Wednesday, January 25, 2012

(Words) Twitter Relationship Gurus

Twitter Relationship Gurus

I ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO GO TO THEIR SITE TO READ IT SO I WILL ONLY PUT UP A SNIPPET. Comedic gold (and correct). I thought someone made up that Tyrese tweet..smh Turns out it is real.





It’s well-known that pretty much anyone with a Twitter account can call themselves a relationship expert these days. A lot of this advice is written by men, and directed at women. Men seem to think women would be better off if only we understood how they work, and modified our behavior accordingly. Shockingly, women refuse to get with the program. But no fear, people like Reverend Run, Tyrese, and a whole host of others are here to tell women what men what, how to recognize a “real” man, and how women should behave if they want to get a man.


I amuse myself from time to time by going to the Twitter feeds of some of these relationship “gurus.” Below is a sampling of some of the wisdom they impart in 140 characters or less:




So bad sex is a compliment. Women should feel privileged to have bad sex, so much so they should get up and fetch a washrag after the amazing two minutes of sex they were lucky enough to not enjoy. Thanks, Tyrese.
As for his “hoodrats and hoes” tweet – standards, of course, are always a good thing. But being single doesn’t mean one has high standards. And weren’t black women told that one of the reasons so many of us are single is that our standards are too high? In 2011, we heard much too much about the single black woman crisis. Single black women, the meme goes, can’t find a man. Well – since Tyrese says that hoodrats and hoes are never single, could becoming hoodrats and hoes be the solution to the single black woman crisis? Perhaps we received some true wisdom from Tyrese, after all. (Joking, obviously.)
The blog Dumbest Tweets devotes a whole section to Tyrese, so I’m not going to crack on him too much. Besides, Tyrese is mangling logic, punctuation and the English language all the way to the bank. In 2011, Tyrese had a NY Times bestselling book, the number one movie worldwide (Fast and Furious), and a well-received album. His second book, Manology, is due out this year. His relationship advice may be questionable, but there’s no question Tyrese is winning.
This next gentleman is someone I generally try to ignore when he pops up in my timeline. Most of the people I follow on Twitter are beyond such facile pap, but apparently he’s got a nice gig going from book sales and media appearances. I usually have to pop a Nexium after reading this man’s timeline, so I will only give you one choice example of his “wisdom”:
His hustle game hasn’t reached Tyrese proportions yet, but people seem to eat this stuff up. Not my kind of wisdom, but if it speaks to you, you should check out his offerings. Pleasantries.
As I pointed out in my post, “Dear Women, You’re Doing It Wrong,” telling black women what’s wrong with them and how to fix themselves is a cottage industry. Since that post, I’ve seen even more offerings directed at the black woman, including one purporting to teach you why he married her instead of you. There’s also this guy, who declared a “No Sex for Single Women” day in September 2011. So I can’t be mad at the Twitter gurus. They’re just jumping on an already overcrowded bandwagon. And the law of supply and demand appears to be rewarding their efforts. If there wasn’t a market for this type of “advice,” the proliferation of self-appointed gurus would cease. Let the buyer beware.

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