Okay, not really. But from what I recently witnessed on Twitter, some people really take those mentions to heart. For real real.

On Friday, two South African twitterers, Nash and GrahamRobert, were having a conversation about South African celebrities, which resulted in Nash basically saying that there is no such thing as a South African celeb, by way of tweeting this:

Now, my theory is that Nash included GrahamRobert in the tweet because he was part of the original conversation, but delivered it out of the conversation because it was a funny comment and he wanted all of his followers to read it, not just the ones who follow both of them. Makes sense. It was a nice gesture to include Graham. Nice, but not necessarily obligatory.

Then Cape Town’s favourite son, Shaun Oakes, saw Nash’s tweet, thought it was worthy of a retweet, and did so.

You may notice now, though, that Shaun removed Graham’s twitter handle from the tweet, as he felt Graham was included by association, but he really didn’t have any authority over it. It was Nash’s statement, so he should get the recognition. Only fair, right?

Well, Graham didn’t think so, and replied to Shaun with this tweet:

“meant” to be in the RT? Really? Did you have your name included in the credits when you watched Avatar as well? No. You were part of it. You enjoyed it. But you’re not owed anything for it.

Unfortunately for Shaun, the rapping on the knuckles made him feel bad, and he sent the tweet again, this time including Graham.

Now, if Shaun had included him in the first place, it would have again, just like Nash’s tweet, been a nice gesture to show that he was a part of the conversation. That’s fair, and no-one would have an issue with that.

What I think is very unfair, however, is Graham telling Shaun that he should be included in something that he really had no ownership of in the first place, just for one more mention on Twitter. To his credit, he did say thanks.

But in the end, dude, it’s Twitter, not the Academy Awards. If you have to ask people to include you in retweets, you’re not really doing well to begin with. But more importantly, no-one really cares.