If you are on twitter you may have noticed the monster that is the Face of MLB contest.
At a top level voting for your favorite player seems fun, but this has devolved into stupid for stupid’s sake.
How it works is you have to tweet with the hashtag FaceofMLB (I am not using hashtags here because I don’t want some scraper-bot voting) and the name of the person you want to choose. It’s head to head and goes on and on and on for weeks bracket style like the NCAA Tournament.
Now why this thing sucks:
What did the TV Network do with it last year? They talked about it for about three minutes to kill one segment at like 9 in the morning. So three weeks of social media to kill three minutes.
I’m sure some exec will run around the offices today showing off the amount of “impressions” they got. With social media you need metrics, so “impressions” is always a good thing to whip out. It will big a number with several digits, so the clueless other executives will be impresses.
But what is the point?
- Did I buy any products? No.
- Did it make me buy tickets? No.
- Did it make me like David Wright more? Not at all. Now I get mad when I see his face on twitter.
- Did it make me like baseball more? No. The opposite actually.
- Did it get you free media coverage on some other outlets. Maybe. You got me last year (like you care) but not this year. This is the first time I have mentioned it on the blog in 2015.
- Will I watch the TV segment? Nope.
- In fact it made me UNFOLLOW @mets. Is the goal of a social media contest to make me UNFOLLOW you? You have made me so annoyed at your brand(s) that I want them out of my life?
This is just twitter masturbating itself. Retweeting retweets like zombies. So TV can kill three minutes.
Congrats TV Network Social Media Executive. You came up with a social media virus. And now I can’t stand the sight of the Captain of my team and stopped following the team on social media. Well done.
Re-think this one everyone. Yeah you got your impressions. Now what are you gonna do with them?
I voted yesterday, but only because bloggers on other outlets were shaming Mets fans and I caved. But I’m sick of it too. It means nothing. Wright won last year (right?) and what the heck did that get us? What did it get Wright?