Posts Tagged 4chan

The Beta-Alpha Male

"We're young and in love, heart attacks waiting to happen. So come a little closer, tell me it's all in our heads."

I’m sitting here, the glow of my computer lighting up my room. I know I should go to bed because I feel some sort of sickness coming on, but screw it, sleep is for the weak.

I Love the winter months. I feel that I was most self-aware during this season in past years. I can clearly remember the coldness of the Sandusky air numbing my cheeks as I played guitar to an empty audience in my grandmother’s garage. My fingers were numb. It literally hurt to play, but dammit, the show inside my head had to go on.

The weird thing is that there are people out there who know how I feel. My friend Will was programming and recording music while I was, yet we were an hour apart. (He was Beta before it was even called that. I have a serious appreciation for those who get the most out of the Internet and have that presence.) I don’t think I’ve ever met a person in my life that shared my exact feelings about music. There’s more to it than money. It’s about the memories that are made both while listening to it and while making it. The organic writing process is something to die for. The hour-long jams where you completely lose yourself on the fretboard…I miss that.

I miss the way I was. I was so sentimental before. I felt more original and less of a phony. (Insert Holden Caufield reference here.) I used to write my feelings out. The late-night phone conversations are missing in my life. I need to get to know someone new. I miss the thrill of getting to know and understand the depths of a person. There’s a few people out there I’d Love to talk to, but I’m too scared to actually initiate anything.

Yeah. Me. Scared to talk to someone.

I miss staying up all night on the phone or having the vibrations of a new text wake me up in random intervals. “No, you’re not keeping me up :)”

Right now, Taking Back Sunday, Hawthorne Heights and Escape the Fate are making me incredibly nostalgic. I remember the first time I heard them before I knew who they were. It was in the winter of the past years mentioned previously.

I remember heartbreak vividly. I remember tears freezing in my eyes. (“How does it feel when tears freeze when you cry.” Literally came on as I finished typing this.)

I wonder if there are anymore bleeding hearts out there. Was that just a phase in my life? Was my sentimentality something I need to outgrow?

God, I hope not. That lifestyle was so satisfying.

There has to be someone out there whose bedroom is being lit up by their computer screen who’s just dying to tell their story to someone new. If this person is you, talk to me. I’m a good listener.

Getting to know someone new is what I live for. If I had it my way, I would travel the country, sharing the drinking traditions of each person or group I came in contact with, all the while talking about the crazy shit we’ve been through, the stuff we’ve seen … the people who have gotten away.

If you’re looking for a friend, I’m here.

Whoever you are.

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How ‘Dub the Dew’ Went Terribly Awry

Social media is great way to communicate with your audience and consumers. However, without careful planning, it can blow up in your face. On the Internet, there are trolls that keep an eye out for chances to mess things up or make someone mad. For example, in August of this year, Mountain Dew introduced a new Granny Smith apple-flavored soft drink. They decided to have a little fun and let their fans name it, or as their slogan stated “Dub the Dew.”

This went horribly awry when members of 4Chan.org, a group of the Internet’s best hackers, most curious individuals and people with too much time, decided to get in on the voting.

The poll was on the Mountain Dew website, so an Anon [Anonymous member of 4Chan] banned people together to vote for some really goofy names. “Gushing Granny,” “Granny Squirts” and “Fap Apple” made their way on to the list. Mountain Dew came out and said they did not have to choose the top name, just one that was on the list. 4Chan accepted this challenge and continued to flood the poll and hack the site.

By the end of the contest, “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” was at the top of the chart, there was no reasonable name left on the poll and the pranksters hacked the site with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up” as an unwarranted pop-up. According to one blog related to this social media fail, hackers went so far as to add “a banner that read “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!”

Mountain Dew gave their public too much freedom. Their intent was good: use social media to interact with their fans and gain their input. However, the Internet trolls took control of the situation and created a social media blunder for the soft drink moguls.

My biggest takeaway point from this experience is that companies need to monitor social media more closely. When a situation starts to arise, they need to extinguish it before it gets out of hand.

They also need to use more tact when dealing with Internet trolls. Mountain Dew’s statement to the trolls could be seen as antagonistic. Had they just let it go, the pranksters would have lost interest, but since they engaged in such a way, the trolls had to have a little fun.

Before a company begins a social media campaign, they need to recognize how it could go wrong and figure out a quick and painless process to fix it. After all, Mountain Dew could have just deleted the poll.

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