.

When The Hashtag Is So Long That It Takes Up Half My Tweet: This is something I’m really struggling with while creating my own chat. ‘Feminism’ or ‘intersectionality’ are pretty long words before they’ve been turned into some cringey pun, so I don’t want to clog up your ideas with, well, my creative ego. There’s nothing worse than typing ‘Hmm I think that this’ and then realising you’re already hurtling towards minus characters. Shoutout to #bdib for keeping it short and sweet.

The People You Interact With All Night That Don’t Follow You Back: Was my choice of emoji not good enough for you Debra? I’m sorry you can’t handle the upside-down smiley but you know what, it’s your loss. (I say through heartbroken tears over all my almost-friends.)

People Arriving At Question 3 But Answering Question 1 Instead: I really don’t mind that you got here a little late- I’m super guilty of telling my friends that I’m ‘round the corner’ from our meeting spot when the truth is I’m still in bed- but I don’t understand why people scroll all the way to the first few questions and write super insightful answers when everyone else has already moved on. I suddenly get a notification about a topic that happened 40 minutes ago and have to majorly wrack my brain to remember what I was on about back then. I feel like that ‘live in the moment’ rule applies best to these situations.

So, Teamales have you ever joined in a Twitter chat and if so do you agree with these? Plus, what do you think about a chat where you can discuss real, intersectional, feminist issues for an hour a week? Please comment below!