Live by Social Media, die by Social Media
There’s been a pretty amusing story circulating the blogosphere - see Shankman.com, Gawker - about James Andrews, who was hired by FedEx as a social media consultant. Upon getting to Memphis, Tennessee, he posted a message on Twitter that said that he’s in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’
. An employee at FedEx had a bit of a hissy fit about it and sent an e-mail to the consultant, to his boss, and to the management at FedEx. It’s now blown up into a bit of a blogstorm, possibly one that will see said social media consultant losing his job with his firm - certainly one that has brought a ton of bad PR on himself and his employer.
I am conflicted about this. On the one hand, it utterly rebukes the claims of some of the evangelists of Web 2.0 and social media that these changes are making a society more free. Let me say this: there are places in this world that I don’t like. If I were to post something on Twitter saying “fuck, London makes me feel suicidal”, would the dear University of London rebuke me for it? Of course not. In this touchy-feely age, they may decide to intervene and send me off to a psychotherapist. There are even bits of London that make me scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’. I was in Kings Road in Chelsea the other day, and the swarm of yummy mummies and Sloane Rangers wearing those horrible Ugg monstrosities and buying rinky little ‘remedies’ in expensive patent medicine boutiques. That’d drive me a lot madder than Memphis, which gave the world Tennessee Williams, the great photographer William Eggleston and the great blues musician B.B. King (not to mention being the home of Stax Records and the National Civil Rights Museum), while Chelsea gave us Diana Spencer, whose death in 1997 gave the world a chance to revel in crass and phony sentimentalism (and, of course, a shit load of paranoid conspiracy theories). I did actually hear from someone that in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, there are lots and lots of people who nick the clothes bags outside charity shops. I think in the last paragraph, I’ve said more offensive things about Chelsea than Mr. Andrews could possibly find to say about Memphis. But, goddamnit, it’s my blog, and if I want to offend some Chelsea residents, that’s my fucking prerogative, something I can do because the damn European Convention on Human Rights says I can, and if you don’t like it, you can choose not to send HTTP requests to my server.
Has Web 2.0, Social Media and Twitter made James Andrew more free and liberated? No, it’s allowed someone to basically ruin his career on the basis of a personal opinion. Of course, I’m not particularly bothered about it. As the title suggests, if you choose to live by the rules of ‘social media’, then those rules may come back to haunt you. Personally, I make sure not to include in my life or sphere of influence anyone who takes this shit too seriously. If you think the Internet is Serious Business, go and play the I Love Horses jingle fifty times, then use Rickroll and Chocolate Rain to self-medicate yourself off this rather idiotic delusion. James Andrews’ wife has this to say: anyone who knows my husband would say that he is a master connector, network guru and social media rock star
. A social media rock star, you say?
