#Adventures in Randomness and Rock & Roll w @leah_cevoli (social media spammer)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Leah. She's pretty rad and has an INCREDIBLY random life. Like, no - for reals ... did you know she has an obsession with vampires, psychics, and tarot card readers ... and she had more sex as a teenager than in her 30s ... anddddd she even had two ex boyfriends die violently - one from a heroin overdose, and the other was murdered. Holy moly roli poli oli - that shit be cray cray. Either way, she's now here to write about her life, love, and all things nerd. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT LEAH!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Leah_Cevoli
A month or so ago, I wrote a blog about a “friend” who unfriended me because they viewed my use of Social Media for my career, as being an inauthentic friend, only out for views, and votes online. Today’s blog is a continuation of that, albeit a bit reversed.
Because I do, use social media for my career and am constantly putting up new content and things for my friends and community to (hopefully) enjoy, I have a very strict policy about my Facebook page.
It’s my page. Therefore, I post what I want on it. My projects, projects I’m involved in, OR projects that I feel *moved* (moved being the key word here), to post on my page whether I am involved in them or not.
This has come about over years of being an active social media user, and building my networks of followers across platforms. See, if I water my page down , with every project that every Tom, Dick, and Harry, I know are involved in, then A) there is no room for my own projects to shine, and B) most ppl will soon get turned off by the constant barrage of things and will just stop looking or even unfriend/unfollow.
Because of this, my policy is easy. If you post something on my page, that has nothing to do with me, and have not previously talked to me about it, I will simply delete it, and may private message you telling you why I deleted it. If it happens again, I will probably delete it and you. Why so harsh? Well, because I don’t go around posting my weekly Vlog or anything else on your page, so why should you post on my page? Oh, because I have a lot of followers, and active participants? Wrong! I’ve worked hard to build those active participants.
Now, if you want to pay me to help you promote this event/project/song/book whatever, that’s a different story. We can discuss a contract, a game plan, and a payment. But if you’re going to treat me and my network, like some wall you can just graffiti on whenever you chose, you are going to get deleted.
I have 2 quick examples, and one not so quick example.
One is a Grammy nominated musician I met at a Horror festival a few years back. He is very well known for the soundtrack of one of my all-time favorite vampire movies from the 80s. Nice guy. I was honored to meet him. His career had a resurgence the past few years, when *the* song of that movie got a remake and a re-release. Yay him! However, outside of a few very brief run-ins over the years, we have no working or personal relationship, yet this guy posts FLYERS on my Facebook wall, any time he has an appearance somewhere, or a speaking engagement. I let it slide the first 3 or 4x, I mean after all he is an accomplished musician who wrote the soundtrack to one of my favorite 80’s vampire movies, butttttt after a few more times, I just finally deleted him. No explanation. Just delete. I mean really dude, I don’t come onto your page and post my videos, and blog links, so don’t clutter mine with your flyers.
The 2nd example is an old friend of mine. We met when I was a teenager and he was in his 20’s with a signed major label deal as a singer of a rock band. I joined their street team, and helped out a bit. In my 20’s we re-connected and I did some online fan club stuff, and spreading the word about his latest project. Then when I moved to LA, I got his latest band, a bunch of gigs in Hollywood. (I literally knocked on doors with their press kit in hand). I never asked for any money for any of this. I was a kid, and being able to just be around musicians and “helping” them out was exciting for me.Over the years, this guy has been in many projects, most recently working as a behind the scenes producer on American Idol. (So yeah, he’s not poor.) Yet every so often, he comes up with his latest get rich quick plan. A Christian Music CD, a tell-all book, and each time, he blatantly posts the latest info on my page (I let him slide, we’ve known each other almost 20years), but then he’ll private message me and ask me to spread the word, or write a press release, or help set up appearances, and when the topic of PAYMENT comes up, he starts talking about results, and commissions. WHAT? First of all, if you didn’t think my social network yielded results, you wouldn’t continually ask me, and secondly, I AM NOT A TEENAGER any longer. I am a freelance actor/host/writer/ in need of dollar bills to survive. So yeah, his last post got deleted.
But now, the piece de la resistance, and the reason for this series of social media blog posts… is a “friend”, let’s call him Tony. Tony is also a musician, used to be in a popular boy band, been friends for 15 years. Even dated a little bit. I really truly like this guy, and would consider dating him more seriously. About a year ago, Tony started producing web-content. When the first episode launched, he systematically posted the video on EVERY ONE he knows Facebook page. Beings we have a few dozen friends in common, my feed was completely full of Tony’s web-show. I jokingly posted a few comments on mutual friends pages, but on my page, I explained to Tony, (under his post), I will leave this up (because I love you), but you basically just spammed everyone, and hey by the way have you checked out my web-shows? I discovered at that time, that he not only wasn’t he following my projects on twitter, or subscribed to my YouTube, but he wasn’t even following me on twitter.
Now, I’m not saying YOU HAVE to follow me on all those platforms to be my friend, BUT if you’re a friend who is also promoting your work, and you want me to support it, then YES, I would hope you are supporting my efforts as well. It works both ways people. But he had gotten so wrapped up in his OWN stuff, and telling/spamming the world about it, that he hadn’t really opened his eyes and looked at what his friends were also creating and to see the value in community support.(Which is what social media is… a supportive community of peeps, helping each other along in this great big World Wide Web).
We had a little discussion about it, Tony subscribed to my YT etc., and never again did he post his show on my page, although, being the supportive friend, I did RT a few episodes, and watched every single one. See, I am very supportive; I just don’t want to be force-fed. I’ll watch and share what I find enjoyable. I can’t back something I don’t like. I just can’t do it.
So that was that… or so I thought…
Last month, I leave a comment on Tony’s page, literally saying “I love you and miss u!”, this turns into a big long thread, a conversation, and about 6 comments down, it gets nasty, and he brings up that a year ago, I called him a “spammer” and I don’t support my friends. WHAT? I explained that I do support him, but he was in fact being a spammer, and I copied the official definition of spammer over. At that point he freaked out, like all caps and explamation points. I deleted my original post off of his wall, and then he begins messaging me, “Why did you delete the post? Cause you’re embarrassed and know that it’s true? Are you afraid that others will see you are unsupportive of your friends!!” What? I simply responded, “No, I deleted it, because I am not having this conversation with you on your FB wall. I will never change my mind about this topic.” He sent 3 more messages. I didn’t respond. Then he writes and says he is deleting me. I went ahead, and did him the favor. Then my PHONE starts ringing (its 1am ppl), he left voicemails, which I didn’t listen to, and then the text messages begin, over and over and over, claiming that I am a horrible friend for not supporting his projects, that he would gladly let me post on his page anything I wanted to, etc. etc.
It was SO BIZARRE!!!!!!!
So Bizarre in fact that I went to Facebook to see what the consensus was… maybe I’m wrong, maybe it should be a free-for-all and post whatever you want wherever you want…
The Consensus says otherwise… Here ya go Tony, it’s not just me, everyone thinks you’re a spammer.
