Bloggasm

For about a year now, there has been a profusion of Facebook groups titled “1,000,000 strong for [insert cause].” E.g., there’s one group called “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert.”

Only this example is different from all others because of one simple fact: It actually has over a million readers.

Seriously people, quit it already. If you type “1,000,000 strong” into Facebook’s search field, you’ll find 500+ groups that use it in the title. And out of all those groups, only one has reached the goal.

By giving yourself such a grandiose title, you’re actually diminishing the effect of your cause. For instance, let’s say your group reaches 10,000 people — that’s a pretty sizable number of supporters– a group that big has clout. But the way the group has been framed, it comes out looking like a loser, a lost cause.

The reason I’m talking about this is because today I happened across a group called “1,000,000 Fans Strong for Striking Writers.” Now, I may be wrong, but I would warrant a guess that there aren’t even more than 1 million facebook members who know anything really substantial about the strike. In other words, there may be a lot who know that a strike exists — but people who are actually following the story?

So what are the chances that you’ll find 1 million facebook members who not only follow the story, but care enough to join the group? Not very good. In fact, the group has been up for a few days now and it has amassed fewer than a thousand members.

So even if this group managed to pull in, say, 50,000 people, it still looks like a failure — it’s a PR nightmare because it creates the illusion that people aren’t supporting the writer’s strike.

Several people have already begun to mock this “1 million strong” trend, including one guy who created a (now deleted) group called “If this group gets 20 people my girlfriend will fuck a horse.”

Indeed.

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