Well it's been a while since I wrote anything on here (in fact it only happened once before.) But I thought I'd try and explain first of all why @followersinneed can be troubling and secondly, what they should do to stop it.
It is sad that many people these days are cynical and not willing to take the word of something initially offering money to charity. However the problem is that often we need to be sceptical.
For example (and I know this isn't on the same league but it shows how it works.) A couple of years ago a Facebook page was set up calling itself Glasgow University Freshers. Obviously this appealed to all university students about to start going to Glasgow University. It picked up 1000s of friends. Then come the day the name changed to a nightclub promo group who then had thousands of people to spam with their events. The page wasn't created or condoned by Glasgow University, and it certainly didn't have widespread appeal. It was spam. And fraudulent spam.
(If anyone else has other examples of this happening send me an email (gdhpearson@gmail.com)/twitter (@gdhp).
Create a profile that will get a lot of followers/friends, to then use it for less honest purposes is worrying but does happen. Currently there is no proof that they won't turn around and turn it into a twitter page that sells vacuum cleaners or what have you.
Many people might think this is a small problem. If it's fake, people leave, no harm done. However this is not entirely the case. For instance as @DaveGorman has rightly pointed out:
"Charity-fatigue is a real problem.If they're fake they're not just not helping, they're doing harm."
Charity fatigues is a massive issue here. If it is fake, then groups like this spread the scepticism. If no one had ever had the idea of a fake profile then I wouldn't be sceptical in the first place. The next time a charity/wellwisher does this for real, more people will not follow it/join in because they fear it is fake. It can be damaging.
It's also worth noting that some people will fill following @followersinneed is doing their bit. By donating 50p via an effortless follow on twitter, some will feel that's 50p they then will keep to themselves and not spend at a charity back sale or something else. People will feel fulfilled for not doing anything to actually help.
There is no denying that setting up a fake profile is incredibly easy, for instance as @writerjames wrote:
"I could set up a sham account tonight, linking to Sport Relief, saying I'll give them a pound for every follower I get... how do you suggest Twitter users distinguish between yourselves and such a hypothetical sham?"
So there we have it. The account can be damaging and is very easily done, and has been done before.
So what should @followersinneed do. Simple.
Verify how they fundraise. Tell us how they pay 50p per follower. Where does this money come from?
The only logical method I can see where money would get donated via such a method is if the account is meant to turn into spam.
For instance they turn round to company x and go "we'll send out your product to 30,000 people if you pay 10p per one." Do that to 5 companies and you're in, that and the companies get a good advertising deal. Everyone wins.
If they are doing this it might explain their initial nervousness to explain how they work, however as much as they might lose temporarily with the initial 'urgh adverts' feeling, they'd gain in the long run as the likes of myself and other sceptics suddenly started following and told others to follow.
As @davegorman wrote no sooner than 15 odd minutes ago:
"DM me a phone number if you like. I'll give you a call. If real, I'll promote you to 100k! No need to be defensive."
That's better than a few people who'd leave.
However, it doesn't look like this is their fundraising method. After all their own description reads:
"Money is being raised in some local villages & large companies have donated money"
What have local villages got to do with @followersinneed? It certainly doesn't fit with the idea I wrote above.
I am not, and to make this perfectly clear I will write it in capitals, I AM NOT TRYING TO SAY THAT @FOLLOWERSINNEED IS FAKE!
I hope it is real. I hope they will respond to my pestering, or the perstering of many others and write one simple blog post, explaining how they raise their money.
I will announce at the bottom of this blog that FollowersInNeed is definitely genuine if they say:
1) How they raise the money
2) Who pays the money
3) How the followers will get verification that the money was sent at the end.
As I write they have 12,423 followers. That means £6,233 raised. That's enough money for the people who are helping to donate it to want to know it's definitely going to CIN.
I apologise for the cynicism that comes with this blog. But given how simple it would be for @followersinneed to verify this, it grows increasingly worrying when they don't.
So, presuming it is real, and hoping they happen to read this blog, @followersinneed please verify that you are genuine, so we can end this scepticism and I and @davegorman and a thousand others can get on with promoting your page and raising money for such a worthy cause.
Thanks,
George
If Followers In Need or anyone else wants to get in touch:
gdhpearson@gmail.com
Saturday 13 November 2010
Thursday 20 May 2010
Janet Street Porter
Right, so somewhere on Saturday I read an article by Janet Street Porter and became enraged. My friend and I read the article together and both gasped and sighed and raged and moaned at the ignorance of it all. 24 hours later my rage had not lessened, neither had my friend's. So together a Facebook group was born. By Wednesday morning we had broken 2,000 people. By Wednesday night, 2700 had joined. It exploded. It's been wonderful.
But from it all many people have questioned the validity of the backlash against the article. So I thought I would take my time to defend the campaign. There are three issues: the accuracy; the offence; and the sentiment. The more valid being first and the more debatable later on. I would like it noted everything I say from this point on I say as myself. I am not a bulk representative for the people who were offended by Janet Street Porter, I'm just the guy who made a Facebook page. These views are mine, not a group.
So first, the accuracy of Janet Street Porter's article. I have already gone on about how inaccurate it was; if people really want the stats to back up how inaccurate it was, I cleared most of them out during the original blog post on the official blog for the campaign. Although also I did fall a little bit in love with the "The Evidence Game - pick a quote, prove it's wrong" discussion thread on the Facebook group. There is some wonderful pieces of research happening there.
However in case you were unaware this rather heavily breaks the PCC code. Article 1.i of the PCC code states "The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted
information, including pictures." She broke rule 1 of the code, I mean you'd think you'd remember the first one and then switch off? Anyway, for those of you unaware of the PCC code, it is a code agreed to by the editors of the newspapers and to which they have all agreed. This isn't forced upon them from above. This is their own rules, and yet still the Daily Mail has broken it with the highly misleading statistics in Janet Street-Porter's article.
There is some form of a freedom of speech argument kicking around this whole bit. There are two responses to this that exist, the first was a quote said to me by a friend of mine today who said "I can go around telling everyone Blue Wales don't exist, freedom of speech doesn't make me any less of an idiot for doing so." Second of all, on a more academic note, it ought to be stressed the responsibility of the media. Like it or not the media do still call themselves 'newspapers', there is one important word written within this, 'news'. As it is news, it comes with the implication that any information within the paper will be accurate. If Janet Street Porter had been shouting this stuff off in the street, I would think she was an idiot, but I wouldn't say she didn't have a right to do so. But a newspaper with a circulation of hundreds of thousands of people must hold themselves to some degree of respectibility. They are put in a position of responsibility and trust by the people who buy the newspaper, and the people who read the paper have a right not to be lied to or mislead by statistics. The paper has a right to be partisan, that's how they appeal to people. I would class the Independent as being my favourite paper, and it has a very distinct ideology, it just happens to agree with my own. So yes, the Mail has the right to an opinion, and the right to 'believe things', but a powerful force in this country, whose job it is to disseminate information to the wider public does not have the right to print stuff that is factually inaccurate. Newspapers have a role and a duty in this country, they are often described as the 'third arm of politics', bridging between Government and people, and that comes with responsibility - to share information accurate and responsibly. Even they decided that.
Second of all - offence. There is some grey area existing in this, and this is primarily where the classic freedom of speech argument comes in. However the freedom of speech argument, unless amognst total purists, often has one very minor flaw in that most people will have some niche that makes them go 'oh no, you can't say that.' For instance, if you take mental illness sufferers as a group of people, then they are a group of people that have a set identity. They are still unique individuals, but they have something that binds them, in the same way that people of the same race do, homosexuals do etc. Most people would probably say writing a piece in the Daily Mail that was explicitly racist was wrong, or a piece that was recieved as homophobic was wrong, so why whould a piece that has offended so much of the mental illness community be treates any differently?
There is one line in this article which I bring up time and time again, but it's one I always need to come back to.
""Now, men are jumping on the depression bandwagon [...] 45 per cent of women earn the same or more than their husbands, then the male ego is under attack [...] at this point, I'm afraid to say, I laugh out loud. The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is frankly, risible. Let's just call it karmic revenge for all those years men have been in charge of everything."
Now, I initially read this line and threw the paper on the floor. I then picked it up again, and I swear I tried to find humour, or irony, or an argument to defend this sentence, but I honestly can't find one. I can't see where the defence comes from. Let's go like this: I am a man, I have a mental illness - what is Janet Street Porter's response? "I'm afraid to say, I laugh out loud. The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is frankly, risible". Oh and what is your reasoning behind this, Janet? "Let's just call it karmic revenge for all those years men have been in charge of everything."
WHAT? How is that comment logical, rational, intelligible, or anything other than horrendously offensive, deliberately sexist and quite frankly childish. If Janet can tell me why I'm suddenly responsible for the actions of a bunch of Victorians who did actions with which I totally disagree, and why this means I deserve to be mentally ill then I would be most greateful. How dare you say because something happened somewhere, and it was caused by some people I happen to share a chromosone with, I deserve to have low self-esteem, and furthermore you find my low self-esteem funny. It's illogical nonsense. It's like me going, "yeah, once my girlfriend cheated on me, so I don't have any sympathy for girls who get cheated on." It doesn't make sense.
Thirdly we reach the sentiment of the article. Many people on the Facebook group have agreed with the sentiment of the article, and there is maybe a slim piece of me that does as well, but overall I don't. Her general attitude is based upon, there are some people who are saying they're depressed and some people who are actually depressed, and these first bunch of people are wrong. Well that's great and all, but unfortunately we're dealing with a slightly wider issue than twenty questions here. First of all, you have to question the motive of someone who 'wants to be depressed', I mean who would seriously wish that upon themselves. Yeah, maybe they're just attention seeking, but maybe they're attention seeking because they feel they really need help because they constantly feel down, and you know, they're depressed. But what really annoys me about the sentiment of this article is the implications it has.
Depression is not something you can know yourself whether you're definitely depressed or not. Many people who do have genuine clinical depression probably label themselves attention seekers, and don't really accept it themselves. If you tell people, and complain about people who pretend to be depressed but aren't, then what message does this sent to people who are depressed who are afraid about getting help.
To get personal for a second (and I promise this is the only time I will ever do this throughout this campaign), I myself had various problems from God knows how young. But I didn't go to the doctor and didn't talk to anyone about how bad I felt or any of the thoughts that went through my head, because I decided I must be an attention seeker, and must just be making it up in my own head. I would probably have never seeked genuine help had it not been at the age of twenty when I had something pretty close to a complete collapse that it all came out and I spilled everything out to my poor mother. And even then, I told her about depression and some of the things I had done because of it, purely as a side story to what had caused the events in my life as of late, and it was she who told to go seek medical advice. Had it not been for me openning my mouth accidentally, I may never have seeked it.
So here's my advice for anyone who feels down, who has for a long time, and thinks they may be suffering from depression. Don't listen to Janet Street Porter, don't listen to any other loon that tells you otherwise. Tell people. Tell people and those who love you will understand and do everything to make things okay. And there are people who love you and will care for you. Whether they're your family, your friends, whoever. Tell them. And then, with their support go seek medical support and ask your GP, and tell him everything. Don't go in and go 'I'm depressed', go in and go 'I can't sleep, I cry every night, I suffer from this, I suffer from that' and let him come to the conclusion of what you should do. That's what he's there for. And unless he wants to get sacked he will be supportive and he will help.
There are a thousand and one mental charities now linked up on that Facebook group, I will at some point link to them properly. I know some of these people, and all of them seem like the most understanding people in the world. Talk to them, see what they say. Just don't keep it to yourself. Be open. 'Nuff said on that.
But this is my point. I would rather we as a society gave sympathy to a handful of people who maybe don't deserve it than we miss one person who has genuine clinical depression. I don't care how high we have to set that bar of acceptance to be, if it means we catch everyone of those people, and we make their lives better, then what difference does it make to our lives that some woman somewhere sold a few more autobiographies. If depression is becoming fashionable then thank God, because maybe people will be willing to talk about it then, maybe all those people with depression will be running to their doctor's to say that they might have this new trendy illness. Great, we'll find them all now, and give them the support they need. Wonderful.
The more we talk about depression, the more acceptable it is, the trendier it is if you will, then the more we can talk about it openly and accept it in our society. The fact that so many depression sufferers, even after they've been diagnosed, still can't talk about it, is a crying shame, and I would love to see a society that talks about it more. So I do not deplore the gloom fashionistas, I applaud them for making this terrible illness an acceptable thing to talk about.
That is a hopeful message. What isn't a hopeful message is the classic tight-upper-lip appraoch of "get a grip", or "well I got through it" or the "the rest of us aren't depressed." I don't see how in anyway messages like this are constructive, who do they help. Yeah if you tell someone who can pull themself together to do so, great, they're fine. You tell the entire public to do that through a national newspaper that they need to "get a grip", then all those people who genuinely can't are going to feel a darn sight lot worse. "Get a grip" should never be an acceptable message to say to anyone feeling down, let along should it be promoted as the standard approach in a national newspaper, and that is why whether she intended to do damage or not, exactly why Janet Street Porter's article was so dangerous.
But from it all many people have questioned the validity of the backlash against the article. So I thought I would take my time to defend the campaign. There are three issues: the accuracy; the offence; and the sentiment. The more valid being first and the more debatable later on. I would like it noted everything I say from this point on I say as myself. I am not a bulk representative for the people who were offended by Janet Street Porter, I'm just the guy who made a Facebook page. These views are mine, not a group.
So first, the accuracy of Janet Street Porter's article. I have already gone on about how inaccurate it was; if people really want the stats to back up how inaccurate it was, I cleared most of them out during the original blog post on the official blog for the campaign. Although also I did fall a little bit in love with the "The Evidence Game - pick a quote, prove it's wrong" discussion thread on the Facebook group. There is some wonderful pieces of research happening there.
However in case you were unaware this rather heavily breaks the PCC code. Article 1.i of the PCC code states "The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted
information, including pictures." She broke rule 1 of the code, I mean you'd think you'd remember the first one and then switch off? Anyway, for those of you unaware of the PCC code, it is a code agreed to by the editors of the newspapers and to which they have all agreed. This isn't forced upon them from above. This is their own rules, and yet still the Daily Mail has broken it with the highly misleading statistics in Janet Street-Porter's article.
There is some form of a freedom of speech argument kicking around this whole bit. There are two responses to this that exist, the first was a quote said to me by a friend of mine today who said "I can go around telling everyone Blue Wales don't exist, freedom of speech doesn't make me any less of an idiot for doing so." Second of all, on a more academic note, it ought to be stressed the responsibility of the media. Like it or not the media do still call themselves 'newspapers', there is one important word written within this, 'news'. As it is news, it comes with the implication that any information within the paper will be accurate. If Janet Street Porter had been shouting this stuff off in the street, I would think she was an idiot, but I wouldn't say she didn't have a right to do so. But a newspaper with a circulation of hundreds of thousands of people must hold themselves to some degree of respectibility. They are put in a position of responsibility and trust by the people who buy the newspaper, and the people who read the paper have a right not to be lied to or mislead by statistics. The paper has a right to be partisan, that's how they appeal to people. I would class the Independent as being my favourite paper, and it has a very distinct ideology, it just happens to agree with my own. So yes, the Mail has the right to an opinion, and the right to 'believe things', but a powerful force in this country, whose job it is to disseminate information to the wider public does not have the right to print stuff that is factually inaccurate. Newspapers have a role and a duty in this country, they are often described as the 'third arm of politics', bridging between Government and people, and that comes with responsibility - to share information accurate and responsibly. Even they decided that.
Second of all - offence. There is some grey area existing in this, and this is primarily where the classic freedom of speech argument comes in. However the freedom of speech argument, unless amognst total purists, often has one very minor flaw in that most people will have some niche that makes them go 'oh no, you can't say that.' For instance, if you take mental illness sufferers as a group of people, then they are a group of people that have a set identity. They are still unique individuals, but they have something that binds them, in the same way that people of the same race do, homosexuals do etc. Most people would probably say writing a piece in the Daily Mail that was explicitly racist was wrong, or a piece that was recieved as homophobic was wrong, so why whould a piece that has offended so much of the mental illness community be treates any differently?
There is one line in this article which I bring up time and time again, but it's one I always need to come back to.
""Now, men are jumping on the depression bandwagon [...] 45 per cent of women earn the same or more than their husbands, then the male ego is under attack [...] at this point, I'm afraid to say, I laugh out loud. The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is frankly, risible. Let's just call it karmic revenge for all those years men have been in charge of everything."
Now, I initially read this line and threw the paper on the floor. I then picked it up again, and I swear I tried to find humour, or irony, or an argument to defend this sentence, but I honestly can't find one. I can't see where the defence comes from. Let's go like this: I am a man, I have a mental illness - what is Janet Street Porter's response? "I'm afraid to say, I laugh out loud. The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is frankly, risible". Oh and what is your reasoning behind this, Janet? "Let's just call it karmic revenge for all those years men have been in charge of everything."
WHAT? How is that comment logical, rational, intelligible, or anything other than horrendously offensive, deliberately sexist and quite frankly childish. If Janet can tell me why I'm suddenly responsible for the actions of a bunch of Victorians who did actions with which I totally disagree, and why this means I deserve to be mentally ill then I would be most greateful. How dare you say because something happened somewhere, and it was caused by some people I happen to share a chromosone with, I deserve to have low self-esteem, and furthermore you find my low self-esteem funny. It's illogical nonsense. It's like me going, "yeah, once my girlfriend cheated on me, so I don't have any sympathy for girls who get cheated on." It doesn't make sense.
Thirdly we reach the sentiment of the article. Many people on the Facebook group have agreed with the sentiment of the article, and there is maybe a slim piece of me that does as well, but overall I don't. Her general attitude is based upon, there are some people who are saying they're depressed and some people who are actually depressed, and these first bunch of people are wrong. Well that's great and all, but unfortunately we're dealing with a slightly wider issue than twenty questions here. First of all, you have to question the motive of someone who 'wants to be depressed', I mean who would seriously wish that upon themselves. Yeah, maybe they're just attention seeking, but maybe they're attention seeking because they feel they really need help because they constantly feel down, and you know, they're depressed. But what really annoys me about the sentiment of this article is the implications it has.
Depression is not something you can know yourself whether you're definitely depressed or not. Many people who do have genuine clinical depression probably label themselves attention seekers, and don't really accept it themselves. If you tell people, and complain about people who pretend to be depressed but aren't, then what message does this sent to people who are depressed who are afraid about getting help.
To get personal for a second (and I promise this is the only time I will ever do this throughout this campaign), I myself had various problems from God knows how young. But I didn't go to the doctor and didn't talk to anyone about how bad I felt or any of the thoughts that went through my head, because I decided I must be an attention seeker, and must just be making it up in my own head. I would probably have never seeked genuine help had it not been at the age of twenty when I had something pretty close to a complete collapse that it all came out and I spilled everything out to my poor mother. And even then, I told her about depression and some of the things I had done because of it, purely as a side story to what had caused the events in my life as of late, and it was she who told to go seek medical advice. Had it not been for me openning my mouth accidentally, I may never have seeked it.
So here's my advice for anyone who feels down, who has for a long time, and thinks they may be suffering from depression. Don't listen to Janet Street Porter, don't listen to any other loon that tells you otherwise. Tell people. Tell people and those who love you will understand and do everything to make things okay. And there are people who love you and will care for you. Whether they're your family, your friends, whoever. Tell them. And then, with their support go seek medical support and ask your GP, and tell him everything. Don't go in and go 'I'm depressed', go in and go 'I can't sleep, I cry every night, I suffer from this, I suffer from that' and let him come to the conclusion of what you should do. That's what he's there for. And unless he wants to get sacked he will be supportive and he will help.
There are a thousand and one mental charities now linked up on that Facebook group, I will at some point link to them properly. I know some of these people, and all of them seem like the most understanding people in the world. Talk to them, see what they say. Just don't keep it to yourself. Be open. 'Nuff said on that.
But this is my point. I would rather we as a society gave sympathy to a handful of people who maybe don't deserve it than we miss one person who has genuine clinical depression. I don't care how high we have to set that bar of acceptance to be, if it means we catch everyone of those people, and we make their lives better, then what difference does it make to our lives that some woman somewhere sold a few more autobiographies. If depression is becoming fashionable then thank God, because maybe people will be willing to talk about it then, maybe all those people with depression will be running to their doctor's to say that they might have this new trendy illness. Great, we'll find them all now, and give them the support they need. Wonderful.
The more we talk about depression, the more acceptable it is, the trendier it is if you will, then the more we can talk about it openly and accept it in our society. The fact that so many depression sufferers, even after they've been diagnosed, still can't talk about it, is a crying shame, and I would love to see a society that talks about it more. So I do not deplore the gloom fashionistas, I applaud them for making this terrible illness an acceptable thing to talk about.
That is a hopeful message. What isn't a hopeful message is the classic tight-upper-lip appraoch of "get a grip", or "well I got through it" or the "the rest of us aren't depressed." I don't see how in anyway messages like this are constructive, who do they help. Yeah if you tell someone who can pull themself together to do so, great, they're fine. You tell the entire public to do that through a national newspaper that they need to "get a grip", then all those people who genuinely can't are going to feel a darn sight lot worse. "Get a grip" should never be an acceptable message to say to anyone feeling down, let along should it be promoted as the standard approach in a national newspaper, and that is why whether she intended to do damage or not, exactly why Janet Street Porter's article was so dangerous.
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