Valley PR Blog

When Mr. Nice guy explodes, listeners defend

By Angelo Fernando on June 8th, 2009 In Uncategorized

The audience in social media can be hard to gauge -especially when it is silent. More so when they are sneaky.

There is the seamy side. I had a request from someone asking how to better moderate comments on a blog –the spammy ones that creep through the filters. there are ‘trolls‘ that like to raise the temperature of the debate, and I still struggle with those (link whores?) who are out to build traffic. (Good checklist of how to spot and avoid this.)

And there is the inspiring side of an audience. What I like most is when a reader/follower/listener jumps in to defend an attack on the content creator, proving the real value of a community. I listen to TWIT –This week in Tech — and have high regard for Leo Laporte. So when he exploded over a comment by Tech Crunch’s Mike Arrington, it was not exactly the Leo we knew.

The point is not him cutting off the controversial Arrington, but how the audience jumped in. Over at John C Dvorak’s blog, there were 149 comments, most of them calling out Arrington.

One comment:

it’s time that PR people called this poser out – if only they had the guts and weren’t so worried about “show and tell” placements w/clients (i.e. PR posers). PR peeps – you out there? You hear me? We all know what a creep this guy is – time to tweet.

Arrington has since apologized.

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