On Pretentiousness

At the 2015 Cisco Live Welcome Keynote, I was fortunate enough to tag along with some other Cisco Champions and Social Media folks who were provided advance seating to the event. This gave us an opportunity to see some of the behind-the-scenes last-minute preparation that goes into the presentation and experience the production from a different perspective than we would traditionally experience as members of the general audience.

During this time a number of us were using Twitter and Periscope to share the experience and provide sounds and images from within the room using the #CLUS hashtag. One such photo included a panoramic view of the stage from the perspective of our seating area, which gave a great view of the stage and the entire production area.

This photo received a response that began a very unfortunate exchange on Twitter:

“Is this what pretentiousness looks like?”

The exchange degraded into vulgar personal attacks and references to genitalia and the person who initiated with the comment above has since deleted their Twitter account. Not surprising, considering how far south this conversation went.

Some Clarity

For those who missed it, essentially we (those who had been granted advance access to the keynote) were accused of “showing off” to the rest of Twitter. This accusation came from a former member of the Cisco Champions team, and someone who I had personally been following very early on since joining Twitter, and who had been, at least until this incident, a respected member of the social media community.

I can’t speak to the motivation behind the comments made, but I can say with certainty that nothing we were sharing with the rest of the community was or has ever been meant as bragging, or showing off. As part of the Cisco Champions team, or any other Social Media group, the intent is to share and provide insight to the community as a whole. It serves to involve as many people as possible in an inclusive manner, not as an exclusive, pretentious group.

Evidence of this is clear in that the group of people gathering and socializing at the Twitter Lounge and Social Media Hub over the years has grown exponentially. And let’s face it, many of us in this industry are fairly introverted, and if there were some underlying sense of cliquishness or exclusivity, we wouldn’t be welcoming new faces to the events year after year.

Ultimately whether you are a member of Cisco Champions, VMware vExpert, Microsoft MVP, EMC Elect or any other similar group, the goal is engagement rather than exclusion. These ladies and gentlemen are purposed to participate and grow additional engagement with the community at large.

Now, this is a definite give and take relationship and there is some work involved – as a member of one of these groups you are going to spend some of your personal time engaged and involved in the community whether it is through blogging, webinars, podcasts, etc. and the reward or benefit from this is perhaps some exclusive access whether it’s VIP seating at an event, or a sneak-preview of a new product release or product updates.

Let’s call these what they are, perks. It’s a fair trade for the effort involved in creating content, but it is not there to cause any kind of divide in the community, but rather to highlight the benefits of becoming more involved.

Final Thoughts

If you can’t say something nice…

Electronic communication, whether it be email, text, Twitter, etc. all tend to distance the creator from their audience. It’s well-known on the Internet that many people have a strong sense of anonymity and thus the “keyboard warriors” are born, those who feel they can say whatever they want to whomever they want without fear of repercussion or reprisal.

Sometimes this feeling carries over to a medium in which you aren’t entirely anonymous, and whatever you say is going to be a part of your online resume or footprint, and could have lasting effects in the long-term.

I believe the source of these comments understands this, and this is at least part of the reason these comments were removed and ultimately their Twitter account was deleted.

It’s also evidence that they don’t have the integrity to stand by their comments.

For those of us who continue to participate in events like Cisco Live as members of the larger Social Media community, I believe we will continue to share and engage those around us by sharing content and insight. If you see something that makes you stop and say “I’d like to be part of that” then by all means, join us.

2 thoughts on “On Pretentiousness

  1. I’ll be honest and say that I’m super duper glad I missed that entire thread and I don’t know who any of the players are. It would have hurt my heart to read the exchange. And yes…. I admit when I say exchange I’m going to guess it also would have hurt my heart a little to watch the other twitter comments “back” at the person who felt it was pretentious.
    People ARE going to have their opinions. Some of their opinions are not going to sync up with ours. How we choose to “act” (or “react” as the case may be) is going to be on us. And we are responsible for how we act and react on twitter also.

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