I spent the summer underground. Hysterically and metaphorically speaking, of course. I’m back before the summer is over because of the Russian denial of service attacks that have taken Twitter down I’m scared.

So I twittered more vaguely. I didn’t blog from my global outposts in Edmonton, Estonia and Finland. Instead, I hunkered down to reconsider my passion for writing about social media. It is the hottest game in town. Social media experts, sanctified and not, are a hideous and fearsome lot. They mindlessly pounce on and suck the retweets out of any clump of words they can. Could I really be one of them?

The Social Media Sheriffs*: Techcrunch, Mashable and Readwriteweb
I, am but one. Social Media Sheriffs are Voltrons. Clunky many-headed machines that never need to rest. Their racket is quantity not quality. They get the news out first with typos and factual errors. But really, who cares. News minus the new is just twitter flotsam not Twitter power.

They are also cold-blooded hypocrites. Take Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington. After sanctimoniously leaking private Twitter documents, he got “completely ripshit mad about all this unauthorized bs press” yesterday. You see his Crunchpad (read: pipe dream) tech specs were leaked without his permission. Now he is pitching a hissy fit.

I’m not one of these hellions! I sleep 8 hours a night and I never throw fits.

Social Media Officials*: Scobleizer, Guy Kawasaki and various Other Guys
These guys are Twitter-elected officials. They have the most followers and thus they get retweeted like mad. And, like most elected officials, they eventually abuse their power:

This week the cherub-face Scoble randomly undfollowed 106, 000 Twitterers. That’s like sucking all the blood out of your constituents and leaving untweeting and dead. It’s plain wrong. The only reason Mr. Scoble once seemed remotely human was that he followed every actual person back so politely. Now he’s just another ravenous demon with a baby face.

I would never unfollow people randomly. I only unfollow when I’m profoundly offended. It hasn’t happened yet. I dare you to try!

Social Media Blood Daywalker*: Chantelle Oliver (wait! that’s me!)
It’s obvious, really. I’m balancing the terrible line between one of the social media monsters and mortal humans. I am still in too in love with words to be a Mashable hack but we do cover the same content. I have a small Twitter fiefdom but I am not yet so bloated with power that I don’t recoil at the thought of hopping on the unfollow trend.

So I’m not a monster, right? All I want to do is bring you social media revelations marinated in prescient pop-cultural missives. And only glamour you …every now and again.

*Three cheers for HBO’s Truebloodwiki for providing me with meaningful categories for my analysis.