If you're not interested in talking cigars, please keep your tweets to yourself

I'm in a ranting mood today. Maybe it's because I've been fighting off a sinus cold for the past week and haven't been able to relax with a good cigar. That would make any avid cigar smoker a little cranky.

So here's where my head's at today. As many of you know, Cigar Advisor has a Twitter page. This Twitter social networking thingamajig is a fantastic communication tool, and it can be a lot of fun, too. I wish I could post a lot more often, too, but since most of my tweets are done from work, I can only afford so much tweeting time, but I do have my TwitterFox running continually in case I want to chime in.

Just about every day I receive emails alerting me that a fellow "twitizen" (as I've dubbed them) is following me. It's nice to see that in spite of my low tweet-to-tweet ratio that someone out there actually cares enough to tweet their very best.

However, and more often lately, the follows are coming from all kinds of people who, when I click through to their Twitter page, seem to have little or no interest in cigars or cigar culture. They're online marketers, mostly work-at-home types, who just want to sell me their goods, services, advice, inspiration, and the fact of the matter is, I ain't buyin.'

Now I have no problem with the followers who are rock musicians, or jazz lovers, or wine and spirits gurus, food gurus, baseball fans, poker players, etc. In return, I follow many of them because I share a genuine interest in those subjects. Moreover, they usually have the word "cigars" listed under their profiles, so at least I KNOW we share an affinity for the leaf.

To be fair, some of the online marketers do mention cigars in their profiles. But here's an example of what I'm talking about: "we've helped tens of thousands of men and women worldwide build successful home businesses." COME ON, folks! Many of these twitizens show thousands of followers on their pages. How nice. Therefore I assume they're also all very successful, and I wish them the best.

Then you have the hotties who think I'm going to follow them because they take a good sexy photo. P'LEEEEEZ! If I really want to meet a girl who wants to pretend she likes me, I can go to a strip club and see her in 3D.

So here's the deal: If you want to follow my Twitter page, hey, that's great. I'll almost always send a little thank you note, even if I'm not following in return. It's the least I can do. Like this blog, the Cigar Advisor Twitter is predicated on our mutual love and enjoyment of premium handmade cigars, cigar-related issues and culture. If you're a cigar smoker, you know what I'm talking about and my Twitterland door is always open. But if all you're really interested in selling me a bill of goods or a pig in a poke, KEEP OUT and BEWARE OF DOG.

~ Gary Korb