Are Twitterers Just Self-serving?

For the past few days I have been tweeting about a cause that is important to me; saving dogs lives (Pilots and Paws). I have asked several times for followers to retweet this for me. Of the 250 followers that I have, only 8 people have bothered to retweet and/or respond: sere_usdesign, Paulastudio, imjustcreative, mayhemstudios, GLHoffman. sharebrain, emtwo, and LogoMotives. Jeff from Logomotives even took the time to locate the NBC newsreel and post that as well.

I have to wonder what this all means. One person said "Also shows you people RT only what they think will promote themselves/is self serving, not serves others/good causes."

I have to somewhat agree, even though I don't want to think or feel that way. I have spent many hours online twittering away with many people and retweeting for many of their causes as well as promoting many of their posts. I really don't expect anything in return (or do I—I have to ask myself this), but I had hoped that when I needed the same that it would be reciprocated. So does that mean we only serve ourselves and self-promote ourselves. I don't know.... I do know that it made me feel sad, bad, and mad that if it didn't promote self and self-interests that it just wasn't important enough to retweet.

I know what twitter is about, but I thought and hoped that it was more than that. I wanted to think that people cared about more than just the things that were important to them. Somehow this experience once again reinforced my perception of human nature. You would think that being 58 years old, and having experienced a lot in my life that I would understand this, not continue to be so naive, and be more accepting of the nature of people.