The Social Media Grift
There are words that make me want to throw something through a window. Used to be ’homework,’ ’series finale’—now it’s ’social media.’ Every mediocre kid from high school who used to bore people with calculus is suddenly a brilliant ’social media strategist.’ Working at some trendy agency, or from a home office full of Swedish minimalism, having these incredibly sincere conversations about Twitter and Facebook. It’s almost endearing.
Until one of them has an idea. Not a good one.
If MySpace is popular, if blogs are hot, then why not push every single product imaginable through those channels? Doesn’t matter if anyone actually needs it, doesn’t matter if it has real value. Just get it in front of eyeballs. Make it ’viral.’ Who cares what it does or whether it’s good—as long as millions of people see it.
This is where I actually lose it.
The con is simple and kind of brilliant: convince some marketing director that you have supernatural powers, that you can make people care about literally anything. Force people onto Facebook to become fans of whatever brand pays you. Get them to enter contests. Make them share it to get a friend to vote. The company pays you for this and calls it ’engagement strategy.’
What you’re actually doing is taking worthless things and manipulating people into caring about them. Sometimes those people are broke or exhausted or gullible, and they take the bait. A free contest, an exclusive offer, whatever. And you count that as a victory.
I’m tired of the whole language around it—’social media,’ ’viral,’ ’engagement,’ ’influencer.’ It all means the same thing: getting people to care about garbage they don’t need by any manipulative method available.
So here’s the choice: figure out if what you’re selling is actually good. Something people genuinely want, something that improves their life. If it is, fine. If it’s not—if you’re just trying to move units through pure manipulation—find a different job. Something honest.
But you know they won’t, because by now this is just how things work. It became real the moment everyone agreed it was real.