Sunday 15 August 2010

Social media mafia? it’s a big virtual playground…



Not exactly the e-mafia story, I will leave that to some other braver person to pen. This is more of a school playground social media story. Not sure if this scenario has been painted before (everything has been done before) but this is my take on it.

The online scene is similar to a school playground. You have your cool kids, your geeks, your bullies, your drug dealers lurking on the other side of the fence, your cool teachers who ‘get’ their students, and all other sorts, garths, loners, nose pickers, et cetera, et cetera!

Here is a bit of a segmentation:

The geeks: these are your actual, modern day cool kids actually. Reversal of fortune. The ones that were shunned and mocked for being too smart and being know-it-alls and got the snort beat out of them? Yeah them, they now rule the play ground. How else would you explain the popularity of the biggest geeks on twitter right now?

The cool kids: these are the ones that won’t even acknowledge the playground, they are out somewhere else frenching, doing afterschool jobs and smoking cigarettes. Not living through 140 characters at a time or begging for friendship to forgotten school acquaintances. These guys rock and everybody on the playground still want to be them.

The Bullies: These are the guys that give some of the kids on the playground a hard time. They are not the law but have knighted themselves as such. They piss on any good idea that is not their own and other kids follow them because they are afraid of being their next victim.

The dealers lurking on the other side of the fence: These are your corporates trying with all their corporate might to fit in with the kids but they are just too old and too obvious. The meek fall for their act and buy the wares they are peddling but everybody else knows that this is no place for a hawker. The children just wanna play!!!

The skanks: These are the whores of social media who follow anyone that has an account, accept friendships from total strangers, check in to every venue for whatever prize, post unflattering pics of their kin, have overly flattering cv’s on linked, etc, etc, etc. You know who you are! These are the guys who also hook up with the cool kids outside the bleachers because they would not want to miss out on real life as well.

The cool teachers: My favourites. These are your wise, older, sexy, hanging on by a thread personalities that parents can relate to. They help parents understand the dynamics of the play ground and all the skanks and the virtuous virgins fall in love with them. They

There are many many more cliques on the playground, which one would you be? And feel free to match actual social media personalities with the cliques above and the ones you come up with.

*Picture - Skins, the first group. one of the best and twisted series ever!

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