#oneaday Day 708: Stupid O’ Clock

It’s, once again, stupid o’ clock in the morning, but this time The Old Republic isn’t to blame. At least, not directly — no, instead, this evening/morning’s lateness is due to the long-awaited return of the Squadron of Shame SquadCast.

The Squaddies are some of my most long-standing friends, and people I speak to in some capacity pretty much every day. I’d even go so far as to say that they’re probably the best friends I have, despite the fact that we’re several thousand miles apart and see each other face to face rarely — and in some cases, we still haven’t met in person.

From humble beginnings as a loose community on 1up.com’s message boards to a more organised “club” on the site and, eventually, cutting loose into the big wide world by ourselves, we’ve stuck together through thick and thin, through life’s big moments and its little pleasures. And between us, we’ve built friendships that have endured, remained strong through various adversities, and grown stronger over the years.

This, people, is the power of the social Web. It’s not about building a “voice for your brand”. It’s not about “engaging with your audience”. It’s not about “leveraging somethingorother”. And it’s certainly not about “monetization strategies”. It’s about socalisation, society, people. It’s easy to forget that with the amount of information we’re voluntarily bombarded with on a daily basis. We willingly subject ourselves to a barrage of stimuli from a diverse array of sources — some of which are real people acting with real honesty; others of which are real people holding up a façade in an attempt to be someone they’re not; others still of which are people acting as the voice of a brand, attempting to bring a face to the faceless corporate world.

Events which transpired today showed the potentially disastrous consequences of acting as the voice of a brand, not of an individual. Ocean Market(t)ing [sic] president Paul Christoforo descended into childish insults and poorly-spelled, poorly-articulated attempts to assert his authority and regain his credibility when confronted with an irate customer. The email exchange has, thanks to its posting on Penny Arcade earlier today, gone viral, and Christoforo has become the object of ridicule. It isn’t the first time this has happened, and I fear very strongly for Christoforo’s future job prospects after this debacle, particularly as so many employers are now taking social media “output” into account when considering applicants for positions. Don’t get me wrong, Christoforo was a dick, but is it really fair to potentially jeopardise his whole future over things that clearly happened in the heat of the moment.

Somewhere along the line, I believe we’ve lost our way with the social Web. We made the critical mistake of letting the marketers and businessmen take charge of something which should bring people together. Rather than situations like that which brought me and the Squaddies to each other, we get popular brands asking facile questions and the eager hordes responding in all-lowercase, thereby indirectly promoting the brand in question. We get people carefully guarding the way the represent themselves online so as to protect their personal brand. We get situations spiralling out of control, such as that seen with Christoforo and his customer earlier today.

It’s not all doom and gloom, of course; to imply that the world is going to hell in a handcart purely because of the presence of marketers is foolish. But it would do many people well to, once in a while, remember what the “social” bit of “social media” really means. Does it mean telling the faceless drone behind the The Sims Facebook account that your favourite colour is indeed green? Or does it mean striking up conversation, getting together, finding new people that you want to spend time with?

I’d opt for the latter every time. And now I need to go to bed before I pass out.