Today I opened my email to find the following warning from the administrators of Facebook:
Hello,
You made one or more wall posts that violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, posts that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down posts that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled.
If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wposts.
The Facebook Team
I admit that I have been pushing the envelope on FB lately. I found over 200 Fan Pages that I thought were relevant to items I am trying to sell on this site, so I placed blurbs about my stuff on those sites incessantly for the past few weeks: airline pages, travel pages, sites about dogs and hotels and cruise lines, etc. I couldn't resist the tens of thousands of eyeballs on those pages (to get the number of people, divide by two). I joined Fan Pages like "I Love Hugs", "Life With Dogs", " i love you. you love me. then why can't we be together?", and "Once you live in NEW DELHI u cannot live anywhere else in the world !!". I spammed the Fan Pages of Ellen deGeneres, The Mentalist, The Colbert Report, and other tv shows. I placed "ads" on the Walls of The Ohio State University, Oregon State University, and Cornell. I invaded various food channels and the Walls of many cities and countries found around the world. In short, I was an aggressive advertiser, ambitious, assertive, and confident in my product.
Alas, I can report that all of that effort on my part has resulted in a big fat nothing. Zilch. No sales. Nada. No profits. I accomplished very little with all that spamming, except the receipt of a warning from FB that they might disable my account. I guess that was a blessing, because now I will have more time for direct contact with all my FB friends---to convince them to buy flowers (see cheery ad below) or designer cookies for your mother or wife. But what does an aspiring capitalist have to do to make a buck in this world?
I realize fully that I was not trained to make money in this life. I was educated as a scientist, a biologist, an ecologist, a conservationist. Those people don't make money; they give of their life to try to understand and save the world and to teach others about all that. But no one really listens to that message, because they are all out there making money. In fact, the public thinks that conservationists don't need money because they know how to live off the land--to find wild edibles for food, to erect primitive shelters from hemlock boughs to get out of the rain and snow, to kill and skin wild animals to make clothing. So you see, when we want to buy a new toaster oven or pay our electric bill, all we have are some beaver pelts or deer livers or hallucinogenic shrooms for those products or services. Most of us have only seen a $100 bill when we visited the money collection at the Smithsonian Institution . When we renegotiate our university contracts, we end up settling for an extra pound of acorns per month instead of a real salary increase. We are so naive.
Given my friendly notice from the management at FB, I spent the past couple of hours hitting the "Unlike" button on about 150 Fan Pages where I was pumping my wares. After all, what could I possibly have to say on the "Memphis" page if I weren't trying to get readers there to buy Cafe Britt coffee (see tiny micro bar ad above) or cigars from my site? "Hey, anyone here seen Elvis lately?" What could I contribute on the "Copenhagen" site other than wanting those Danes to come to my blog? "Hvordan har De det?" And what do I have in common with readers of the "Princess Cruises" site, unless I can get them to book their cruise on DrTom's Travel Shoppe? (To be honest, I am really prone to motion sickness, so the thought of taking a cruise (see simple blue and orange ad below) with 5,000 strangers wearing plaid shorts makes me vomit for a couple of reasons. But I would gladly sell a cruise to anyone else.)
So, I am left with using my own Profile page on FB to entice potential customers to this site. Just watch over the next month how clever I can be in getting my FB friends here. Expect to see the following messages on my Wall soon. "Would you like to be admitted to Cornell University and receive reduced tuition? Then come to Life at DrTom's." "Are you lonely and in need of a free companion dog? .......DrTom's." "Like to get rich quick? Come to DrTom's for a list of FB Fan Pages that you can spam. Results guaranteed!" I am only limited by my own imagination. And because people really do want to get rich quick, or they need a dog, they will be like putty in my hands. Yea, that's the ticket. I will just lie outright and promise the moon. Then, after I make a big pile of money, maybe I'll take a cruise. BLECK!
