Twitter’s tragic complexity illustrated in one sadly hilarious blog post

Once again, it’s national-dump-on-Twitter week here on the Internet.

Mega-uber startup investor Chris Sacca kicked things off yesterday by writing the world’s longest blog post in order to share his advice on how to fix the world’s favorite short messaging-blogging-sharing-whatever service.

By my reckoning, it’s about six Mojitos long. About the only thing I remember about the ending was that he reminded us he could have gone on about another dozen things regarding Twitter, but didn’t. So, I guess we should be grateful he showed some restraint. I guess.

Anyhoo, let me now make the obligatory qualifier about how I love Twitter.

I love Twitter.

That said, Sacca’s Russian-novel-of-a-blog-post can, in fact, be summarized thusly: Twitter is still too damn complicated.

To illustrate this point, let me now direct your attention to a blog post today from Twitter’s sports team about how to follow the UEFA Championship, which features the Italian Juventus FC playing the Spanish FC Barcelona, on Twitter.

This kind of live thingy, as Sacca notes, oughta be right in Twitter’s wheelhouse. Indeed, a couple of years ago, Twitter did gangbusters on the Brazil Olympics. Totally off the hook, as the kids used to say.

The new post explains to the masses how they can follow the live-tweet action on Twitter for the game on Saturday. Here’s my Sacca-esque non-summary summary:

Step 1: Keep track of 8 hashtags for your tweets. I assume you know what a hashtag is right? To wit:

“Every Tweet with #FCBarcelona, #FCBlive or #DR3AM — as well as #FinoAllaFine,#CeNeAndiamoABerlino, #ForzaJuve or #SeAndiamoInFinale — will trigger their club’s insignia in a hashflag, a tiny emoji resembling the club’s logo. Any Tweet with #UCLfinal will show an image of the game trophy.”

Step 2: Wait, there’s a ninth hashtag we forgot:

“Fans can also dive into the conversation by using the hashtags #UCLFinal and #UCL for the mother of all games in European international professional football.” Note: Assuming the #UCLFinal here is the same as #UCLfinal (lowercase ‘f’) as above.

And hey, good luck keeping track of nine channels of conversation!

Step 3: Follow the league’s official Twitter handle: @ChampionsLeague

Step 4: Determine which language you speak, then either follow the English-speaking @FCBarcelona or the Spanish-speaking @fcbarcelona_es.

Step 5: More hashtags!

For the FC Barcelona camp, in addition to the ones above: #HalloBerlin

Step 6: Follow the FC Barcelona players on Twitter. There are only 19 and they each have an account. Or, just check out this handy Twitter list and click through the list to follow them all. You know what lists are, right?

Step 7: Do the same for Juventus FC. Actually, most of you will only want to do Step 6 or 7. Unless you like to troll people on Twitter, which, come to think about it, is the best part! Though officially, Twitter doesn’t like trolls or harassment. But, you know, sports.

Step 8: More hashtags! “Juventus FC is asking all of their supporters to tweet to them using the hashtag #RoadToBerlin.”

Step 9: This is more like a bonus round, but there will of course be stuff happening on Periscope which you can find by … well, that’s another blog post! But trust us, it will be cool. And live! Um, you know what Periscope is, right?

So, there you have it. All you need to do to join the live conversation. In 7 to 9 easy steps, give or take a few shots of Tequila. Of course, the game may be over before you do all of this, so I suggest you start now.

And good luck!