Image via Wikipedia
Why on earth do some people buy friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter? I say friends, but of course I don’t really mean friends at all when money has changed hands to acquire them, I mean online identities attached to your own as friends or followers, according to the parlance of the two social networking sites.
On Twitter, followers can be bought in blocks starting at £53 for 1,000. They’re not cheap. The biggest block marketing firm USocial is selling is 100,000 people. Nobody has 100,000 friends. I don’t know anyone with 1,000 friends. Not real ones at any rate. A few hundred, sure, but how many of those are friends and how many are mere acquaintances, passing ships in the night?
Most of us can understand the human drives involved in paying for company, paying for sex, whether we object to such transactions on moral and religious grounds or not. Loneliness and lust are the most obvious factors involved in reaching for your wallet in order to get the chance to touch and caress someone else’s body. But forking up serious money just to stack up the number count on a column on a website?
Real friends are there for you at times of joy or crisis, they sit down with you and gossip over coffee, they go out with you to bars and clubs and events. You don’t pay them or a third-party. Of course many of our friends on these sites are online only, but the communications—the chats and the helpful advice, the consoling words in times of grief, the congratulations on getting a new job, the debates on issues of the day, the occasional no-word, thumbs-up, mouse-click response to something you’ve posted—are nevertheless very genuine and real, essentially human and worthwhile.
Where is the profit in the so-called ‘enhanced’ profile? Would you feel more inclined to heed the instant message of someone wanting to sell you something online if they had thousands of attached followers or friends? My reaction would be to run in the opposite direction. I am innately suspicious of Twitter and Facebook accounts with huge numbers of attached identities unless it’s understandable because they’re high-profile celebrities like Stephen Fry.
We can argue the point, but supposedly Ordinary Joe must be suspect if he has 22,456 people supposedly enthralled by his daily tweets or Facebook updates about his goldfish and obsession with hummus. If his real aim is to sell erectile dysfunction pills, one wonders how much value for money he’s getting from buying those followers, how many of them convert to sales?
Of course we do come across people online who seek to collect friends and followers like stamps or badges, on a more modest scale than that offered by USocial, without money being involved. My reaction to them is one of puzzlement, and I wonder what drives them to do what they do.
If you want to follow @spicycauldron on Twitter, go right ahead. I’d welcome you doing so. But I don’t crave followers, and even if I was a millionaire I wouldn’t buy them.
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! you learn something new every day … I had no idea people bought 'friends' like that … weird …
I think any misuse of the word 'friend', outside the meaning the word has had as far back as anyone can trace, is a dangerous dilution.
I always look at the profiles and websites of people who follow me before I follow. I won't follow anyone with hundreds of thousands of followers because I find that suspicious and unnecessary, with the exception of two people.
Stephen Fry, because he's a real person. He doesn't spend all his tweets trying to promote his brand. He talks about dart tournaments and white rhinos and architecture. I'd follow him if he wasn't a celebrity because he's silly when needed and serious when appropriate and overall very charming.
I'm not Buddhist, but he seems nice so I follow the Dalai Lama. It's an assistant tweeting, of course, and is mostly quotes and appearance announcements, but they are simple and lack the fuss and sarcastic narcissism of other big name posts. I suspect it wouldn't matter if he had five followers or a million, the tweets would be the same.
I also have never purchased anything from Starbucks and never seen Titanic– because everyone else has. What do they need my attention for if they have everyone else's?
Hi Pet. Thanks for your comment, it's appreciated. Yeah, your comments chime with my thoughts as well, pretty much. I've stopped following many celebrities, only keeping those who are genuinely funny or otherwise interesting – although I think it rather against the spirit of the thing when some celebs follow back less than 10 per cent of those who follow them. I mean, you'd think they'd have a fair few friends for starters among their followers, let alone fans and colleagues. I think it's lazy, really.
The Dalai Lama's Twitter stream is very interesting and you're right, it doesn't matter that it's likely to be an assistant tweeting his thoughts for him.
I can't say I've never bought a Starbucks coffee and I have seen Titanic, though. I was always going to see that film eventually because I've had an interest in that ship and its fate going back years. I also don't think the huge popularity of a film, book, TV show or whatever should be taken as indicative of it being either poor or excellent quality – it's a triumph of marketing, at least in part. The proof for one's own self is in the eating of the pudding. If you don't like it, fine. If you do, okay then.
I think precluding yourself from engagement with the wildly popular is a blanket rule that can see you missing out as much as missing nothing of merit.
Just my thoughts on this.
Oops! I think I should clarify!
I have little interest in romantic disaster movies or coffee, so not seeing Titanic and not purchasing from Starbucks is a natural choice for me. Americans in general find out about one or the other and their instant response is, “but everyone else has!”. Wild popularity is a cultural event here on par with the Crusades– since we didn't have Crusades.
We also rarely have jobs that allow for more than a week and a half or two weeks off annually, if that. Federal law says three days minimum. So anything created by Hollywood or mass marketing is as close as some people get to a vacation here. It is enough for a lot of people to make it a cultural event worth experiencing en masse, even if they aren't interested in coffee or romantic disaster movies.
So a cultural event is not enough to make me want to experience it just for the sake of a cultural event, but it's not enough to keep me away. I would have LOVED to have seen Avatar in the theatre like everyone else, but I can't see in stereo and they didn't have the non-3D version when I was available to go.
We get less holiday time in the UK than we used to back when the Church had more say. The number of bank holidays used to be treble what it is today but we do still have a lot more state-sanctioned time off than Americans, although the US 'work 'til you drop' approach was imported in the early 1980s along with fast food. A lovely combo.
I thought 'Titanic' succeeded on spectacle but the romantic element left me cold because DiCaprio was totally unconvincing. Avatar, still not seen it but I hear that follows in the James Cameron tradition of looking amazing but being a bit shaky when it comes to plot and character. I absolutely must see Alice in Wonderland, and soon, and in 3D–although when I sit through a 3D film that lasts a while I leave the theatre with my balance disorder hugely provoked and a mild to banging headache. So I'll be taking some painkillers with me, and don't think I'll be rushing to buy into 3D TV as the next big thing.