Brutal Honesty or Twitter Pervert?

Some days I’ll search Twitter for other people who are passionate about honesty. Yesterday, I thought I found one of these people.

I will conceal his actual Twitter name, but it is something about being honest. He lists his real name as Mr. Authentic. His description talks about how he started this account so he could be “brutally honest.” Then he says, “Hopefully my Twitter friends here will still accept me.”

I have mixed feelings about “brutal honesty.” Brutal honesty is almost always a little too heavy on the brutality. Take Simon Cowell, for example. He could just tell the contestants, “I don’t think you’re a very good singer.” (That’s still brutal honesty.) But he adds extra insults (for ratings, or because he’s a jerk) that no longer have anything to do with “honesty.” At that point, he’s just being unnecessarily brutal. It seems to me, “brutal honesty” isn’t really about telling the truth as much as it is wanting to put someone in their place.

But still, I like it when people are committed to honesty, so I figured I’d follow this guy to see what his “brutal honesty” looked like.

By the end of the day, I stopped following him.

As it turns out, the guy follows a lot of women. Including famous women. And in his “brutally honest” tweets, all he does is rave about how hot they are. You can practically see him drooling over their bodies in his tweets.

He isn’t being honest; he’s being a pervert. And something of a stalker. He’s using “honesty” as a gimmick because he thinks it gives him free reign to sexually harass woman via Twitter.

If he wants to use Twitter to hit on hot women, well, I’m sure he’s not the only guy trying it. But please, don’t do it under the guise of “brutal honesty” and “authenticity.” There are other people (like me) for whom those terms actually mean something.

Tweet, Tweet

I’m officially “tweeting” now. I know what you’re thinking: Wow, how masculine that sounds. Yeah, yeah.

I was reluctant, but as of yesterday, I officially joined the ranks of the twitterers (now that’s more masculine, right?). You can check me out, follow me, or just marvel at my effective use of 140 characters here: Tyler’s Twitter

If you’re asking yourself, as I probably will in about a month, “What’s the point?”

Then as of right now, I can only say, “I have no idea. But so far, it’s been kind of fun.”

But I suppose I could tell you why I signed up. Because even though I don’t know what I’m doing yet, word on the street (and when I say “street,” I mean “Internet”), is that Twitter is valuable. As a would-be author who is about to start shopping his book proposal to publishers who want authors willing to self-promote, I figured I might as well start now so I can actually figure out how to use Twitter by the time I ship off those proposals.

If you want to know why you should “tweet,” let me refer you to Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson. Not only does he offer “12 Reasons to Start Twittering” and “The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter,” but he also wrote “Answers to the Top 10 Twitter Objections.”

It’s all great stuff.

If you’re not down with the tweeting, that’s cool. No pressure from me. But if you’re trying to make an informed decision about it, check out those posts.

Now excuse me, I must go update my twitter status. Or you know, “tweet.” Like a man.