Social Media Polluters! Greed and Self-Aggrandizement on Twitter

On Twitter, @nickcharney Retweeted @mitchjoel: The dirty little secret of the Twitter Elite

http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-dirty-little-secret-of-the-twitter-elite.

This is an excellent article tracing the history of the takeover of what began as a social media space with a minimalist communitarian ethic (I’ll follow you if you’ll follow me) into what is now a technology driven “get your message out” space in which it’s “all about me” rather than listening to and learning from each other.

My response to this article was only one of a number of thoughtful and provocative comments:

You just touched on one of the most important points about Twitter, but dropped it, just as a previous author I respect touched on affiliate marketing but then allowed that it was respectable. Is anyone going to stand up and say that being in it for yourself, that duping others to spend money chasing impossible dreams is immoral and a cancer in the soul of America? Is anyone going to say that treating everyone one you relate to as a means to your personal aggrandizement instead of an end in themselves, is anyone else going to say that this makes a mockery of "In God we Trust"?

Twitter started with some attempt at community, and there are still people who actually like to talk to each other, network with each other, discover new things and new people from each other. Instead of rolling over and ceding yet another piece of social real estate to the selfish, the immoral and the blind, perhaps we can learn to block out those who are only clanging cymbals or pounding drums in their own names, and promote those we know who truly value and contribute to community. Just a thought . . .

Despite retweeting Mitch’s article myself, I thought there was still more to say on the topic.

Currently I spend time in Facebook, where I often utilize chat to talk to people I’ve met on Twitter and other friends around the world as well as Friendstock which is a co-operative game where one gets to meet people in a low risk, low investment setting. It is interesting that in friendstock those who value a communitarian, looking out for each other approach to the game group together and tell the predators (only in it for themselves) to get lost. So far in Twitter, I’m the only person I know who routinely publicly blocks spammers, those who demonstrate their Twitter know-how to clog up our screens with their achievements of multiple consecutive posts. I’m still just barely tolerating those who are only on Twitter for self-promotion purposes and who seemingly couldn’t give a flying f@*& for anyone else on Twitter except as a potential buyer of whatever it is they’re trying to sell. I’m so tired of watching the scammers scam the desperate wannabe scammers – all of them thinking that somehow this is acceptable social behaviour!! Can you imagine being in a neighbourhood where everyone was like this, and every first-time conversation inevitably ended up with what you had for sale, and then ignoring people afterwards if they weren’t interested.

So people, instead of the mindless, lemming-like rush to “get rich” why don’t the real people start banding together, blocking anyone who’s cluttering the tweetways with their pathetic approaches to “look at me so I can try to sell you something” so that we can get back to real human intercourse in this cool social media space we share? Or is it too late, and in fact, like some cheesey sci-fi horror movie, most tweets are already “one of them” with glassed over eyes, tweeting the same words and phrases to each other hearing in the distance an illusory “bling bling.”