After an ill-deserved leave of absence, I returned to the relative serenity of Exmouth House to hold myself in readiness for Tempero’s 10th Anniversary Party. Ten years is a long time in social media and as it turned out, the rapid growth of this paradigm-tickling phenomenon was directly proportional to the liver damage suffered by those of us who sacrificed themselves once again at the Dionysian altar we know more colloquially as, ‘the free bar’.
However, as the emesis of celebratory excess is power-hosed down the gutter of semi-consciousness and the red-faced amnesia of the night before is engulfed by the mutual fear that you too may have touched the CEO inappropriately on the dancefloor – it falls to me once again to present my latest steaming tureen of social media soup.
To ease you in gently, I thought you might like to indulge in a guilty pleasure I came across this month (albeit 6 months too late). If, like me, mundane snapshots of what people had for dinner/abstract wallscapes/skyscapes or grinning drunken selfies, make you want to jump off the dock, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this video which cunningly blends everything cringeworthy about Instagram with another of my pet hates – the vomit-inducingly inane, growling purveyors of soft-rock-bilge, known to many as Nickelback. I hope you enjoy this amusing parody, clearly forged in the fiery furnaces of the fifth circle of hell.
While I’m on the subject of infernal locations, the kitchens at Amy’s Baking Company have been burning with expletive rage recently as the owners took to Facebook and gave all of us a timely lesson in how to fuel a cascading social media disaster. Having been dubbed ‘incapable of listening’ by Gordon Ramsay himself on the Kitchen Nightmares programme they were featured on, they went on to prove that they weren’t that good at engaging with their customers either.
After several ill-advised rants to their detractors on Reddit, Yelp and Twitter, there followed a troll backlash which in turn engendered another barrage of sanctimonious vitriol from the owners, accompanied by some highly unconvincing claims that their account had been hacked. This toing and froing continued in a predictable catastrophic loop, counter-intuitively racking up over 51,000 likes on their Facebook page in the process, showing how much the voyeuristic glee of the Internet troll can skew the stats when a feeding frenzy is in full flow.
More recently, a cynical hack (or hock?) on Peppa Pig World’s Facebook fan page by some foul-mouthed interlopers set the newswires crackling as justifiably angered parents vented their rage towards the swine concerned for posting such nasty content on a children’s page. The official Peppa Pig page were quick to respond with an apology for the security breach and it seems that an even rasher decision was made to give the original Facebook page the chop until the issue is resolved.
Friends Reunited made an extremely insensitive and tasteless return to the spotlight this month by allowing one of their number to publish a terribly ill-thought out tweet a matter of minutes after news of the tragic murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich broke across the Internet.
It seems that the rush to be the first to pounce on breaking news in order to gain the best possible social media traction, supersedes what one would hope is the inate sensitivity and common sense present in content creators. Every month it seems that another big brand causes significant damage to their reputation by giving their social media teams the latitude to publish the first thing that comes into their heads with no editorial mediation whatsoever. The more this happens as time goes on, the more hollow the subsequent apologies will appear to be.
If people adhere to the ‘more haste, less speed’ mantra as part of a clear and sensible editorial policy, it should prevent the premature stampede towards the tweet button and the publishing of yet another horrifically misguided attempt at humour off the back of a truly tragic event.
In a wonderful contrast this month, Kickstarter provided a perfect example of how to deal with a very public mistake by publishing a finely crafted apology, when excerpts of a seduction guide, crowdfunded by the site started attracting controversy for its highly-questionable misogynistic espousals of sexual violence. As well as the comprehensive and sincere apology, Kickstarter removed the offending page, added a new editorial guideline banning similar content and donated $25,000 to RAINN, a charity that fights to combat sexual-violence and runs the National Sexual Assault Hotline in the U.S.
The positive response in the Kickstarter community to how this sticky issue was dealt with, demonstrates the importance and efficacy of a transparent and honest approach to crisis management.
I will return next month with another over-seasoned social media salmagundi. In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy the fruits of the Internet with a renewed sense of vigour and all-pervading dread.
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