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.
