The Anti-Social Media

I think “content” is a disgusting word.

I was reminded of this after I got a message that said to “Keep making great content!”

Seriously? You can’t even name what I make?

I think of myself as a blogger, writer and cartoonist. I don’t think of myself as someone who just makes content. It offends me that you can’t name the things I write and draw.

Content sounds dull. Content is not compelling. Content is a bland, tasteless gruel that we have shoved down our throats daily.

If content is king, he is a vague and nondescript king.

Who grows up thinking, “I want to make content when I grow up!” No one. Because people don’t just create content.

Writers write blogs. Artists draw pictures. Filmmakers make videos.

And any generic person can make weak, boring content. It takes a person with guts to make something real and defined.

Yesterday, I got a pitch telling me to congratulate to someone I don’t know because some publication I don’t care about named him as a top social media influencer along with a bunch of other name drops.

Ugh.

I can’t even begin to fathom who thought this was a good idea. Because I’m a nice person though, I won’t name names. BUT YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Instead, please enjoy my humorous recreation of this abomination:

Happy Holidays Jay!

Even though I have no clue who you are, I wanted to send you some irrelevant news. We are super excited to say our Corporate Tool was named by a publication you don’t care about as leading social media influencer. He was awarded along with a bunch of other people, including Name Drop #1, Name Drop #2, and Name Drop #3. We’re so proud of him!

Even though you don’t know him, tell him congratulations. A half-hearted tweet would be so thoughtful!

We’ll use the rest of the email to tell you additional meaningless, self-serving news you don’t care about. We want you to use the social capital you’ve carefully built up to serve our purposes with no compensation for you.

Best,

 Your Favorite Clueless Agency

I don’t know you. I don’t know your “influence.” And I certainly don’t give shit about your meaningless award.

Congratulations on continuing to give smart, thoughtful, and hard working social media and public relations professionals a bad name with your half-assed, name-dropping and self-serving pitch.

Happy Holidays indeed, chumps.

Guys, we need to have a talk about your blog headers.

How many blog headers need to have a white guy with his arms folded across his chest? Aren’t you original? Aren’t you more fun? And why are you closing up your body language like that?

Look, I’m totally ok with you having a nice slick photo of yourself up at the top of your blog. I have mine over in the sidebar. The way the internet works these days, we need to sell ourselves to clients, readers, and potential employers. Like all forms of internet prostitution, a good photo helps with that.

But if I have look at another blog with a white guy with his arms folded across is chest, I’m going to scream.

How many times do we stand and smile with our arms folded? Not many I suspect. Usually when I have my arms folded, I’m grumpy, frowning, and getting extremely snarky about whatever the hell I’m listening to. It’s a closed, defensive body language.

It’s also really generic body language. Isn’t there a more open, inviting, and exciting gesture you could be making? Something that doesn’t say, “I”m a smug, self-centered white guy?”

For the guys who don’t have a blog header like this, thanks for being ahead of the curve. For the rest of you, pull your head out of your ass, open up photoshop, and touch up your header. You’ve got a nice smile. Show me what you look like when you aren’t closing down your body language.

Don’t worry, you won’t look any less professional than the guy who has a cartoon for half of his photo.

Public relations professionals have it hard.

Bloggers are a snarky, unforgiving bunch. When you call us a f*&#%*g bitch, we mobilize half of the internet against you and your stupidity.

Really though, they bring this upon themselves.

In the past month, I was been put on a weird social media PR list. You’d think this would bring a blogger exciting new opportunities. Instead, it just brings headaches, links to piss poor social media research, and offers for guest posts on topics I don’t cover at all.

The only person who ever got it right offered to send me treats for my cat. How sad is that?

So, PR folks, let’s clear this up. Here are some tips for dealing with me and other bloggers.

1. Get off Yahoo and Gmail - You want me to take you seriously? Great. But when you use a Gmail and Yahoo addresses for your email, I don’t take you seriously. Sorry, but it’s not terribly hard to set up a yourname@yourwebsite.com email address. Do it. I’ll take you more seriously to start with.
2. Don’t ask to write a guest post - Don’t just presume because I run a blog and I’ve had guest posts featured previously that I’m looking to have you write a guest post. I don’t know you. I don’t know your writing. Giving me a list of generic topics like Facebook and Twitter isn’t helpful either. Either send me the article, or try to get to know me in a way that doesn’t promote your half-hearted PR business.
3. Stop trying to get me to promote your content - I know it takes a lot of work to promote a blog and make content for it. I do it myself every. single. day. Your piss poor article about “5 ways to use Twitter for business” doesn’t interest me or my readers. And besides, I could write that article ten times in a more dynamic way than you could.
4. Don’t waste my time - I have a job.  I like to think that I have a life, but who am I kidding about that? Keep your email to the point. Also, don’t get your britches in a twist when it takes 48 hours for me to reply. I’m likely doing something so if we do work together, your efforts will be more successful.
5. Don’t Assume - I got an email recently that read “This will interest you and your readers.” How dare you have the gall to know what interests me and my audience?  If this is your first email to me and you’ve read one of my posts, you don’t know me or my readers.
6. Say My Name - My name is all over this site. When you write “Dear The Anti-Social Media” or “Dear Blogger” you insult me as an author. Stop it. I’m Jay, use my name. Give me the respect I deserve. You wouldn’t write to J.K Rowling and start the letter with “Dear Author.” She’d go all “Avada Kedavra” on you.

Releasing that rage has me feeling better already,b but there’s still more than can be done. What else can PR professionals do better with blogger outreach? Leave a comment so we give them a post where they can learn where they are messing up and the chance to laugh at their own failures.  Or if that isn’t fun, we can just make fun of all the horrible things we’ve seen.

Either way, we’ll all learn something about how not to piss off the people who control the interwebs.

Bloggers have to put up with a lot of shit. Trolls. Assholes like me. Overzealous fans who point over every single mistake you make. It’s all part of the job of being an extremely minor celebrity.

But there is one bunch that is worse than everyone else. These are the people that try to make a few bucks off of the blogger.

A few recent samples:

• Hi Jay - I noticed that you had a few posts in your archives with some lists of seemingly random things. Would you be willing to rewrite that list to include a link to this sketchy product?

• Jay - I’m number 5 on Google for a vague search term that you aren’t targeting. Would you be interested in buying another domain?

Sketchy advertisers - I’m flattered you think my blog is good enough for you to hawk your wares on, whether to me or to my readers.

But fuck you. Selling out my readers trust for a few bucks isn’t worth it.

Reading and writing are the most essential parts of the internet, right below bacon and LOLcats. The use text-based language is essential because it is the quickest way to to share and process information. Sure, we have audio and video, but most of us spend years in school to come out with the ability to read and write coherent sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

That’s why it always amazes me how much of the internet is written at a second grade level with more typos than conceivably possible. Here are a few ways to improve your reading and writing, which has probably languished since you got out of college.

• Don’t read the internet - You may remember something from school called books. There are also other publications called magazines that are published, usually with nice glossy photographs. Find something other than the internet to read. See how people write for audiences that aren’t distracted by Facebook. It’s a different experience, and makes you think about the words, sentences, and paragraphs you are constructing in different ways.
• Proofread - Whatever you publish, proofread. One of the best parts of these new fangled computing machines is that they can edit things before you publish them. Take the 2 minutes to read over what you publish. It makes you look that much smarter.
• Read things in different tones - As useful as our words can be, they lose a multitude of meaning and intent as soon as someone publishes them without any audio tone. Our languages are meant to be spoken out loud, and enunciating and articulating the consonants and vowels gives words context and meaning. Consider reading things out loud to further understand the author’s intention. Just rememeber if you read something out loud, do it somewhere people won’t think you’re crazy.
• Write something significant - Blog posts and Twitter updates are fun, but they are no substitute for something of real significance. When was the last time you thought about writing two or three coherent pages? When did you last slave over a word about how it would fit into the context of something biggere than a sentence? It’s that type of labor in writing that makes a real difference in your quality and tone as a writer.

What do you do to read and write better? Is there any hope for the masses on the internet? Does writing another angry blog post about ths even do anything? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Meanwhile, I’ll be reading this awesome book I found. And no, I’m not sharing it. It’s mine.

I’ve been reading the same blogs for months and years now because I’m picky and can never find anything I like to read long term.

Also, there’s only so much of Mashable I can take before it jumps the fail whale.

What’s good out there these days? What am I missing in my tunnel vision? Does anyone else have original thoughts? Anything inspire you or give you ideas?

I want to read something that doesn’t suck and won’t make me want to tear my intestines out and jump rope with them. Give me something good to read people.

This is the 399th blog post I’ve written in the span of about a year and a half here at The Anti-Social Media. That’s 399 blog posts in 548 days, or about 7 tenths of a blog post a day (I like to keep the other 3 tenths saved in my nest egg for a rainy day). It also includes 200 unique comics, not counting the ones I create for speeches and presentations.

That’s more swearing, bitching, and whining than most people do in their entire lifetime.

Long-term blogging is hard, even for experts. There’s only so much we can write about, and only so many ways we can say it. We’re human. We lose interest. We have other obligations off of the internet, like survival and feeding our cats.

Thankfully, I blog about social media, where everything changes every two weeks and Facebook keeps shooting itself in the foot. I’ll never run out of material.

Bloggers, both old and new, is it hard for you to blog frequently? Is it worth it? Do you even care? I want to know what the other people who spend their time writing on the internet think of the madness we put ourselves through.