The Internet Is Manufacturing Idiots…Is beBee The Antidote?

There are more words in the English language that are synonyms for ‘idiot’ than pretty much any other other word or term you can think of.
Moron. Buffoon. Clown. Doofus. Asshole. Bozo. Dipshit. Fool. Halfwit. Dunce. Cretin. Imbecile. Flake. Dough Head. Shit For Brains. Ass. Airhead. Blockhead. Dope. Dork. Lunkhead. Brain Dead. Airhead. Boob. Lamebrain. Meathead. Thick As A Brick. Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks. Not Playing With A Full Deck. Simpleton. Dunce. Dummy. Pinhead. Numbskull. Jerk. Nincompoop. Ninny. Ignoramus. Dumbbell. Dimwit. Dolt. A few Bricks Short Of A Load. To mention a few.
We have all come across these people in our lives and in social media. And for the most part we try and steer clear of them.
But they still keep popping up like so many bad pennies in your life. A lot of times, they just show up in the form of things you see or come across, especially on places like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
I find these people fairly easy to avoid, but I carry the curse of having majored in philosophy. And even though the staggering number of idiots doesn’t necessarily affect me personally or physically, it really bothers me philosophically.
I am very uncomfortable around people who are stupid.

Back In The Day Idiots

Back when I worked in the ad agency business, we used to do a lot of research on products and the concepts we could come up with to sell them to people.

This is one of those places where idiots would show up regularly. Not in great numbers. But even having one or two in a focus group of 10 or 12 people could really screw things up, because the people in the groups who were not idiots, would get upset, thinking that we were throwing them in with a couple of idiots, and that’s maybe what we thought of them.
Needless to say, that cost us a lot of extra work, because concepts that intelligent people would get with no problem, were turned on by this resentment, which, in its own way was a form of stupidity as well.
In one way I have been lucky, because my exposure to idiots in the pre-social media days was limited. Because you work so much in advertising, the friendships you form tend to be with people in your business. And generally speaking, people in advertising and marketing tend to be both bright and well-educated. At least they did back then.
But we all had stories, like my research stories and about neighbours who were complete morons etc.

Social Media Idiots

I joined Facebook back in the early days when the objective was to max out your ‘friends’ list, as that was seen as some sort of social media merit badge.
And since everybody was doing the same thing back then, I very soon maxed out and was left with literally hours of scrolling to do to get through the comings and goings of my 5000 ‘friends’.
This is where I started to develop the 80/20 Differential. Because as I was scrolling through I started to notice that there was a lot of stupid shit getting posted. Back then, it was the early days of the ‘jackass’ breed, and so a lot of the stuff that was posted had the do with idiots doing fairly stupid and actually kind of dangerous stuff.

This is when I started to wonder if there wasn’t some conspiracy afoot to create a generation of social media idiots. As a marketer I could see the brilliance of that. Idiots are much easier to sell stuff to than non-idiots.
And I could see that if ‘free’ sites like Facebook were going to survive, they would have to monetize and if they had a lot of idiots they could sell to, they would do well.
As time went by, my frustration with the large number of idiots, political freaks, sad sacks, hustlers, scammers and trolls had grown to the point where I simply closed my account, waited a week and then opened a new one.
This new account now only has 115 ‘friends’, the vast majority of whom I know personally or am related to. As a result of having fewer friends there, I am spending a lot less time on it, and have extra time to devote to something I find much more gratifying.

beeBe…A Haven From The Idiot Onslaught

I joined beBee a little more than a year ago, as part of the initial wave of writers who showed up based on John White’s recommendation.
We all knew John from LinkedIn where we were all doing quite well on their Pulse publisher, until we weren’t. John assured us all that beBee was working hard to learn from the mistakes that Facebook and LinkedIn had made and structure their site accordingly.
Having gone through ‘idiot and management overkill’ on Facebook and LI respectively, I was a bit skeptical, but I figured what the hell. Here’s a chance to be part of the initial wave of English speaking writers coming to beBee. At the very least we would all have each other.

The beBee Revelation

Having negative experiences with certain things can actually enhance your appreciation of the positive experiences. And that is exactly what happened on beBee.
From the very outset, the users (aka bees) here, and the management of beBee all greeted us with open arms and a willingness to engage that I personally only experienced a few times on LinkedIn and hardly ever on Facebook.
But what was the most encouraging thing of all was the almost total absence of idiots. It was kind of like I had died and gone to social media heaven.

Nothing’s Perfect…But BeBee Is Not Too Shabby

I won’t tell you that my experience here as a user and then as a brand ambassador hasn’t been without a few bumps here and there. But what I can tell you is that the management of this site (also the owners) Javier Rica and Juan Imaz, are both very hands-on and easily the most active cheerleaders for beBee.
And the adage that the character of any business is shaped by the characters of the people who run it holds true here 100%.
Being a content contributor on this site has been both gratifying and interesting. The scarcity of idiots is strange on the surface, but not when you consider that the management is very hands-on and has moved swiftly to keep any ‘idiot’ issues from raging out of control.

Every Site Has Its Purpose

Social media, which is relatively young in marketing terms has divided itself into a number of silos. Each major site has its own primary function and brand character.
LinkedIn is morphing slowly back to its original form, which was as a job seeker/employee seeker repository. Facebook continues to be a ‘friends and friends-of-friends’ site with an ever increasing amount of sponsored posts. Instagram is for celebrities and other self-absorbed types of which there are millions. Twitter is for news (fake and other) and advertising. Pinterest is for pics. Etc.

But beBee Is Different From All Of The Above

As a user, beBee is about finding new audiences for my blogging. It’s about being able to explore different interests that I have by exploring posts in affinity-based hives. And it’s about finding interesting stuff to read and learn from in a relatively ‘idiot-free’ environment.
beBee also has the opportunity to grow into a more structured business site as it starts to attract more group activity from the frustrated group owners on LinkedIn.
beBee is also an excellent place to have as a blogging headquarters. Because not only are you able to reach all your followers with every post you create, you can reach out into any number of the special interest hives and post there, plus share your posts on LI, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ without all the hassle of having to do it the cut and paste way.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

The performance of my posts on beBee, makes my LinkedIn Pulse performance pale in comparison. I keep telling the writers who are still publishing on Pulse and wondering if their audience has died or something, that they are basically wasting their time there.
And one by one, the penny is dropping with these folks and good writers are showing up here all the time.

All I Can Go By Is My Own Experience

I have a year with beBee under my belt. I have developed some very solid friendships. I have an interested and interesting audience. I have support from management. And I have been able to develop several promotional streams for beBee that beBee’s management supports and encourages.
I am not just a user here. But I have become an organic part of this site. Maybe just a small part, but that’s OK, because it’s a hell of a lot better than any social media experience I have had in the last decade.
All comments, relevents and shares are welcome.

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real World here:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
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All content Copyright 2017 Jim Murray

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