{Fun Friday post} my Howard Stern Twitter problem

Ok, for Friday, going to veer off course a bit and talk about something that has nothing to do with special needs or special education. Because I have a secret that I’ve been hiding for about a year. I have a problem, a Twitter problem…a Howard Stern Twitter problem.

First, I have been a Howard Stern fan for over 25 years. It pains me to say that because it means we’re both getting old. But I have been listening to him since his early days in Philly back in the late 80s. When we spent a couple of years living in Kansas City in the mid-90s, it was painful, I missed having him on the radio. However, I’m also a cheapskate, so I did not follow him to Sirius. But anyway, I’ve read most of his books, I’ve seen the movie, suffice it to say I’m a fan.

I have a cheap LG non-smart phone. I can text from it, and using an SMS thing, I can tweet and post to Facebook. It’s enough for me to get through social media and blogging events–I can throw out a few tweets, but I can’t retweet or do Instagram or anything, just a basic tweet. I don’t see my own Twitter feed on my phone, I only get tweets that are either DMs, or if they tag me in it.

Except for one exception–Howard Stern’s tweets. If he tweets or is tagged on a tweet, I get it on my phone. WTF? And let me tell you, with his media presence and 1.3 million followers, that’s a LOT of tweets. I have my phone set to chirp when I get a text or tweet, and it chirps a lot. All hours of day and night. Chirp, chirp, chirp. I cannot see the Twitter pics that go along with them, but it sounds like he and others tweet lots of pics of his hot wife and cute dogs that need rescuing. Mostly I turn the phone off, but then it comes back to bite me if I forget to turn it back on and then I miss important calls.

So what’s the problem? Well, first of all, like I said=cheapskate. So I only get so many texts each month and his tweets significantly eat into that. Plus, if it’s a particularly busy time, his tweets (and those by others tagging him) seriously eat into my phone’s text memory. Sometimes I just have to batch delete a whole bunch of texts and tweets, and some of them may be ones I needed to see-like from family or from clients. I’ve tried unfollowing him. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app. I went to the Verizon store and they didn’t have any suggestions, but they got a good laugh out of my situation. Short of getting a new phone, and again=cheapskate–I’m not due for  a free one yet and I don’t want to pay for one, I don’t know what to do.

I’ve hesitated posting about it, because if you know Howard Stern, you know his fans can be brutal. And I risk them seeing this, and being funny–tweeting him even more, knowing it will cause my phone to go nuts. But it’s been a year and at this point, I figure how much worse can it get?

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Writer, blogger and Special Education Advocate. WAHM to two boys and two dogs, plus a husband. Metropolitan Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania born and raised.