Social Media "Massholes"

Social Media Masshole: is this not the guy who aims to win with volume?

You tell me. I say it is. The masshole is the guy who does not interact with you, does as little as possible for you – but strives to attract masses of followers, circlers, subscribers, etc. for his social network accounts. He understands that he will never be regarded for bettering this world or mankind in any substantial way; that’s fine, he would simply like to have a great big following – that would make it seem like he must be someone big and important.

What is okay about this?

Circle Me (thanks, John). Circle me lots.

Oh, and circle my brand/company page as well (in Google+). While you’re at it, please like my Facebook fanpage and subscribe to my Facebook updates.

What is okay about this, as well?

(Okay, I do, on occassion, check to see how I’m “doing,” and try to assess whether I’m even noticed much.)

There are Massholes and there is assholery.

Once again, assholery can mean different things to different people. As always, I’d very much like to know what you would deem to be assholery.

In social media, the public call-out/accusation is probably a valid example of assholery. I do it like this:

Do you have a Masshole story to share?

Mine is here: Triberr and the no reach-around diva blogger. What is your stance on:

contrived internal linking?
#hashtag spam?
blow-hards who talk over you in Google+ Hangouts?
numbskulls attempting to extract money from noobs by flogging help (that they were recently treated to au gratis) to those with more money than brains?
know-it-all jackasses who have no qualms whatsoever about publicly calling people out for douchebaggery?

Am I missing anything? Surely, I am.

Send your screenshots, stories and links to saul@osakabentures.com and be sure to let me know how I can credit you in the obligatory follow-up article: More on Massholes.

About Saul Fleischman

Founder of emerging social media tool sites. Bootstrapping innovation with lean startup development teams. I do project management, user experience, PR, marketing and community development.

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Brian D. Hawkins

My idea of Massholes are the people that do things like setup a Facebook page and start adding people without inviting them. You mentioned trustcloud on StumbleUpon and I just left that group on Facebook. I came home to find a ton of email notifications from the
trustcloud FB group that I didn’t join. I left the group and unfriended the person that added my. An invite is one thing but to push someone into a crowd when they’re not looking is rude.
- Saul Fleischman
  
  Thanks, @HotBlogTips:disqus as for me, I really don’t like it when total strangers ask me to “like their fanpage.” And you probably know my stance on invites to Facebook groups: they are not invitations but rather inflictions. You get thrust into the group – and the onus is upon YOU to turn off notifications and/or leave the group. Here’s where I cry foul:
  http://osakabentures.com/2011/10/linkedin-vs-facebook-groups/
Parrington

I’m with you on this one, Saul. A lot of impersonal, unconstructive, intrusive, abrasive, awkward and otherwise innapropriate usage of social media out there. May we always be counted among those who avoid such garbage.

For me, the web is all about content: producing it, distributing it, and digesting it. I don’t want or need to push it down someone’s throat or have an army of yes-men echoing me to feel that I am making progress in my ideal.

Thanks for venting a little. We all need to, once in a while.
- Saul Fleischman
  
  thanks, and @Parrington:disqus do see the linked content in the bottom 1…5: for most, I linked to my own stuff
  - Parrington
    
    Thanks, Saul, I looked through them.
    
    Have to admit I’m a fan of your no-nonsense conjunction of data and personal opinion. You write with a great deal of personality.
    
    Particularly liked the post on regifting/reblogging.
    - Saul Fleischman
      
      Thanks so much – a “fan!!”
Adam Justice

I just got messed up on Triberr. A friend invited me…. and about 200 others to all 6 of his tribes earlier this week. I thought 2 sounded alright, so I joined them. Today I went through and approved legitimate posts. They will be posted on 9/30/2012…. 4 days from now. What is the point in that? If you post every 20 minutes 24 hours a day, you’ll definitely lose followers (I just did a small study that showed that unfollows increases substantially when you move posts from every 40 minutes to less than every 30 minutes).

Cleaning up this mess is harder than it is to get in it. I’ll probably go be making 1 tribe very soon and leaving all the others. There isn’t as much value there as there once was.

Plus, I hate all their new ideas. First they came out with re-blogging. I already had that happening, I called it copyright infringement, and I thought it was a negative thing! Then, they changed the layout and features so many times, it always seems to get less intuitive. Lately, Atomic Tribes, which if anyone checked, isn’t a very good deal. I have a ton of Triberr shares, and the blog gets even more RTs on top of those, and yet 1 Facebook post on our Facebook page with a few hundred fans brings in half the referral traffic that Twitter does. With the amount of sharing going on on my free Triberr account (and people’s reluctance to join an Atomic tribe), I just can’t see it being worth it. The concepts of these features aren’t cool to begin with, and that’s what gets me. I would like to see them find a good (Value oriented) way to monetize Triberr, but Spread.us was cheaper, and I can rig the same thing up with RSS graffiti for free.
- Saul Fleischman
  
  thanks for all that, @etelligence:disqus. I got the same invites. To at least 4 of his tribes. He’s building them monster-big – but oblivious to the fact that if we stay in them, we are going to the have a HELL of a time vetting all those posts in our Tribal Stream. This is where the problem lies. It is for this reason that, before joining, I looked at the masses of bloggers who had already accepted, and then decided not to do so myself. It is also what led me to leave a few tribes: they seem to take “all comers,” bu think: what’s that going to do to the amount of time spent vetting what you approve daily…?
jimdougherty

Hi Saul,

Pretty provokative post – well done (and a new word added to the lexicon). I think it’s difficult to assume that everyone has the same mastery level of social tools that you do, and expecting reciprocity for anything in social will drive you crazy. The good news is that you can kick people out of hangouts now, so maybe there are small victories in this struggle?

Cheers, Jim
- Saul Fleischman
  
  Well thank you @jimdougherty:disqus, we’ll have to see if #masshole trends, right?
  As for G+ Hangouts, yes, they continue to get refinements. In public Hangouts, it just takes two participants to get someone booted. In a Hangoutonair (the recorded type), with the Moderator app, the moderator has all the control – and this works well too.
Dan Nichols

This is very Saulesque! You had me laughing as usual, Mr. Fleischman. Are you familiar with the ASKHOLE? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=askhole
- OsakaSaul
  
  In fact, I did not know about “askholes.” I do believe that I know a few, though. Makes me think of my relatives: they’ll ask you a question, just to experience the hot air emanating from their gullet, perhaps – since they wont even pay attention to your reply. (Is this a Yankee thing, maybe…?)