Certifiable Spreader-of-Uncaring-Care-for-People, Part III

Let me start Part III of this three-series blog with the identity of the Certifiable Spreader-of-Uncaring-Care-for-People. She is the the person who came out of nowhere and sent the Pinterest invitation when none of my so-called Facebook friends did. She was the only person who noticed my wall request. I will call her "Mary." For that, I thank Mary as well for unwittingly providing me with the starting material in my first blog series. I wanted to find an entrance, so-to-speak, before I started talking about social media and technology, and how our lives have changed with it, through it, and because of it. Mary opened that path for me.

And that brings me to the lessons learned from this experiment. I have numbered them in Part II.

Lesson I.  Depending on how many friends you have that YOU have allowed in your Facebook Settings to be able to post on your wall, and depending on how these friends configured theirs as well, your wall post has about 3.6 seconds to be on top of everyone’s wall post. Yes, your own wall post will always show your top and most current post, but on your common wall (“Home”), it is being replaced by the person with the newest post on your community. That simple fact alone counts for the majority of wall posts not being noticed by anyone; EXCEPT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ONLINE, ON FACEBOOK, AT THE MOMENT THAT YOU ARE POSTING. Then slowly, as surely as they sun rise and set, your post will go down and ultimately disappear from the common community view. Would you then argue that in order for people to see your posts, you will have to keep on reposting? No. That would be very unethical and time consuming, to say the least. But that is the way things go with the community wall. This is the reason I have started to tweak the settings on my community wall. The irony in here is not lost; the more friends you have the harder it is to keep track of what’s happening with each and every one of them.

So, what is our lesson one?

Just a few days ago, while attending the Selling to Fairfax County Workshop, one of the other gentleman in there who was an HVAC company President, told me his marketing strategy when it comes to going to neighborhoods and putting up “Door-hanger Post Card Advertisers.” He said he never put them on people’s doors in the beginning or the middle of the week because it never works during that part of the week. But when he placed them on Fridays, he always gets a call of about 2-3 per 10 cards. I exclaimed, “That is fantastic! What is the secret?”

His answer was epiphany for me: "During the beginning or middle of the week, most husbands and wives, if both are working—their minds are on their respective jobs. And even when the wife is a stay-at-home wife, she is pre-occupied with children and other stuff. But when Thursday and Friday approaches, the things a husband want to do on the weekend starts to occupy their mind, and wives tend to wait until the end of the work week to remind their husbands of certain household chores and jobs that needed to be done on the weekends.” Voila!

For you out there, Social Networking Guru, take this! You should put up your updates and other advertising and marketing posts at the end of the day or even early evening, when most people start to wind down and log-on to their social media sites. Has anybody ever done a statistical analysis on this? I would like to hear one. If I had posted at the end of the day, which I do tend to notice that  most of the comments and re-posts I received are at the end of the day, I would have had a better than average chance of getting a response for my request.

Lesson II. This is going to be a tricky one. My tactical analysis here is that the only reason I saw Pinterest on my wall was because someone on my friend’s lists has an account and posted it onto the community wall. There is just no other explanation. So my lesson for this one is very simple. Not all your so-called in-group on your friends list can be trusted or are really your friends or colleague.

But I do admit that I am being naïve here. How many times have you accepted a friend request just for the hell of it? Or the person looks interesting; or is a friend or colleague of a friend of a colleague, etc. etc. etc. Come on now, be honest. I am guilty of that many times. Heck, I even once accepted a friend request just because the person happened to have the same last name as mine. She is from Hawaii! I did not know I had relatives in Hawaii! That was the interesting part.

Lesson III.  And so, from Lesson II, here is the capper: “Maybe that person really just did not want me to be on Pinterest.” Period. End of story. If someone does not want to share, there is nothing in the world you can do to change that. And yes, you can then “un-friend” that person. But what does that accomplish? A few moments of glee and exhilaration of having been able to “up-yours” the other person? Trust me, that is short lived as well. I once posted on my wall, IN CAPITAL LETTERS, that I would un-friend anyone who will keep on asking me onto this Hidden Chronicles stuff or some other game. I have probably un-friended close to 20 people because of this. But what did it really do to my networking sphere? Nothing; except I lost 20 people, who could have been potential clients or referrals. (On the other hand, why would I want to be involved with people who spends all their free time playing Hidden Chronicles?)

Or the person just did not see my request.

Lesson IV. Someone could have accidentally posted the Pinterest Pin by accident onto my community’s wall. Highly unlikely since; presumably from the geniuses at Facebook, no one can post onto your wall unless they belong to your network. Yes, that is true. But my argument about the accident being that one belonging to my friends list accidentally posted a Pinterest Pin “Publicly” from his/her side. Maybe it was not meant to be public. Remember, what you post on your wall automatically becomes public unless you have it set otherwise.

Lesson V. The sad fact: NO ONE REALLY PAYS ATTENTION TO SOMEONE’S POST ABOUT WHAT BREAKFAST HE/SHE ATE THIS MORNING! In fact, 96 percent of people post all kinds of crap not worth mentioning. Including “yours truly." That 4 percent belongs to really awesome posts about their cat being run over by a truck. I am kidding! Relax. How about this, when was the last time you actually still remember someone’s post up to this day? Was there ever one post from someone that is still on your mind?

Lesson VI. What does Pinterest do for me anyways? In the preceding weeks after I had finally gotten my Pinterest account from “Mary," I realize this was just another great idea from someone trying to get rich quick. What better way than to make companies pay your site invention, by using the general public to advertise for FREE for these same companies? Brilliant idea indeed! You do not have to do anything. It is in our DNA to want to be in someone’s thoughts—ALL THE TIME—if we can have it our way. How many times your significant other has asked you today, either by phone or text message, if you have been thinking of her/him today? To make matter worse, they actually start the text or phone call with: “Hey, I have been thinking about you today.” Which is another way of saying: “Have you?”

We live in a world that is moving so fast, we want to cling to the one thing we can “sometimes” control: each other. If in that 24 hour period we are given by nature, we can affect someone, whether in person or online, that makes our tedious life a little bit more bearable.

Social networking is nothing but a false pretense of keeping in touch. And the profit schemers and dealers have been lightning fast at converting that into a gargantuan money-making machine.

All Mark ever wanted to do was find a way to get laid. Until his epiphany of what a cash cow it could be came into focus.

But the one underlying lesson I have learned is the one constant reminder that my Aunt Cecilia always drilled in my head when I was young: You never know until you try. And that goes for people in general and certain persons in particular.  You will never know who amongst the multitude around you, who are the Certifiable-Spreader-of-Uncaring-Care-for-Others are out there. They are usually the ones you least expect them to be; or as in my case, a total stranger.

The good news is they are still out there. Do not be fooled by the grandiose donation and charity contributions that most of these fakers do, they are usually in it to try to alleviate taxes. The real ones are the ones serving food in homeless shelters, travelling to far flung places in the world working for free.

When was the last time you did something for somebody without ever thinking of getting something, somehow in return?