I confront you, the reader, to lift yourself away from your computer for a short period, and contact some people you know. Call your mom, your dad, your pet rock, your therapist, your booty call, and your parish pastor. I want you to ask them one thing. "What is Social Media?" Discover how many of them answer the question with something other than "How the fuck should I know?" or some variant thereof.
Chances are you are part of a limited group on the Interwebs that knows specifically what social media is and what it is all about. You might take pleasure in this fact. You may even blog about it. You are most certainly overinundated with the web sites. If you are not on Facebook, you're digging. If you are not digging, you are tweeting. If you're not tweeting, you are blogging. All of which contributes to some magic feed across the web called a lifestream.
But, my comrades, there is something going on around here that you may or may not have perceived just yet. There is an element of this whole factor that is eroding away from the value of your involvement in such sites.
I am sorry to say this, or to break it to you, but Social Media (as you have come to distinguish it) is a myth. It simply does not exist. It's all bullshit, people.
Social Media is a buzzword. It is like Web 2.0. It is like what e-commerce was in the late 1990's and early part of this decade. That is all it is.
Oh for sure: there are "social media sites". These are the sites made by the innovators of the internet. The people behind the scenes of Mixx, Facebook, Plurk, and countless other web sites are creating innovative products and services that allow people to impart a wide range of media sources in an interactive fashion; hence the use of the idiom, "social media site". But these innovators, these thinkers and doers, these movers and shakers, on no account invented the phrase "Social Media".
Do you want to know who invented the phrase "Social Media"?
The same individuals who created the buzz words for "Web 2.0". There’s already a buzz word for the next period of development on the Internet. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s called "Semantic Web" (of course, it used to be called "Web 3.0") and the same individuals who created the words "Social Media" and "Web 2.0" are salivating and scraping at this new buzz word.
Who are these folks?
They call themselves marketers. More distinctively, they refer to themselves as social media marketers or SEO marketers.
Do not get me wrong. There's a whole bunch of people out there involved in the sphere of marketing who are very knowledgeable as to how the Internet has changed, developed, reformed, and influenced their industry. And that is cool.
The individuals I am talking about are those who claim they are knowledgeable about Social Media. It is the biggest con of the 21st century, folks: they create a buzz word, convince you that it exists, persuade you that you and/or your business needs it, and then convinces every person that they are so competent in the area that you can afford to pay them lots of cash to be your "Social Media Consultant".
What a fucking joke.
Yes, there are "social media web sites" (Digg, MySpace, Twitter, etc); but there is no "Social Media", okay?
Let us call it by its real name, shall we?
THE INTERNET.
The title worked really well back in the 1990's, and I am sure it still stands up well today. Back then in the nineties, sure, we didn't have such innovation in the way things are displayed on-screen. But we did have interaction. In operation, the Internet, in and of itself, is literally social media. You are using a kind of media to interact with others.
Even websites need a buzz word according to these arsemunchers now. They call them blogs, or blogging. While companies like WordPress and BlogSpot have afforded easier templates for people to have their own place on the web, let's face it: it is still a web site. You still have to type a URL in, and you still end up at a HTML page.
These sacksqueezers, these con artists, even run their own blogs. Most of them are blogging about blogging about blogging about how your blog can make more income. There is another buzzword: "monetize"! Get rich quick, for I did! That is the attitude they convey.
Oh, but friends, the best bits are yet to come. I love seeing the posts with titles such as "How FriendFeed can improve your traffic" or "Why utilizing StumbleUpon is better for your site".
Wait. How do these people know? How did they come across these answers? If their shitty blogs are generating magnificent traffic, why bare the secret? Why not keep the damn thing to yourself, get more ad clicks, sell additional t-shirts, and earn more money?
I will tell you why, folks. There is no clandestine way to build traffic. There is no one single site that shares content that is better than another. These marketers are just making a few observations, making a few more assumptions, and crafting a bullshit article for their blog with an attractive title to get your attention and visit their site.
That is all it is. They don't want to share the secrets of the Internet with you (there are no secrets on the web, just as there are no rules); they do not want to be your best friend. To them, you are just another digit. You are a solitary number that contributes to their unique page views for the day.
These folks are not the knowledgeable marketers that speak at events about how the internet and marketing interacts.
Nor are they the writers who make observations about directions, shifts, and trends about contemporary websites created by the real social media innovators. (Let me give you two examples: Tamar Weinberg's site and Reem Abeidoh's site - these two extraordinary women make some interesting observations about the trends and the people using web sites such as Mixx and Digg).
No. These people I am referring to are the scabs of the web. They do not have the innovative brain power or skills to develop their own product or service to deepen another user's experience of the Internet.
They do not have the dexterous observation skills to write articles about identifiable trends in these types of sites.
No, no: what these people are skilled at is making up bullshit. So they cruise along the edge of the wave created by people such as Chris McGill and Kevin Rose, and skim the crust off the surface to just make money. They make money off ads, merchandise, and even phony little meet-ups and conventions that make them feel very fucking imperative.
But the sad thing is, in a majority of these sites (such as Mixx), nobody seems to notice them nor care. They just let them on through, polluting these fabulous sites with their torrential (yet irrelevant) fecal thoughts (in the form of "How you can get more traffic" blogs). My question is: Why?
Why be lethargic about tolerating these fakers, these nobodies, these imbeciles? Why allow them to swindle you into clicking on their link?
Fuck 'em. Vote 'em down. Vote 'em down and vote all their shit down. If you are a digger: bury at will. Come on, people, these con artists are not telling you anything new nor are they revealing to you anything you never knew beforehand.
Essentially these people are trying to rob you of your own opinion. They will drill into you what the next trend is, how big it will be, and how horny they are getting over the whole damn conception.
Yes, my friends, I am sorry. Social Media is a myth. It doesn't exist. At least, what these marketers have led you to believe what Social Media is does not exist. There are absolutely social media sites; but the diatribe that the marketers are telling you is nothing more than deception.
It is no different than the pious televangelists from the eighties giving you that special miracle and always wanting more money.
I will continue using the social media sites I like. I will keep not using the ones I do not like. But I will not endure some know-it-all try and explain to me how to drive traffic to my site, when they know damn well themselves that they cannot even do it for their own site.
And these people will not disappear. As soon as the buzz word "social media" (if you recall, this phrase hit the web in 2007; making itself less than a year old) fades away, and they can start dry humping the leg of "semantic web", they will move onto some other form of marketing to explore how they can exploit that, and exploit you. Just like a fucking parasite. These people are the pubic lice of the human species!
Don't give these crabs any more support! They do not deserve it. Allow yourself to make up your own fucking opinion about what sites you should visit. Learn for yourself how your web site will work for you. Encounter for yourself what kinds of traffic work well for your site. Refuse to let anyone else tell you how to do this.
Because if it was widespread knowledge, everyone would be making millions.
And these scumbags of the web are not millionaires.
I confront you, the reader, to lift yourself away from your computer for a short period, and contact some people you know. Call your mom, your dad, your pet rock, your therapist, your 
I am sorry to say this, or to break it to you, but 
Do not get me wrong. There's a whole bunch of people out there involved in the sphere of marketing who are very knowledgeable as to how the Internet has changed, developed, reformed, and influenced their industry. And that is cool.
Even websites need a buzz word according to these arsemunchers now. They call them blogs, or blogging. While companies like 
I will tell you why, folks. There is no clandestine way to build traffic. There is no one single site that shares content that is better than another. These marketers are just making a few observations, making a few more assumptions, and crafting a bullshit article for their blog with an attractive title to get your attention and visit their site.
No. These people I am referring to are the scabs of the web. They do not have the innovative brain power or skills to develop their own product or service to deepen 
Fuck 'em. Vote 'em down. Vote 'em down and vote all their shit down. If you are a digger: bury at will. Come on, people, these con artists are not telling you anything new nor are they revealing to you anything you never knew beforehand.
