The other day, I got a furious, invective-filled e-mail from a total stranger. If I came over to your house, took a dump on your rug, stomped your cellphone to pieces and euthanized your house pets and all relatives over the age of 70, you would not get as mad as this guy is at me.
My crime? I haven't responded to a series of private messages he's sent me on LinkedIn, a service I signed up for back in the Pleistocene Era, just to find out what it was all about and if it could be of any use to me. I quickly found out that it was all about strangers asking you to give them a job, help them get a job, invest in their projects, publicize their projects and/or help them connect with someone who will give them a job, help them get a job, invest in their projects, publicize their projects, etc. I already get plenty of that in my life because I have a blog.
Could LinkedIn be of any use to me? None that I could see…so I stopped checking in here. Every day or so since, LinkedIn sends me an e-mail telling me I have 53 messages, 27 job changes and 407 new updates waiting for me on LinkedIn.
Upon receipt of the aforementioned angry e-mail, I decided to log in to LinkedIn for the first time in I-Don't-Know-How-Long. There, I found tons o' messages to me from folks who want me to give them a job, help them get a job, invest in their projects, yadda yadda yadda. Most do not give me any reason to do these things other than that they want me to and some of them are pretty brusque about it. They remind me of that guy back in high school — and you had one in your school too, I'm sure — who thought that the way to get girls to perform sex acts on or with him was to go around asking every non-hideous female to perform sex acts on or with him. Again, no reason…just "Hey, you wanna do this?"
The guy who tried this smooth approach at my school had a success record of well below triple-zero. That is to say that not only did no girl take him up on his offer but he swiftly became the obvious pick if the yearbook had contained a category for "Least Likely to Ever Get Laid." That's right. He even beat me out for that honor and for a time there, I was sure I had a lock on it.
There is something wrong with your product if that's how you're selling it. Really, really wrong.
I saw on LinkedIn that the fellow who sent me the wacko e-mail had sent me about a dozen and a half messages at first asking that I promote and recommend his self-published comic. By the last few, he was demanding that I plug this comic I've never seen or even heard of. Can't imagine why he isn't getting a lot of great press.