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I met Jenny on Twitter. She was from the Midwest. Her smile was sweet and she was remarkably upbeat (one of those highly interactive, optimistic ‘laughing out loud’ types).

Around the same time, Twitter was having a popularity boom. Spammers saw opportunities and began infiltrating the social phenomenon at an alarming rate. They were crawling into the Twitter alleys and up the pipes into the mainstream community. These nasty varmints were not easy for newcomers to spot. We followed them back, naively flattered by their interest in us.

Meanwhile, Jenny would continue to have wonderful conversations with people. She tweeted about her baby and about her philosophies on life.

Sometimes she would make pancakes in the morning and life seemed wonderful for her.

At the same time, I was learning more about how to use Twitter effectively. I read about some popular spamming tactics that were being used such as in The Seven Twitter Sins: Twitter Spam Techniques and Video: Twitter spammer caught on camera and I became more and more suspicious.

One Saturday morning I spotted Jenny’s avatar (picture) on the Twitter timeline and suddenly had the sneaky suspicion that she was a spammer. She actually seemed too nice to be real. One click on her Twitter bio (profile) link confirmed my suspicions. The link went to a company that she never mentioned in her tweets. At the same time, the company website didn’t mention her either. It didn’t make sense. “What a phony!” I thought.

Not wanting to falsely accuse someone, I sent out a tweet asking her about the company. No response. I sent a direct message asking her about the company and waited 10 minutes. No response. Meanwhile, she kept on tweeting.

The Twitter Smackdown

There was no doubt in my mind that Jenny was a spammer. I not only hated the fact that she pretended to be a happy outgoing woman day after day, but she had to stoop so low as to include a fake baby in her phony tweets.

With absolute confidence, I posted a tweet to let the rest of the Twitter world know that I doubted she was real.

No Jenny. No pancakes. No baby. I pressed the button with great satisfaction. What a good deed I had done.

Within minutes, I received a direct message asking me what my tweet meant. It was the fake Jenny calling.

The Interrogation

I now pictured Jenny as a man with some nefarious plan. He had crawled up the Twitter pipe and was trying to outsmart me. I asked a few pointed questions, in an effort to trip him up. But, he didn’t waver. He didn’t budge. And the interrogation soon fizzled. He was—after all—a she.

I apologized profusely to Jenny in a direct message and then online so everyone could see. Then I walked away from Twitter full of regrets. I knew that my Internet skepticism had gone too far. It was the result of years of trying to keep spammers away from my website contact forms, databases etc. It had clouded my judgment, resulting in this colossal Twitter mistake.

The Humble Tweet

The next day I tweeted once:

“Eating humble pie today. It does not taste very good.”

I didn’t see her face on the Twitter timeline (probably because she had blocked me). Why wouldn’t she?

I turned the computer off for the rest of the day.

Then Jenny, once again, defied what seemed normal. Yet her actions really weren’t out of character at all. Jenny forgave me.

I had tweeted the next day about being on a very bumpy road to enlightenment.

She, in turn, responded with a light-hearted funny reply, saying that I should wear a good bra for the trip. Her kindness was beyond my comprehension. I now pictured an angel in my mind.

In reality, her name is not Jenny. And the picture above is not her avatar. I’ve given her a pseudonym (out of embarrassment). However, she really is on Twitter and is truly one of the nicest people I’ve ever virtually met.

No Spammers Here

Isn’t it refreshing to know that the spammer in this story doesn’t exist? Yet the heroine, with the altruistic, compassionate traits is a real person you could bump into on a Midwestern street?

She is a Twitter success, inspiring her followers on a daily basis, making people laugh, and showing genuine compassion for the Twitter blunderers. And sometimes she really does make pancakes for breakfast.