Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Seven Sins of Social Networking

1. Me, me, me, me, me!!!
When something good happens to us, we all like to brag a little and get a pat on the back. That's human nature. But as in elementary school, there's always that kid who always does things to draw attention to themselves. Look at my new car, followed by fifty pictures of their car. Look at my new haircut, my shoes, my motorcycle.Oh look, here's my winning bingo board. Okay! Enough already. Being social means sharing and congratulating others, posting about their success and giving someone else a pat on the back. Besides, it's damn hard to pat your own back!

2. Buy my book, pills, seminar tapes
Have you ever met someone at a party and within seconds of introduction, they proceed to pull out their latest multi-level vitamin packet and ask you if you want to go into business? Or the old friend who hasn't seen you in ages, but suddenly is your BEST buddy and comes to your house with a large suitcase of brochures and samples? Same thing happens with social networking. You're all jazzed. That kid who sat behind you in third grade and stuck gum in your hair just friended you. You're like, what's been going on? How's life and they're, "Buy my book, buy my pills, buy my get-rich-quick tapes, buy, buy, buy." You unfriend, unfollow, unlink them. Bye, Bye, Bye.

3. The Snitch
This is the gossip. The one who's always stirring trouble. You can sniff them out a mile away. That ferret way they have of scrunching up their nose, as if something stinks, not knowing the only thing that smells is their own breath. Well, the social networking version is the one who stirs the pot online. You know what so and so just said about you? Oh, remember twenty years ago, and you thought she was your best friend? Well, this is what she really thinks of you. Even worse, this poisonous pill uses the "authorities" to gang up against their enemies, marking all your posts "spam" and reporting you as a "spammer" or a "bot". Whenever I get a private message saying something about someone I figure they're also getting a message about me. Delete and block.

4. Passing viruses
There are good sneezers, of the Seth Godin persuasion, and horridly unhygienic sneezers. Look what someone posted about you, click here. Embarrassing pictures of you, click there. I can't believe it! Free iPhone, click everywhere! Hey kids, don't stick your clicker into every link. You don't know what you'll catch.

5. Promiscuity
Yes, we all want lots of friends and lots of followers. But seriously, if you already have a million followers, what's the chance you'd interact with me, a tiny guppy in the proverbial ocean? Even worse, there are all sorts of hucksters and con artists selling you thousands of friends and followers if you'd just click that link. You know what? I've never clicked that link. See #4.


6. Diarrhea
Here's the guy who thinks every drip from the leaky faucet of his life is of supreme interest to his followers. Hey, look what I found between my teeth. My dog just peed on my laptop, wah!!! I just played Farm, Barn, Swarm, Darnville, please, please, please help me find that gold coin, cow, birdie, ten nails and a tin can. Oh, wow, look at that set of T&A. hey, hey, hey, play with me... tap, tap, tap. Blasting the same message ten times an hour in case you didn't see it. Well, guess what? I didn't see it, because, um.... I've filtered you out.

7. Buttinskis
Everyone's got an uncle. You know the guy, the one who wears the mismatched socks and butts into every conversation with some off the wall comment? Yes, crazy uncles are online too. They're the ones who derail threads, spam other people's blog comments with off topic URLs, and thumb up everything and post remarks like "Cool", "Nice job!", "So funny", without bothering to read the thread: whether it's the death of your pet ferret or the comment about how you hate people who butt in with stupid remarks.

So, are you guilty of any of these sins? What are some of your pet peeves about social networking? Is it okay if everyone's doing it?

18 comments:

  1. Being human, I'm guilty of some of these sins and willing be tolerant - up to a point - of others who commit them. Sure, it's easier to get by with doing something that everyone else does, but that doesn't make it okay. Actually, I enjoy social networking though it's worrisome how much time it eats up.

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    1. Mary, you're so right! Of course, everyone's laughing so hard they can't breathe. Rachelle, you're doing at least a few of them. What are you talking about? Like are we really interested in your snide remarks about social networking peeves? LOL

      Yes, I do enjoy it way too much to the point I have to turn off my internet connection if I want to get real reading or writing done. Thanks for commenting.

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  2. Very informative post.

    My pet peeves...spammers! Okay, I know they are writers and proud of it, but I don't need to have your book pushed in my face every 10th post on my Twitter feed.

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  3. So funny! Nice job! and I hope your pet ferret doesn't die :-) #4 made me laugh out loud! I've seen all of these, and probably committed a few. I told everyone I missed the garbage man yesterday. Is that diarrhea? I only told it once! ;-)

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    1. Nah... depends on what your relationship is to your garbage man. Do tell!

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  4. This list is awesome and so very true! Well done.

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  5. Somehow I get all these x rated followers on twitter and I'm like, what the what? I blog about death. Follow me if you must, but...

    Nice post!

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  6. I'm glad I'm not the only one to admit I've stumbled on some of these Seven Deadly Sins! Back to the Inferno ;)

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  7. Oh dear, my toes were curling by the end of the list, especially when you mention promoting every 10 tweets: oops, looks at the ceiling and whistles...
    G x

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  8. Does it count when you're promoting other people's books ten times an hour? *ducking*

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  9. So true! I know at least one of each of these. :)

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  10. This post is so funny and so true! You know how I feel about the "buy buy buy" tweets ;-) And I've lost patience with the people in example #1, especially the ones who post their Amazon rankings every hour. I feel like all I know about some people are the titles of their books and the million other books they retweet every day.

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  11. I like your view point. I never send a re-tweet without reading the information first. If I get a follow I try to learn more about the person or company before following back. Sometimes it is hard to really tell if it is spam or not, but you need to make the effort. Thanks for writing this post.

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  12. It's like high school, only we call it the 'internet' now.

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  13. Hilarious. Love this post, Rachelle. I'll admit there's a Twitter associate who tweets her book so much I get turned off at the sight of her now. I can understand hitting it hard for a special promo. But every hour, every day, every week for months on end? How much can other tweepers take?

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  14. The reason other tweepers stand it is no one is paying attention to her tweets. I wonder how much of them go by the wayside? The way I manage twitter is to use lists. I then use Hootsuite and display a column for each list. For example, my CritiqueCircle list has all the tweepers that I know from CC. I can interact with them without looking at all the gadzillion other tweets.

    I'm still undecided on how much is too much. With Triberr we tweet each other's blog posts. With Tweet Teams we tweet each other's promo tweets. There are only 24 hours in a day, so how many can you tweet before you turn off those who wish to interact with you?

    Every evening I randomly look at my general tweet feed and click on some of the links, retweet, or @mention someone. I'm sure I miss the majority of the tweets.

    Existential question: If a tweet is not read, did it ever exist?

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  15. I'm hoping Triberr RTs aren't turning off my followers. I admit that my blog hits have tripled though and I'm still getting new followers. I'm at the point I need to pare down who I'm following to those I know. Hard to believe I'm at this point already! Great post, BTW.

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