Maybe I’m Not As Shameless As I Thought

Anyone who has known me for longer than five minutes has most likely heard me say “I am completely shameless when it comes to promoting a good cause” or something very similar.  And it’s true, I am.  If I want your money to go somewhere, I will walk right up to you and ask you to send it there.

Like right here, where I’m saying you should go donate to my fundraiser for the American Lung Cancer Partnership.

See?

When you have something the very survival of which demands attention being called to it, if you don’t do it, no one will.  And I have learned over the years that one of the best ways to be as shameless as is necessary to market effectively, without turning people off, is to not even pretend you aren’t behaving like an attention whore.  Embrace your shamelessness.  Flaunt it.  Turn it into an asset.  Make it so shameless it’s funny.

I have some friends over on Facebook who market their modeling pages with posts along the lines of “You should go like my page, then tell all your friends to like my page, for no better reason than there are boobs.  Huge boobs.  Boobs just for you and your friends, over on my page, just go like it”.   That’s the right kind of shameless.  Self-deprecating boob-intensive marketing shamelessness.  And it works.  Because it’s so shameless it’s funny.

However, today I was on the receiving end of a completely different type of shamelessness, and I have to say I found it a bit offensive.

Over on another social networking site, I received a friend request from someone whose name I recognized and work I am vaguely familiar with.  I assumed it had been sent because this person also was vaguely familiar with my work, so I accepted the request and followed up with my usual “Hi, nice to meet you!” comment on that person’s profile.  The response I got to that comment?

“Go like my Facebook page!”

Um... wow, really?

I might have let it go, and not let it drive me into a fit of enraged blogging, had it been left at that.  It was not.  Following that comment was a message from this person, asking for me to go vote for a photo they had entered in a contest.

A contest in which I also have a photo entered.  A photo it never even occurred to me to go around asking random people with whom I have no previous connection to go vote for.  A photo this person seems to have completely overlooked in their quest to garner votes from complete strangers.  And not once in this entire exchange was there any mention of boobs.

This person may in fact be a really nice person, and not have any clue how offensive this whole thing was, but you don’t just walk up to people you don’t know and start asking for things, that is just not the way it’s done.

Or is it?  Is that the way it’s done now?  Am I really old-fashioned, to think there should be some sort of connection, or at least hint of reciprocity, before you start asking for favors?

There should at least be some mention of boobs, right?

(Seriously though, you should go like Naomi VonKreeps and Veronica Virgo.  For the boobs.)