Tag: social media

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News News Blog

Warm Your Hands on These Social Media Dumpster Fires

CREDIT: Memphis As Fuck/Instagram

Memphis As Fuck/Instagram

Did you see the bright lights over Memphis this weekend?

It wasn’t barbecue. It’s actually the glowing lights from two Memphis social-media dumpster fires. And you should have a look.

The flames are still being fanned on an Instagram photo posted by Memphis As Fuck (@memphisaf_ck) on Saturday. It shows a orange-brown rock in some desert landscape with the words “Memphis As Fuck” scrawled onto it.

Memphis As Fuck captioned the photo (above) ”#fanart #memphisasfuck #allday 🛒: memphisasfuck.com.” And a bunch of internet people are having none of it.
[pullquote-1] “Nice job asshole! Way to really flex your douchebag muscle,” wrote macscac.

“This is fucking gross, dude,” wrote zpeckler. “Stay the hell out of our public lands if this how you’re going to behave. I hope the Coconino [National Forest] rangers press charges.”

Apparently, someone did alert the authorities.

“I have sent this over to Coconino Co Sheriff’s office,” wrote rugerandtitan. “It’s been confirmed in their county, and they absolutely want to pursue charges.”
[pullquote-2] However, Instagram user instajunk said there were more things to worry about.

“I love how all these keyboard warriors are so distraught over a scratch on a rock and choose to spend their time worrying about this when they could be worrying about something really disgusting, like the state of our nation 🤦🏻‍♀️,” wrote instajunk.

The instagram picture was posted to Reddit (where, so far, 46 comments have piled up) Saturday. A Reddit user named PublicLandsHateYou said, the photo is believed to have been taken at Grand Canyon National Park, though that has not been verified.

“National Park Service would be greatly appreciative of any assistance you could provide in helping to identify potential suspects,” wrote Public LandsHateYou. “Actions like this are what close down access to public lands. Thanks for your help.”

Wanted to know what else is Memphis as fuck? Getting busted and going to jail.

Maybe whoever scrawled the city’s gritty, underground motto didn’t know the federal government has police that really do care about stuff like scrawled rocks.

The National Parks Service’s Investigative Branch busts folks for hunting on federal lands, smuggling protected plants and artifacts from them, and, yes, vandalizing them.

National Parks Service

Investigators are now looking for whoever carved “Ferny and Nicky” into a ruins at Tumacacori National Historical Park in Arizona. In 2016, Casey Nocket was sentenced to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service for drawing and painting on rock formations in seven national parks in 2014.

National Parks Service

And, it looks like Victory Bicycle Studios removed a Saturday post that also sparked a roaring fire. The photo showed a cycling jersey printed with a handgun in the rear pocket. Printed on the pocket is “Memphis” in a graffiti print. The post was captioned #memphis.

Victory Bicycle Studios

Bob Nelson wrote, “Good shop. Lousy taste.”

Daphne Maysonet wrote, “Ew, god, fire your marketing and design team. This is so embarrassing it’s hard to look at: creatively lazy AND cheaply produced. Looks like y’all just collectively read a definition for the word ‘subversive’ and landed on this. Lol. Cringeworthy af.”

[pullquote-3]
Some liked it, though.

Douglas Loreman commented, “Change it to a Glock and I’ll take 2!”

Since you can’t see the post anymore, check out some of the many comments below.

If you see any raging social-media Dumpster fires blazing, let me know at toby@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (January 22, 2015)

CREDIT: Carrienelson1 | Dreamstime.com

I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think I may be trending. I’m not 100 percent sure what trending really is, but I feel fairly certain that it’s a real word and that I’m doing it. Well, I’m not 100 percent sure if trending is something you actually do or if it’s something that happens to you and you are just lucky to be the recipient of it, but, by damn, I better be trending.

See, in my new role at work of being a social media poster, I’ve taken it upon myself to learn how to do it for myself first before I totally screw up the social media posting for my job. I figure if I screw up my own personal social media posts, it won’t really matter because who the hell cares? Right? Oh, I guess I could probably offend someone by accident or post something that comes across in a way that I didn’t mean for it to come across or I could just appear to be really stupid and inept, but, as it relates to me personally, I really couldn’t care less because I so rarely do anything in my personal life that requires me to leave the sanctity of my own home and interact with others, with the exception of traveling, and even then I try to keep to myself and mind my own business.

But even that can prove to be difficult when you’re packed into a small aircraft and forced to sit so close to someone that you can’t avoid physical contact with them. I was recently on a flight from Charlotte to Florida, and the woman packed into the seat beside me was breaking up with her apparently longtime significant other in a conversation on her cell phone. And she was the one who made the call. It would have been one thing if she had answered her phone and the conversation ended up being that kind of a phone call, but no, she initiated the argument herself, seated so close to me that our elbows were unavoidably rubbing against each other.

And she was not holding anything back, from what I could tell. It was along the lines of, “You are such a f–king piece of s–t! And you’re not getting custody of the f–king dog! I used to really love you, but you f–king ruined all that! Your cooking tastes like s–t! I’m hanging up now!”

But she wouldn’t hang up. She kept railing on and reaming the person out and every third or fourth sentence was, “I’m hanging up now!” Finally, the flight attendant said that all cell phones must be turned off for takeoff. But she still didn’t hang up and kept repeating, “You’re not getting custody of the f–king dog!”

But I digress. The thing about trending is that I could have secretly videotaped this woman’s conversation and put it on YouTube and gotten, say, 4 million hits and could have been invited to the “Orange Room” on the Today Show as someone who was trending. I’m not 100 percent sure how many hits one has to have to be trending, but I’m pretty sure it would have trended.

A few weeks back, when I decided to embrace Facebook on my own personal page that has been dormant since 2009, I posted a question. I’d received a menacing message from someone I didn’t really recall and with whom I was certainly not Facebook friends, harassing me about something that happened TWO DECADES AGO when I was the first editor of this newspaper. He was still mad because I wouldn’t publish some piece of crap he had written that he thought was very clever. So I asked people on Facebook if I should be worried about this guy and his inability to let go of this grudge.

I got a lot of responses, including several from people I don’t even know, with suggestions ranging from call the cops to invite him to meet me in a dark alley and kick his ass to publish his name and warn others about him. It was awesome to read all the remarks, like them, comment on them, and share them. I’m 100 percent sure I was trending with that one.

Oh, and I finally figured out who the guy was. I won’t mention his name here, but I do sort of recall that he was a rather unattractive (not his fault, of course, and I’m no hottie) exhibitionist who made my skin crawl. I didn’t report him because I didn’t know who to report him to, but I blocked him and felt very empowered.

And speaking of which, am I the only person in the world who believes that the hacking of Sony Pictures in regard to the movie The Interview had nothing to do with North Korean hackers? To me, it all smacked of a publicity stunt, and it’s embarrassing that it was referred to as “an act of war.”

I have every intention of trending about this at some point in my life when I figure out what trending really is. Would someone please comment on that remark, share it, and cause it to trend? I’ll check it later to see if it performs 80 percent better than my other posts this week.

I’ve also been tweeting, and ask now of the first “t” in tweeting should be capitalized. Haven’t figured that out yet. I even used a hashtag and got on John Legend’s Twitter feed or RSS feed or whatever it is. I was so impressed with myself.

Carrienelson1 | Dreamstime.com

Bradley Cooper

The thing that got me thinking about all this is that I noticed earlier today that controversial filmmaker Michael Moore is on Twitter. It seems that he sent out a tweet, or Tweet, about Bradley Cooper’s new Clint Eastwood-directed film American Sniper being too “pro-war” or something like that. I haven’t seen the movie yet but my initial reaction is that Moore has sold out by being on Twitter and should make a spoof movie about the social media platform (did I just write the phrase “social media platform?”) and leave Cooper alone. I don’t like people messing with my Bradley. In fact, I’m going to tweet, or Tweet, Brad letting him know I think he’s the the best actor in the movie business right now. I wonder if that will make me trend.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

New Year’s Notebook

Over the holiday break, my family and I watched a lot movies on television. Well, sometimes, I watched; other times, I was just in the room reading or scanning the internet on my laptop.

This was the case when my wife was watching The Notebook, though I did watch whenever Rachel McAdams was on-screen. (Wowzah.) It’s a weepy love story that follows a couple from first infatuation to old age and death. One of the big plot twists is that the mother of the young heroine intercepts 365 letters (one a day, for a year) from her daughter’s would-be suitor in an attempt to stop their affair.

It made me think about how ludicrous such a plot device would be today. The young lovers would have exchanged 365 texts in the first week of their separation. Their Facebook friends would know all the details. There would be romantic Instagram pictures of the places they’d been.

A mother has no power over two 20-somethings’ ability to communicate with each other in 2015. We are all — or most of us, anyway — part of the human hive now.

Nearly every day, I wish a happy birthday to someone, sometimes to a person I haven’t seen in years. It’s not because I’m a thoughtful, conscientious friend to hundreds of people; it’s because Facebook helpfully reminds me whose birthday it is each morning. This, I think, is a good thing. Sure, some of the birthday wishes are somewhat pro forma, but who doesn’t like to be remembered on their birthday? It’s an easy way to be kind.

Social media pulls us together in odd and sometimes delightful ways. I was sitting at a club bar listening to music a couple weeks ago, and I realized the fellow next to me was a Facebook friend I’d never really met in person. We have lots of mutual friends, and I enjoy his wit on Twitter and Facebook, and we’d exchanged pleasantries online. I may have even wished him happy birthday. Who knows?

“How’s it going, Dave?” I said.

“Hey, great, Bruce. How are you?” he replied, not missing a beat. Instant recognition, and an ensuing conversation that flowed as smoothly as beer into a glass. At some level, we already knew each other, though not “in real life.” This, too, is a good thing, I think.

As a new year begins, I find myself hopeful — perhaps naively so — that these sorts of social connections will help us bridge our differences — in age, race, gender, politics. Becoming social media “friends” is the new version of exchanging business cards, except we have the opportunity to continue to communicate, to read each others’ opinions, to see who has a sense of humor, to learn who has an off-putting ego, to find out who’s a sucker for foolish memes, who’s an undiscovered writer.

Sometimes, “real life” is what you make it. As is a new year. Onward.

Categories
News News Blog

MLGW Leads Ranking of Top 50 Utilities Using Social Media

MLGW.JPG


Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) not only manages the city’s utilities, they also ensure customers receive feedback online.

And they’ve been recognized as the number one utility company that does just that. In March, research and consulting firm Northeast Group, LLC conducted a week-long study surveying the top 50 utility companies in the country regarding their social media efforts. Based off of their findings, MLGW ranked number one among the utility companies in the nation that assisted customers on a timely basis through social media. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) ranked second and Dominion Virginia Power ranked third.

Ben Gardner, president of Northeast Group, said the firm conducted a content analysis of the various social media postings and mobile app offerings of the top 50 utilities, and through that were able to score each of the utilities together and rank them in order.

“For Twitter hostings, it would be things like how responsive were the utilities? How quickly did they respond to customer requests?” Gardner said. “Another thing was the quality of the content. Were the utilities posting energy-saving tips and safety tips of value to customers? How high was the value of the content they were posting? Each utility was scored on those criteria.”

The survey took place over one week in March. During that week, Gardner said MLGW posted 77 tweets and the median response time of how quickly they got back to customers was five minutes. LADWP came in second place with 134 tweets and a median response time of about 34 minutes. Dominion was third place with 62 tweets and a median response time of about 18 minutes, according to Gardner.

“We’re extremely honored to be recognized,” said Richard Thompson, senior communications specialist for MLGW. “We’ve been recognized by our peers before but to be recognized again by an independent study for the Top 50 utilities, we’re really honored, and most importantly, we thank our customers and our followers on Facebook and Twitter for believing in us, following us, and interacting with us. We take great pride in those relationships that we’ve established.”

Thompson said MLGW was one of the initial utilities to utilize social media back in 2008. However, it was 2009 when MLGW established a variety of social media channels and its staff began to communicate with customers via Internet significantly.

“We had a major storm in June 2009. It knocked out power for a lot of customers over several days. That really helped integrate our social media to our communications efforts,” Thompson said. “That was really the first time that we live-tweeted or did some continuous tweeting about the outage situation. Customers really appreciated the fact that it felt like we were there during their outages and they could communicate with us and get ready information about their outages. The fact that our customers fill like they can reach out to us and communicate with us when they need to, it just opens up another avenue for us to serve customers.”

Prior to the storm in 2009, which left more than 140,000 customers without power, MLGW had only 220 followers. The following week, after power had been completely restored, MLGW’s Twitter following increased to over 1,500 followers.

Northeast Group’s survey also ranked the top utilities in the country for mobile apps. MLGW ranked third on this list. San Diego Gas and Electric took the number one slot and Con Edison in New York was selected second in the category.

This portion of the survey was based on the type of functionality that the mobile app boasted. If the app offered energy saving tips, allowed customers to pay bills, and provided utility related information such as reporting outages and receiving estimated times of restoration, conservation tips, and a mobile-friendly outage map.

“In general, utilities have some room for improvement in their customer engagement,” Gardner said with regard to what influenced the survey. “We think that social media and mobile app are very effective channels for utilities to better communicate with their customers.”

Thompson said several thousand people have downloaded MLGW’s free mobile app, which can be accessed by both iPhones and Androids. MLGW has nearly 12,000 Twitter followers, 8,000 Facebook likes, an award-winning blog and website, and pages on Pinterest, Youtube, and Flicker.