This is a story I wrote about social media, technology and the blurry line between who we are online and who we are in the real world…
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#METROBLOG: The Metro’s page 3: Who cares what its about? Just get me a pun damnit!!
The Metro’s page 3 is infamous among commuters for always being something trivial and fluffy, and for good reason. At that time of the morning: you’re barely cognisant of where you are or what you’re doing, so some light hearted fluff isn’t just appropriate; its utterly necessary. For example; here’s a Metro page 3 I republished a while ago in which the man who made the world’s largest jigsaw accidentally dropped it and it fell to pieces.
Thing is though; since newspapers are by nature published in a hurry to get everything done on time, sometimes they don’t really give a whole lot of thought into whether they way they present it is a tad inappropriate. Take for example this instance where the New York police department’s attempt to get positive publicity through social media by getting people to tweet pictures of them with their happy friendly police officers went horribly wrong when people started tweeting pictures of police brutality.
Is it just me or does that headline completely sum up the state of tabloid journalism and their lack of self awareness and tact? “What’s the story about?” “I DON’T CARE!! JUST GET ME A PUN!!! THE DEADLINE’S IN TWO HOURS!!!” Looks like Twitter’s become a shitter for NYPD’s publicity! …yeah I’m shit at puns, I won’t do those again, I’m sorry.
This isn’t the most tasteless case of forgetting that not everything needs a pun and it’d probably be a good idea not to pun it. I have seen worse cases where stories of incest, rape, and people being decapitated have ended up getting a pun headline. But whether you agree with their punning this story or not, it still doesn’t seem like the sort of thing the Metro’s page 3 was designed for. Sure it’s got the social media element in there but the general formula for this page looks something like this:
Whereas police brutality isn’t exactly something that achieves this effect. To make my point I’m gonna have to be very tasteless, so please forgive me but I’m trying to make a point here.
See what I mean? You’d better break out the puppies having a tea party or a quirky sort of bake sale for cancer tomorrow Metro, cause this shit doesn’t slide for commuters.
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So my Twitter Account got suspended: a few thoughts on that
So last night my twitter account got suspended. Strangely I’m not that annoyed about it. I mean sure it’ll mean my site, youtube and community radio stuff will get less traffic if/until I get it given back but for what twitter is, I’ve never really been a fan. Sure I abused it for my own ends but as a means of communication, I just didn’t get it. I do want it back and will stop doing what got me suspended in the first place, but the reasons for suspending me that Twitter offered just made me think that you and I have a very different idea about what this site’s actually for.
I also must stress, I had at least 3,500 followers by the time I got suspended and I was only actually going on twitter about once a week. How you ask? And how does this not violate twitter’s terms of service? Well let me explain:
I think that Twitter as a communication tool is fucking rubbish. The layout’s awful and I just don’t see how anyone uses it on a daily basis for anything other than self promotion. I mean twitter themselves made this site called Tweetdeck which is a complete redesign of Twitter where your tweets, your direct messages, mentions, interactions are all in separate columns and easy to follow. Looks like this and can be found at tweetdeck.com – if you already have a twitter account you can just go ahead and use it
Yes exactly. Surely Twitter coming out and making this clearly states “yes, we know that our layout is dreadful, here is something easier to use” doesn’t that harm your site’s image a little bit? I did check tweetdeck at least once a week but as a means of communication, I didn’t use it a whole lot since all my followers really said to me was “please like us on facebook” or “did you see this pic of you lol?” with a link to a site that I never clicked on because it was either porn or something that would destroy my computer. If I want to talk to people, there’s billions of other things that don’t limit me to 120 characters.
Most of my followers were either companies trying to advertise to me or other general spam because I was using something called Tweetadder – a piece of software that will find people interested in the area you’re creatively exerting yourself in and follow them and see if they’ll follow you back, it also has a feature to unfollow reciprocated follows after three days. Mostly its just other companies using tweetadder or a similar bit of software that follows back because if some randomer follows you because you might like their stuff, you’re gonna get suspicious and not follow back, companies are more desperate. I think if you compare my likes on facebook to my twitter followers it’s a fair enough indication of who my tweetadder antics were attracting. I would offer my google analytics as further evidence but…well I’m embarrassed of them frankly. I’d also note that Tweetadder recently got in trouble with Twitter for what they were doing and removed the ability to automate the software, and I wasn’t using it on autopilot, I was using the version released to coincide with twitter’s rulebook so…yeah.
Call it cheating all you want but is it worse than buying followers? I don’t think so for the very reason that THE INTERNET IS FUCKING MASSIVE! How do you expect anyone to hear about what you’re doing if you don’t shout at them about it?
Call me a marketing whore but I have a full time job and the little free time I get I have to spend actually making videos and writing, I call this a shortcut. Yeah alright its impersonal, I wasn’t actually investing in my followers as people but how the fuck could I when as I said: THE INTERNET IS FUCKING MASSIVE? Yeah alright people might get annoyed but what else is twitter for?
It’s all well and good to say “you will get attention if you make good and interesting content Stuart, you don’t need marketing gimmicks” bullshit is that the way to followers. No one’s going to watch your video or read your blog if you just put it on a server somewhere. The way to get people to look at you is to say “here’s something I made, look if you’re interested” across a plethora of different sites
I never actually wrote my own tweets either. I used this site called ifttt.com (short for if this then that)
Ifttt can set up recipes whereby if you post a blog, it will write a tweet and put it on your feed, it will post on your facebook and a whole load of other sites with pictures, working links and captions. You may call it laziness, I call it efficiency.
If the whole point of twitter was communication then why use it at all? There’s thousands more effective ways of communicating with slightly less dumb layouts. Twitter responded to my appeal for my account back with the reasoning that people might get annoyed by follower churning like this. My problem with that is why else is anyone on the internet at all if not to promote yourself? Its an open public forum by which anyone at all can have a voice. For better or for worse, the internet is designed as a platform for arseholes like me to annoy people.
There are two kinds of people on the internet: browsers and posters. And if you have put something on the internet, be it just get a twitter account and tweet occasionally; obviously you want people to look at you. You are shouting about yourself to others. And alright there is a difference, if you’re safe within your core circle of contacts you know you won’t annoy, whereas I was bothering all sorts of people in the sad desperate campaign of “like my stuff!” but how else do people know you’re doing stuff? I’m someone that posts stuff, I have to shout about it or no one will look at it. Call it shallow but if you want to get taken seriously in the real world you have to show you’re capable of getting people to care. Whether I succeed in that is subjective.
Alright, my stuff may not be all that great. The strong likelihood is I’m going to be doing this creative internet bollocks in my spare time for no money never getting taken seriously for decades of my life but if I can get one person to care, then I know I’ll have achieved something. Call me bigheaded, call me an impersonal douchebag. But my life’s kind of hectic and at the same time I’m trying to churn out content on a regular basis to make it clear I’m serious about what I want to do in life. I want to write creative funny stuff, make people laugh and if they do, great, if not, I’ll try and find someone else to make laugh, fair’s fair. The search for someone to pay attention to you is what the internet’s for and if I abused Twitter for that purpose then what the fuck else is twitter for? Why should I use it to talk to people when I have legs, I can get up and go over to the person I want to talk to, move my mouth up and down utilising my vocal chords to form what we call “communication”. Or I could call them or text them, email them, whatever, get a clue and realise what your site is primarily used for Twitter.
……………….just kidding, please give me my account back? I’ll be good pwease?
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Stubagful 