If you don’t know what cow tipping is, here’s a quick how-to:
Step 1: Call up your friends.
Step 2: Find a cow.
Step 3: Sneak up on the cow.
Step 4: Have your friends join you and simultaneously push the cow so it falls over on its side.
Step 5: Run away laughing and tell your other friends about how you bested the giant beast.
Why would people want to do that? Because they find it amusing and they can. There are a lot of stereotypes about cow tippers. Most run along the lines of boredom, alcohol consumption, and limited exposure to cultural activities that improve the mind.
What’s digital cow tipping?
Another quick how-to:
Step 1: Choose a cow to tip. In this instance, a cow isn’t a four-legged beast but an unsuspecting corporate entity with an online presence. The recent spam attack on Twitter’s trending topics is a perfect example of digital cow tipping.
Step 2: Send out a “call to action” to your social network. Social media allows us to quickly build relationships that function along the same lines as what I refer to as “drinking buddies.” They’re sort of people who are good for help on a quick project but probably nothing long-term. (You can build long-term friendships through social media but those take a lot of sustained effort and mutual commitment.) You don’t need real friends for digital cow tipping. You just need a bunch of people who will click a mouse button a few times.
Step 3: Have your friends simultaneously leverage their digital influence against the entity you’ve decided to attack. Real time mass communication systems like Twitter make planning simple and cost-free. “Please send a tweet to @digitalcow and let them know they should fix my laptop for free” will get retweeted many times and @digitalcow’s stream will fill up with references to your complaint.
Step 4: Enjoy watching the mayhem you’ve created as the company stumbles over itself trying to understand what just happened and how to respond. Social media is still so new that many users will support your escapade just because they like to see companies respond to social media pressure. The company will probably fix your laptop for free even though you didn’t have the appropriate warranty because they’d rather shut you up than spend resources trying to prove you wrong.
Step 5: Realize that you’re a selfish idiot who just abused a system for personal gain.
There’s been a lot of talk about the need for a system to keep trolls and spammers out of social media. We already have a system. The block, unfriend, unfollow, and “report abuse” functions built into every platform we use on a daily basis allows for moderation to be effectively crowd-sourced. All the system needs in order to work well is a group of users who think before they act, ponder before they speak, and pause before they click.
Digital cow tipping, as you’ve probably noticed, works on the same premise of social media lobbying. Namely, enough voices sounding together can draw a real reaction out of an inattentive beast.
In order for this technique to continue to work and to work well, we need to do a better job of keeping insidious thugs out of the social media pasture.
When you see somebody abusing (truly so, not just using in a way you don’t prefer) a social media platform, don’t just complain. Use the tools you’ve been given to moderate that person’s behavior. Unfriend, unfollow, block, report as spam, and recognize that you’ve done us all a service by taking action.
Social media has given the consumer such a powerful communication tool. Let’s not be “too busy” to spend some time keeping it running smoothly and effectively.
I’m going to try and do a better job at that. I hope you will, too.
Seth, I like you. We share similar community values, but different ideas about how to improve things for everyone – well, almost everyone in my case. Yours is mostly wishful thinking, while mine is actually effective. Like me, you’re idealistic and strive to improve communications in our respective neighborhoods. Yet since you don’t understand my neighborhood, I’m one you might derisively call a cow-tipper, and I’m not a bit ashamed of the label.
Your knee-jerk, feel-good, overly-simplistic reaction to vicious Internet tricks is honorable, but it is also foolishly authoritarian and impossible to enforce by un-following and otherwise blocking special bastards like you suggest. BCBSTX tried that with me on Twitter when I asked them questions about their NPI policy that they didn’t want to address publicly, and for good reason. Their lame defense of sticking their heads in the sand was a mistake. Now, if one visits BCBSTX’s Facebook account, I am their most frequent commentator, and what I am clearly describing to their potential clients are BCBSTX’s unfair policies that harm my dental patients.
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=934870186...
This is exactly why I was blocked on Twitter by anonymous leaders at BCBSTX who do not want to be held accountable to those they serve. You can call me a cow-tipper if you want. I will not tolerate tyranny, regardless if tipping that cow over hard is unpopular.
I don’t go to any Website to enlist anyone to help. If some in my audience find interest and entertainment in what I pry open, discover and share, should I tell them not to click on links to my articles because that would be unfair to sleazy businesses like BCBSTX? Get real. And modernize your attitude while you’re at it.
I say if fat cows are off-balance and too damn slow and top-heavy to stay upright, perhaps it’s better for the herd to help the weak ones to hit the ground hard and mercifully halt the lineage of bad blood….
That’s my blunt opinion about herd management. I’ve learned that it’s also better to castrate and brand bulls while they’re young. It makes them more docile and easier to find if they stray. D. Kellus Pruitt DDS
[...] here: seth simonds » Digital Cow Tipping Object July 11th [...]
There is no secret here. It's simply a matter of the verb. Change “tipping” to “lifting” and we will see results. The social web responds and works effectively when we help and lift others. And let's face it, its a hell of a lot easier to lift a cow online than off.
If you're not making up excuses to tip cows, I think you're in good territory. Like I said in the post, the technique is the same for both the “recreational” cow tippers and the ones trying to topple a beast for a reason. It starts and ends with intent.
“easier to life a cow online than off”
Haha! I'm not sure I follow the metaphor entirely but I like the way it sounds! =)
Sometimes it's good to tip things. I just worry that if we tip too many digital cows for fun that the dangerous ones will get wary and the system will cease to work well.
Thanks Dave!
D'oh! That was supposed to be lift a cow… That's what I get for typing on an empty stomach. Ha!
Oh, no. That was my typo. I was referring to your original thought of lifting rather than tipping a cow.
I shouldn't reply to comments on an empty stomach.
My bad. =)
I say a cow susceptible to tipping should read his or her mission statement rather than depend on the benevolence of a free market.
Let me make this clear: Cow-tipping can be very, very entertaining.