freedom to dither

i’m not really sure why this bothered me, but for some reason it did.  so this is a rare tumblr rant (hey i did say upfront that this tumblr will contain “links, videos, pics and occasionally rants from pete black”.

anyway, brisbane followers would be familiar with fluffy, which is a gay nightclub event every sunday night.  it is where brisbane’s power gays and twinks come out to dance and generally look beautiful.  fluffy has had for some time a facebook page, so i wasn’t surprised to stumble into fluffy’s twitter account @fluffybrisbane.  what struck me as odd, however, was that while @fluffybrisbane had 896 followers, it was following 0 people:

being the self-proclaimed wannabe social media evangelist i am, i decided to leave a comment on fluffy’s facebook page, helpfully suggesting that if they wanted to get the most of twitter, they should actually follow someone:

while i was genuinely trying to be helpful, i accept it may have sounded a little snarky.  nonetheless i was disappointed to see that half an hour or so later, my comment had been deleted:

now of course fluffy is free to moderate their facebook page and adopt their own social media strategy, these two social media faux pas (following no-one on twitter and deleting inoffensive facebook comments) struck me as a missed opportunity.  rather than just blindly promoting their events, and allowing only fawning comments about how great their events are, they could be genuinely engaging and interacting with the gay (twink?) community in brisbane.  outside of grindr and manhunt, there aren’t many social media communities for the glbt community in brisbane, and fluffy’s high profile within the community would make them a perfect vehicle to facilitate such a discussion.  there is more to being gay than dance parties after all. 

while i accept i may be being overly optimistic here, at the very least fluffy could start by acknowleding comments and suggestions, instead of just blindly deleting them.  fluffy could engage in the conversation instead of shutting it down.  there is more to social media than it being yet another broadcast mechanism after all.