The Fall of Social Media Egos

As with most things, people that do things with ulterior motives get found out and removed from their pedestal. In the world of social media, it seems to take a while, because I think to some degree you can hide your non-authenticity for a while longer than you can off line. There are a handful of people that I thought would have been dethroned by now but they seem to be hanging on, although they don’t have the “market share” they once had.

I see a lot of up and comers falling into the trap of having a social media ego too…it’s the feeling of fame and power when you have 500, 1,000, or 5,000 (let alone 10,000 or 1,000,000) people “following” you. But that’s just it…how many people are TRULY “following” you? Then you get into things like Klout or Peer Index or any of the other “scoring” systems which grade you on your…well, what the hell do they grade you on?

The most unfortunate thing coming from businesses like Klout is it, by definition, invites people to game the system, to cheat, to not act as they normally would. How? Klout is a reward for being “better” than everyone else, it gives you a number and so many people are caught up in that number, that grade. And now with things like Klout Perks, they are enticing people more than ever to game the system.

I will not argue the issue of being able to game the system, so many people think you can’t…but you absolutely can. The scoring is based on engagement, reach, amplification, and so on…are you saying you can’t “fake” engagement in order to increase your score? People do this every day…online and off.
My problem is not with Klout, my problem is that people allow the importance of Klout to be too much. I think social media has become saturated with people (obviously) that don’t know how to use it. Isn’t worrying about your Klout score, or doing whatever you can to raise it to look better than others, similar to worrying about what kind of car you drive or the clothes you wear? Indeed, one in the same.

Even in my 27 months involved in social media I’ve seen a big change in the users, the communities, and the goals of these folks. I have become more skeptical of people in the social media world because it is far more common to find non-authentic people with ulterior motives…those that are gaming the system because scores are more important than people; and that’s just not how I roll.

So from the time I began in the social online world to now…I do not automate my social media, I do not use hashtags on Facebook (except the rare time I simply forget to remove one), and my Klout score means squat to me!! Oh, and Twitter #PillowFights and all that other weird shit is, well, weird. Go have a real pillow fight.

Cheers

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