communication is essential to business making and it involves more than the ability to name your product, write a tag line or a press release. It's an intricate, rational and scalable effort and, let's face it, not anyone can do it.

1/15/2010

Are we all trolls?

Two striking comments in one day and maybe I see a pattern: first a client of mine admits that most of the newsletters he sends get opened and read ONLY because the recipients want to see if they can find something wrong to bitch about. Second, Tolo says in a post "it's a miracle to get praised online". And finally, the nagging feeling that most of my clients refuse blog exposure not because blogger are not controllable but because bloggers seldom bother to say anything remotely nice even when the case is for niceness.
Truth of the matter is in Romania bashing everything equals ratings. And you see it with reviews people post: we must be a singular nation because when we review something, anything, we never ever have something good to say. It's always crap and bad and under expectations.
The most celebrated commentators in Romania have made their fame on being bastards to one and all. Even when there is nothing bad to be said, we spin it so that something bad comes out of it. We are always out to get someone, the government, the MAN, the competition.
Online it works mostly the same: you trash everyone and everyone comments and trashes you back and you're famous. The louder and dirtier your mouth is the more likely you are to get noticed. Tweets saying something nasty are 80% more likely to get responded to. We like to get into arguments. Compare this to the fact that most tweets that get retweeted are positive facts. We are unable to sustain a positive POV, we simply post it on and forget about it. It's the trash we like to interact with.
There are TV stations in this country which have built a show grid on trashing everything. And we all watch and we all interact. Trolling as a national denominator. Ironic in a country which was said to be full of welcoming people.

4 comments:

Ioana C said...

In such an environment, how can an online presence still add to a company's image if no favourability will come of it?

Bogdana Butnar said...

That's a great question. Strangely enough none of the people trolling online asks this question :(; i'll think of an answer myself

Ioana C said...

Please let me know when you come up with one. I am really interested because I know that, no matter what the situation is, the online cannot and should not be ignored.

Mo said...

See! That's why I don't bother reading Romanian blogs (except maybe a couple). Everywhere you look around it's full of junk and the online has become an elongation of the classic media. I think that it's all about the quality of people, meaning poor... even in the professional area. It's just easier this way and beside this junk creates exposure and in sometimes revenue.