Online, No One Can Hear You Scream

The irony of the following column is that, a few weeks ago, I was named as one of the most online influential people in the promotional products industry in a piece by Dale Denham in Promo Marketing magazine. This, for a person who still has his old AOL address active and on his smart phone.

If I may be fair to me (well, who else will be?), I’ve had that address for about 20 years now.  Many of my long-time connections still refer to it due to its unique name (no, I won’t share it now… you either have it or you don’t), even though they’ve been brought into the 21^st century with the address you’ll find at the end of this piece. More important, if you think I’ll ever get my parents to remember to stop using it, well… good luck with that.

For those of you craving nostalgia, I’ll share this: https://www.dialupsound.com/

Way back when Al Gore was first unveiling the internet for the masses, my highly tech-savvy brother-in-law and my soon-to-be tech-savvier Trophy Wife were having a discussion about all things online. He asserted that, while the internet will become a very handy tool for individuals, no one will be able to make any money off of it. I guess internet porn hadn’t crossed his mind yet.

Suffice to say, this whole internet thing kinda took off, and it’s hard to imagine our lives without having online access. There are downsides too, of course. According to my physical therapist, his office has seen a marked increase of patients with neck issues due to keeping their heads bowed, looking at their phone in their laps. I’m quite used to that look… my (non-smart-phone) father calls it “napping.”

Another downside might very well that we have lost the art of actual communication. Between texting, tweeting and PMs and DMs, I think that people have forgotten how to be civil, courteous and polite… and it’s brought out the worst in some people. By that, I do not mean that I now know too much about my “friends” and their political preferences (but admit it… Facebook has made you second-guess a lot of your connections thanks to the current presidential campaign, hasn’t it?). What I mean is that it’s brought out the worst in some people… and caused some horrible results in its wake.

Twenty-three years ago, the New Yorker published this brilliant cartoon by Peter Steiner:

If you can’t read it here, the caption says, “On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.” This cartoon went viral before going viral went viral.  If you haven’t seen it, I commend you. To me, that means you have a real life and have probably seen the light of day, have healthy, loving relationships, and don’t suffer from back and neck problems.

As I have written in previous columns, and was one of the reasons I was cited in the Promo Marketing column as an online whiz-kid, I’m one of the admins of the Promotional Products Professionals page on Facebook. This is akin to being a traffic cop on a playground, but I do it anyway because I genuinely like (most of) you and I enjoy being part of the daily discussion about what makes our industry tick.

Until you mess with me.  Until you mess with my friends.

(Brief, shameless plug approaches).

My company, Keyfetch, prides itself on the fact that we return lost and misplaced items to their owners quickly and anonymously. To me, the anonymity is crucial.

Anonymity also allows the “dogs” of the internet to pretend to be anyone they’re not. Case in point:

Because of my admin duties in that Facebook group, I have a fairly well-developed nose for rooting out fake profiles. Whenever I get a friend request from someone I don’t know, but we might be professionally connected, I check the profile thoroughly to see if it’s legit.  Back in March, I got such a request from someone I didn’t know, had never heard of, and who worked for an industry trade association with which I was not familiar.

Out of nowhere, this person had suddenly become “friends” with about a dozen people I knew. When I asked one or two of them who this person was, they each claimed they didn’t know him personally, but saw that so-and-so had connected with him so he must be legit. In good story-telling, that’s call foreshadowing.

There was something about this profile that simply didn’t pass my smell test. It wasn’t that it was particularly slick… it just didn’t seem legit. For someone who worked in our industry… for some trade group I didn’t know.

And then there were the photos he’d posted.  His profile shot seemed rather… typical. It was another photo that got my Spidey senses tingling.

He posted a photo from a trade show. A generic trade show. Could have been promotional products… could have been plumbing. Let’s face it: if I don’t see a photo of an imprinted this-or-that, or a giant, walking exclamation point, I question that photo’s legitimacy. 

I brought this friend request to the attention of the Facebook group. We all pretty much determined that it was a fake. One member of the group went so far as to do an image search of the posted photos and determined that they were, in fact, generic stock photos. Our mutual friends suddenly started to dwindle, as people began “un-friending” this fraud. One friend went so far as to send her new “friend” a private message, playing along with his charade. That’s when it turned ugly.

He then proceeded to lock down his profile, but not until he mocked my friend both via word and photo.  All attempts to report this fraudulent profile have failed to get it taken down by the powers that be at Facebook, even though it’s been reported by countless people…  including the victim of this hurtful act.

You’re humans, not sheep. Don’t follow the crowd just because everyone else has done it. Don’t fuel the fire of some fraudulent ******* – all you’re doing is giving that imbecile the attention he craves. Make an effort do some digging on your own.

I still don’t know what the endgame is of the jerk in question. I hope to someday find out. Conversely, I hope to never find out.

Mike Schenker, MAS, is a promotional industry veteran and member of the Specialty Advertising Association of Greater New York (SAAGNY) Hall of Fame. He can be reached at mike@mikeschenker.com.