BlueCat
Roses are red, cats are blue
- Dec 14, 2009
- 4,503
- 19,507
It's bizarre that they preach an "anti-bullying" rhetoric, but yet enable 12-year-old girls and their mothers to comment on every piece of criticism they receive. :rolleyes:
The sassy social media intern thing is not for me. I'm ok with 99% of their responses, but there's ALWAYS one or two comments they take way too far. So unprofessional and not a good look for any company.
I didn't see the particular comments, so this isn't defending any particular response. In my brief look through their responses, nothing jumped out as being snarky, but it may have been taken down or been somewhere I didn't look.
It can be really difficult not to fire back when people bash your service/product - deserved or not. You can know perfectly well that the "wisest" response is no response, but it is a challenge to simply stay quiet. When you feel your close friends / coworkers / life's work is being attacked, it is really hard to simply turn the other cheek. I am not saying that excuses anything, but it does sometimes explain it.
Also, nearly every company now employs younger staff to run their social media. They are FAR more in touch with trends, verbiage, and the things that interest your core customer base. However, the downside is that they sometimes lack the maturity to handle getting slammed online. Even old geezers like myself can get "drawn offsides" at times by some of the venom thrown out - particularly when it is by anonymous or semi-anonymous posts. It is frustrating because 99.999% of the time, those posting the negative comments would never dare say that directly to the designer in person, but they feel fine sharing it with hundreds or thousands of others.
The bigger / more well-known the target, the more people feel it is OK to express harsh opinions in public online about them. It is part of the territory and it is what it is. It is tough to remember that (relatively) big corporations are still made up of people fiercely proud of their work and that of their co-workers. Again, that doesn't excuse firing back, but I do empathize sometimes when some of the bigger organizations let their emotions get the better of them.