At the beginning of 2015 I had a mental list of crazy things I wanted to achieve, no matter how great or small; grow a beard (check), 4-week 3 litre water cleanse (relapsed), save 50% of my monthly salary (check), Vote for Change (check), and many more if you’ve got nothing else better to read on a Friday night. One of these Herculean tasks was to leap from 300 followers to 1000 followers before the end of 2015. It took me 6 years to get to 300 followers so how on earth did I expect to pole vault over the 1000 follower mark, right?

It was no easy task, I tell you. Aside from the temptation to click on those links boasting of boosting your abysmal follower count into ‘000s with as little as $5, I was also considering posting a controversial twit pic and praying it would go viral. I must admit I dabbled in the second option but then my twitter follower count started to drop so I panicked, threw my pitch fork away and put my halo back on. I subscribed to a great plugin called Tweet Jukebox courtesy of Tim Fargo (a certified Twitter god). The scheduled posting of inspirational quotes automatically every few hours made a difference – an increase of about 3-4 followers a day on average. But I needed more, MORE! Cue the Arab Connection.

I recall one of my random tweets being retweeted by a friend and he included an Arab (his/her name was in Arabic). The Arab followed me so I followed back. That was what triggered a chain reaction of followers. My phone kept bleeping every 2 minutes for close to 2 hours. My battery went flat that evening and I dozed off. I woke up the next day to 94 followers. I’ve never seen that number in the past. The next couple of hours I had 165 new followers – I thought I was going to choke my own tongue. By the time I hit 999 followers I was sending ‘pleets’ (a lazy way of saying plea tweets) on my twitter page to get that one extra follower so I could pop a bottle of imaginary champagne. I was like a junkie waiting for that fix from a dealer the way I was fidgeting with my phone. I finally hit 1,000 and guess what – my life didn’t change.

I hit 2,000 some days after that and I’m still no richer, smarter, cuter, taller, hairier, or verified like the celebrities. It’s all a bit of an anti-climax now. All I want now is to be verified and get that white tick in the blue circular background. Well, at least I can say I achieved the 1000 follower feat and it felt damn good at the time (IN YOUR FACE, TWITTER!). On to the next task…