Tweaked with clearer thoughts about the @ symbol and no comments, Tuesday, March 3, 2009. Updates in italics.
You wanna know what bugs me? No? Okay, here are a few things that bug me.
1. People in social media and marketing circles who refer to themselves as “evangelists.” I know this is nothing new. People in the business sector have appropriated and co-opted the term for years. I first noticed it in the late ’90s.
Nowadays, though, it seems everyone on Twitter is some sort of evangelist — either a social media evangelist, a twitter evangelist, a search evangelist, a user experience evangelist, a technology evangelist, a VMware virtual evangelist or some such label.
Technically, according to the Merriam-Webster definition, all the people using the term are correct according to the third definition — the evangelist as “an enthusiastic advocate.” But it still bugs me.
2. Blog posts that use the @username convention made popular by Twitter. I’m guilty of doing this, but usually only when referring to someone’s Twitter account or a tweet that person made. But I see the convention showing up a lot on blogs, especially in comments. I say, keep the @ on Twitter, where it belongs.
I guess one thing about the @ symbol on blogs that bothers me is that it smacks of elitism. Sure, a lot of bloggers are now tweeting, so they know what the @ symbol symbolizes. But a lot of bloggers, and blog readers, aren’t tweeting. It’s kind of like the secret handshake, a sign that you’re part of the “in” crowd. That just sticks in my craw. I suppose it’s because I don’t like elitism.
3. Bloggers who don’t accept comments on their blogs. This too gets back to the whole elitism thing. I think Ron Bronson nailed it in the comments below, when he wrote, “… some just think they’re cooler than the rest of us.” That’s it. Elitists. Boo, hiss, on the elitists.
That is all. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
Andrew Careaga 