Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Netiquite Faux pas


As many of you know I can be quite vocal about politics.

I wasn't always like this. Up until 4 years ago, I rarely, if ever, made any political commentary on any of my many social media platforms. Not even on Foursquare or Friendster. (With the exception of my highly popular Kim Jong Un tumblr, which is still quite funny in my humble opinion)

That changed when the Son of Hitler came gliding down the escalator with his Slovenian Rent A Date.

Lately, and because the most important election in the lifetime of American Democracy is just 60 days away, I have expanded my political domain and have started posting my vociferous opinion on Linkedin. To the delight of some. And to the dismay of others.

"This is not Facebook."

"This isn't the platform for this kind of material."

"Political posts on this site will not help your career."

If I may paraphrase General Anthony McAuliffe and his legendary and incredibly brief response to a threat issued by the German High Command:

"Eat Me."

Am I concerned about the consequences of such a vocationally risky move? Am I worried it will taint my already iffy reputation? Or that it will in some way scare off any new potential employers? No. No. No I am not.

I'm 44 years old. I work in advertising. I don't know if you heard the incredible sage Mark Read, the CEO of WPP, Wire Plastics & Profits, the world's largest and misnamed advertising holding company:

“We have a very broad range of skills, and if you look at our people – the average age of someone who works at WPP is less than 30 – they don’t hark back to the 1980s, luckily.”

In other words, and for all in Tent Sales & Purposes, my career (if you were to call it that) is over.

That being the case, there's a good chance I'll be redoubling my efforts and pissing off a certain misguided young upstart copywriter from Philadelphia who took to clumsily badmouthing me on several Linkedin posts hoping to engage me in some type of social media fight. After the second off the mark and unfunny crack about my age, I hit the block button. Did you know you can block folks on LinkedIn?

I'm not even going to give his name, lest the algorithms throw more attention his pathetic way.

Finally, I'll say this, perhaps Mr. Read is right. No one want to harken back to the 80's. That's when I was sporting a haircut that is best not immortalized and pushing the damn mailroom cart down the long corporate hallways of Needless Hard-ons & Tears.

I hated that cart.

1 comment:

chip kettering said...

always been a fan of General McAullife:

https://www.army.mil/article/92856/the_story_of_the_nuts_reply