Never comment on Twitter on Twitter.

Just about the only ‘rule’ – completely self-applied – I adhere to on this marvelous little website. It keeps me off the well-trodden path of tweets that are posted just for the sake of making a digital noise. A tuneless binary whistle that only serves to remind others of your existence and nought else.

However, occasionally, I will comment. Looking back normally every year or so, so here is this year’s.

I am a preening, self-congratulatory, narcissist who is almost entirely absorbed in my own sexual prowess or otherwise and whose prurience is at once my strength and my weakness. I am not politically aligned to a single party although if you are keen to squeeze my impressively trim-for-a-40yo frame into a pigeonhole (make sure there’s a mirror and a running machine) then lube me in somewhere around liberal conservative.

My TV habits are precisely whatever fits my demographic – Sky Atlantic – so I am rarely involved in any prime-time shit-slinging. Musically my heart gets pumping to anything from Springsteen to Mozart to Knife Party to Rebecca Ferguson. I read The Sunday Times and never bought The Grauniad or Daily Mail. I wish I knew more about the arts and was better traveled. My education stopped at O’Level.

So that’s me, broadly. What I didn’t mention is my sense of humour. I know all of the above and will happily lampoon myself, because of that I will happily lampoon others.

Twitter allows me to follow a huge variety of people, many of the most vocal of whom I may disagree with vehemently on many topics. However, their approach to their passion is positive as they believe others will benefit from their campaign. I get that and continue to follow these people through sometimes over-whelming volumes of their passion. It’s not a problem, I can just put the website down, scroll past or whatever – no harm done to anyone.

Given my conservative sensibilities you would assume I follow some Tories, right? Wrong. I know which of the people whom I follow are Conservative and it’s not many, and to my knowledge I only follow one or two Tory MPs. On the other hand the vast majority of the people I follow are proper Lefties, including @edballsmp who follows me (?!). The reason for this? Tories are not funny. Liberals aren’t brave enough to stick it to the man. Socialists, well, their passion is often only equaled by their wit.

It’s not just politics though is it?

I often willfully subvert common consensus even if I agree with it because as the old maxim dictates, “a person is not stupid, people are stupid”. For that reason alone I take an enormous amount of pleasure in picking up the hot potato spinning it all ways and plopping an unnecessary dildo on it. Now look how stupid it looks.

All of this is not to say I do not respect serious issues, of course I do. What I do not respect is complete disrespect of other people or disregard of their opinions on the basis that they differ from you and yours. Often the perpetrator of such filth and hatred has purposefully engaged with their victim when they are fully aware they will be vexed; addicted to being vexed it seems. Daily Mail’s amazing link-back revenue is a direct result of this, a marketing strategy I secretly admire.

Politics, wit, sex and opinions all combine to enhance my Twitter experience and now I have amassed a ridiculous amount of followers for a man with no discernible talent and a large penis, I am less precious about being unfollowed and the benign act of unfollowing.

I get unfollowed in droves and I care not a jot, some people who I admire, find funny or interesting, or even know me in real life have unfollowed me. It doesn’t matter, as my friend and confidant @amateuradam once remarked, “They’re all 1s and 0s, Matt.”

So after nearly three years posting jokes about my dick and goading the humourless I’ve earned my Twitter stripes and know when to be noisy, when to be quiet and when to just put it down without fuss.

I look forward to unfollowing you soon.

M x