Social media has revolutionized the way human beings interact in an unprecedented way. Examples of social media companies include Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. The most interesting phenomenon about social media is how much it brings out human nature. For instance, Twitter is one of the most confusing platforms to participate in because of its wealth of information on the one hand and for being a cesspool of toxic content on the other hand. This paper is a report about a social media experiment conducted on Twitter.
Apart from the heated political discourse on Twitter, it is also a good platform for one to market themselves. Even the political pundits that engage in so much debate always end up – intentionally or not – amassing huge followings that can be monetized in various ways. This experiment involved creating two fake profiles on Twitter and engaging in the so-called follow-trains to increase their follower count in a short time. This was done to ensure that the accounts looked legitimate to the target personalities.
The two accounts would target Twitter accounts that were big on the monetization of their contents. One account, Johnharun67, would select the target subjects to engage them to respond to a question about a random topic unrelated to what they were selling. The other account, Robertsmith222, would choose them by asking about their products which they were selling. Examples of these target subjects included authors, DJs, musicians, artists, and even sex workers known colloquially on Twitter as ‘Onlyfans in bio’ accounts. The results of this experiment are reported below.
Results
The targeted author is a moderately famous activist in the social justice realm who has written several progressive publications. They have a recent book for which they have a posted an Amazon link on their Twitter bio. Johnharun67 replies to the author who has tweeted a random tweet about Trump; the author does not respond. RobertSmith222 replies to the tweet asking the author where to buy an older book they had written because it is missing on Amazon. Interestingly, the author responds to RobertSmith222 almost instantly with a link to where they can find it.
In the second experiment, Johnharun67 engages a popular alt-right vlogger after tweeting a tweet about how Joe Biden has let down his voters already. Johnharun67 asks the commentator whether they think Republicans will win the house in 2022; this question is related to the commentator’s tweet, but it receives no engagement. RobertSmith222 replies to the same tweet asking about the commentator’s bitcoin address since he has been ‘deplatformed’ from Patreon. Unsurprisingly, RobertSmith222 gets a reply with the commentator’s cryptocurrency address.
The third experiment is about a popular transgender account; let’s call them barbieshot11. Barbieshot11 runs an Onlyfans account but does not have it on their bio. Johnharun67 asks barbieshot11 about a link to her Onlyfans, but he does not get it, interestingly. RobertSmith222 responds to barbieshot11’s tweet about cats to ask about good recommendation books for somebody coming out as trans. In a surprise move, barbieshot11 replies almost immediately with a book for the trans journey.
Discussion
The most interesting phenomenon on Twitter and social media is that they are a microcosm of society in general. In the first experiment, it is clear that the author takes her ‘hustle’ very seriously and is desperate enough to scour and isolate prospective customers for their book. The author was chosen on purpose because they have fallen behind in their career. From her book sales, she’s are not doing well and is reported to have been dropped from their assistant professor job at a state University for having tweeted controversial comments about Republicans. The second case is more like that of the first one; it is of self-proclaimed thought-leaders who take the monetization of their roles more seriously than they care about the message.
In the third experiment, the trans activist does not respond to a tweet soliciting for their Onlyfans link. One would hope that barbieshot11 pounces on the opportunity to get a new subscription to their channel, but they seem uninterested. Interestingly, barbieshot11 responds almost instantaneously to RobertSmith222 request on how to handle his transition. This is a classical case of the transcendent activist who believes in their course more than money. In this case, barbieshot11 empathizes more with RobertSmith222’s situation or is probably just trying to build a community.
There is a possibility that the author is not one of the so-called ‘grifters,’ but she is likely in financial distress after they lost their tenure. According to Marwick A. (2020), institutions should do more to protect their professors who have an online presence because they may become victims of the ‘thought police.’ In this case, a female author working in a red state was punished for things that maybe she shouldn’t have said. Still, it begs the question of whether this action would have been taken if the author was a white male or a Republican saying unsavory things about Democrats.