TWITTERVILLE, WWW – The latest wave of blog raids conducted by BADA (The Blogosphere Anti-Doping Agency) has left some bloggers shaking in their sponsored designer boots. Ever since the doping scandal that broke last week, bloggers everywhere are getting exposed and disqualified for purchasing Twitter followers, Facebook likes, and blog comments in order to raise their digital reputation and therefore be seen as popular by brands and PR companies.
“You don’t understand,” said a tearful blogger on BNN’s Peace Outman Show last night. “We bloggers are under a lot of pressure to perform. If our numbers aren’t up to snuff, they’ll stop giving us… free stuff.”
Snuff and stuff, indeed. When Outman pressed the blogger to elaborate on what kind of free stuff she gets, she blubbered a long list of items that included free trips to Disney Iceland, a Gucci apron, and “this really pretty glitter nail polish”.
So, are bloggers really employing unethical performance enhancing methods, gaming the system, just to keep up?
Another busted blogger who wished to remain anonymous (but whose name is Bartholomew Greenblatt and blogs for I Heart Baseball) stated, “The question isn’t who is doping, the question is, who isn’t?”
“We were getting away with murder,” bragged another nameless blogger on Outman’s program. “I killed baby unicorns, and blogged about it. Talk about easy money. All I had to do was buy about fifty thousand followers and a dozen or so blog comments for the sponsored posts. I was livin’ large. Until someone blew the whistle on us.”
So, who is this whistle blower?
Enter Status People, the new internet application that tells you how many fake followers someone has on Twitter.
Bloggers left and right are getting stripped of their “gold medal” status by savvy PR companies who are well aware of how to check for real influence vs. fabricated ones.
Blog Doctor Ryan McGurviclampen saw this coming a long time ago and wrote about it in the American Blog Medical Journal predicting this very scenario that we see today.
“It was just a matter of time,” droned McGurviclampen. “I tried to warn bloggers at conferences that doping, or purchasing influence, only atrophies your blog muscles and ruins your content’s libido. This doping trend for performance enhancement has got to stop.”
Blog doping rehab websites are popping up everywhere to help those who are suffering in this crisis. StopBuyingFollowers.com founder Justin DoGooder advises resisting temptation to that very first tweet you see that says, “Get 10,000 twitter followers overnight”.
“Just say no to those guys,” admonishes DoGooder. “You might think, oh what’s the harm in buying, say, 500 followers? But purchasing even a small fake influence is a gateway drug to more deadly schemes.”
Just ask blogger Seedy Underbelly, who hit bottom last month when he was found tied up and barely breathing in a dark alley of the internet just on the other side of the border.
“It’s not worth it,” whispered Underbelly, who suffered from a blow to his sidebar and two broken IP addresses. “I had to take down my site and cancel my Twitter account after getting blasted with hate comments on my blog.” Paramedics saved his life after rescuing him from underneath an infinite loop of pop-up ads.
Underbelly had 43 million followers.
“I had to start over. I only have 15 Twitter followers now and I’m lucky if my mom leaves a comment on my new blog. It’s hard. But one day at a time, you know?”
When asked what Underbelly had learned from his experience, he coughed weakly before saying, “Don’t lose touch with your friends. Friends don’t let friends buy followers.”
—
This satirical post was inspired by two very real and informative articles about purchasing Twitter followers and it’s where I found out about the also very real “whistle blower”, Status People:
Are Bloggers Buying Twitter Followers? (She Posts)
Buying Twitter Followers? Beware, Status People… (Fast Company)
the fuck? for real?
yup.
Wow. That’s just messed up.
Great post! love the satire!
Thank you, Eva!
Sheer brilliance, Margaret! I really hate Twitter. Glad they’re finally cleaning up the joint.
And not a moment too soon, Cheryl.
I ran that scan & HOLY GOATS! I have fake followers. I have an account but I rarely, if ever, use it. FRAUDS are following me. GAH! It’s a sad day. (Except for all the super-de-duper cool shit that’s happened IRL today.)
Yay! Glad to hear about all the super-de-super cool shit that’s happened.
And BOOO!!!! to the frauds. BOOO – HISSS!!!!
Love your take on this. What if I just buy a dozen or so? 😉
Fake Twitter Followers, appetizer style? Hmmmm….
There are bloggers who have designer boots? Man am I doing this wrong!
Me too, Nora. 😉
The act of buying twitter follows is bizarre imo. Never knew that existed, and I’m almost positive that that is against Twitter’s code of conduct.
It must be that some people believe (or, are made to believe) that having as many Twitter followers as possible is the most important. Quantity over quality, that sort of thing.
Hey Margaret! Like many others, I was shocked that these things could be bought. Partly because nobody ever mailed me to tell me, but mostly because I’d never thought of it; I must have some good bones in my body. Please note that, as a man, the phrase “pressure to perform” makes me uncomfortable in any context. Tho of course, I get plenty of mails about THAT. Sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. Indigo x
I’ve seen plenty of those ads to get 10K followers but because I never followed those links, I didn’t realize you had to PAY for them. It was a slimy ad without even clicking over. As a woman, I didn’t even realize that “pressure to perform” would cause discomfort to you and your fellow brethren. I shall endeavor to be more sensitive in the future. 😉
I so totallly loved this post!!
You are ann awesome writer and I had to let everyone know it, so I shared it on FB and Stumbled it.
You ROCK!!
Lorie! Thank you so much. Now, YOU rock! 🙂
Now I understand why I’ve only been able to scrape a maximum of three comments to my blog posts. Thank you so much for alerting me to the dangers of over ambition.
Awwwww, speaking of which. Your blog doesn’t come up here in Disqus. Or your Twitter account. Or your FB page. How is it picking up a profile pic of you? Regardless, I’d visit your blog if I could get to it from here somehow.
I don’t do twitter or FB. That’s my pic from google (+). My main blog is anjipatchwork.blogspot.com and my most interesting is timeandoft.blogspot.com
And you know what? All these people who are black hat bloggers and have MUCH more money than us are on the first page of google EVERY TIME.
I know. The bastards. (Pardon my French).
From someone who has started blogging from scratch again, it can be a grueling thing finding real Twitter followers.
I can understand that. Which is why I’m looking to simply change my handle without losing the followers. They say you can do that.
You can change your handle. I kept my name as J. Bear Savo, but changed my @ designation to auctionaut.
That was a really very funny and also a very poignant post. I think I’ve been under a rock. I was totally unaware you could do that… Really? I haven’t been blogging that long to be courted by anyone. In any case I guess it helps me be more aware of this kind of stuff… shish!!!
It’s true. Part of this parody was also to bring awareness to the issue.
So BADA went BOOM on the blogosphere. That’s gotta hurt.
We’ve never bought any Twitter followers but I think we have fake ones all the same. There simply can’t be that many marketing gurus, porn stars and Christ followers interested in cheese.
Can there?
Have you ever met a porn star NOT interested in cheese? Okay, then.
Gosh, I too am saddened like Boom Boom Larew but not because my followers are fake, (they’re real alright…so low in number, so high in/on pharmaceuticals)
I am sad I didn’t know followers could be bought. Does that really make me a bad person? Tweet deprivation makes people resort to drastic measures.
It makes you a bad person (or maybe just desperate) if you buy them. It only makes you human to merely think about it.
OMG! This is terrible. I had no idea such doping existed. So glad that it is coming to the Nation’s forefront. I’m glad that I just said no myself to all that nonsense. I’m starting all over again with a new brand on Twitter and it is tough at the bottom but at least I can tweet a pic of myself in my underwear and no one cares!
Dana, I would care very much if you tweeted a pic of yourself in your underwear. Um, do you have a link? 😉
Also, about your new Twitter handle and rebranding. I’ve been contemplating that myself, switching to my name instead of nannygoats since my name belongs to other things now.
Margaret, that’s why I decided to do it. If you really want to be known as Margaret Andrews, the most hilarious blogger and writer ever to walk the fields with nanny goats, I would recommend you do it too. The downside is you kinda have to start over again but if keep a list of your followers and ask them to follow you back (you’ll have to offer them a cookie though–not at all like doping) it won’t take you long.
I’ve heard you can change your handle without losing your followers, but @margaretandrews is already taken so I’ve been struggling with including my middle initial. I’m frustrated though, that the above mentioned handle is totally inactive and Twitter hasn’t found it in their heart to release such handles. Grrrrrr….
Thank God paramedics were able to rescue Seedy from underneath an infinite loop of pop-up ads. hahaha!
First baseball, then the Olympics, it was only time before a doping scandal hit the blogosphere.
I know! And we should let this serve as a warning to the rest of us. Just waiting for the public service announcements on TV from the Ad Council now. 🙂
LOL! I’d rather watch that than a political ad with the scary voice.
Amen to that. I can’t wait for elections to be over. My faith in the human race will just degrade between now and then.
I have ZERO fake followers. But, I’m not a big blogger. I’m infinitesimal. LOL
I have 0 fake followers too, which quite frankly surprised me. I expected a few scattered here and there. They even say to expect that. Maybe I’m not “big” enough either. 🙂
We need to start a club. “REAL tweeters”. LMAO
Shoot, Girl, I don’t even know what twitter is. So this does not really apply to me. I have enough trouble with the DEA as you know.
Ha! Yeah, you and me both. Oops, I mean…uh…whatever are you talking about? 🙂
You mean my 10 followers only did it for the money? I’m shocked and saddened.
Yeah, but they “worked hard for the money”, Boom Boom. 😉
Cough! Snort! Coffee out the nose! Seriously, you need to knock this off. Now I need to wash my computer keyboard.
As much as I hate for you to hurt yourself, Pam, I’m glad you liked it. Now, go wipe your face. 🙂
Lawd. If someone’s following me on Twitter, I’d like to think it’s because stuff like bewb sweat and crotch rot are important to them.. and they really CARE if I’m sitting at my desk praying for a visit from the donut fairy.
heeeee! I get why people buy followers, I just wish they had more integrity. I’m so glad for this StatusPeople thing. It may help stem the “cheating”.
Seriously?! The publicist says she needs her money for better things like food and apples for me.
I agree, Pricilla. Food and apples are far more important.