Scoble Demonstrates that His Book, Naked Conversations, is Pure Bullshit

I decided I needed some material for a post last night and headed over to Scobleizer because Robert Scoble never disappoints. I hadn’t visited his blog in a couple of weeks and apparently I’ve missed a lot – Scoble has a little reader backlash on his hands.

The cause? Politics.

His pointless diatribe about not being an American is apparently the latest in a line of political rants that he has recently posted.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who has voluntarily subscribed to Scobleizer deserves what they get. I have no sympathy for Scoble’s subscribers and would ask all of them the same question: “What the fuck were you expecting when you subscribed to Scoble’s feeds in the first place?”

Putting this aside, it was Scoble’s response to the reader backlash that I found amusing and worth addressing:

Only a very small percentage of my work has anything to do with politics.

Which makes me very happy at the unsubscribes. I’m hoping for a smart audience here, not one that throws insults based on bad data.

But if you think you’re ONLY going to get tech here, you’ll be very unhappy. You should unsubscribe now. Last time I checked this is still my +personal blog+ where I get to write about whatever I am interested in. Overwhelmingly that’ll be tech, but sometimes I’m interested in other things.

I’m pretty sure implying that readers are stupid is not a “blogging best practice” and that chapter three of Scoble’s book, Naked Conversations,” isn’t entitled “Encouraging Your Audience to Abandon You.” But this is essentially Scoble does.

In the post that seems to have caused the strongest response, Scoble even told a reader that he was not only stupid, but hated:

I really hate people who don’t like to hear from people who have opinions and stuff. Good bye, you just made my readership smarter.

But he played the role of victim perfectly:

But some really missed the point I was trying to make, which is that if you try to talk about the issues you just get called names. Note that I didn’t call anyone names. I called myself names, if anything. I just put out my point of view on the issues.

But many people here decided to call names. I think that says more about them than it says about me.

This is all very curious to me since Naked Conversations, which I have 24 autographed copies of, states:

If you are doing it wrong, the blogosphere will tell you how to do it right and if you listen, your blog will probably fulfill your original goals.

Clearly, enough Scobleizer readers are complaining about Scoble’s political rants to grab his attention yet instead of listening to them, Scoble is trying to convince them that their perceptions of his blog are wrong. Just look at the data! 90% of all the garbage he spews is still tech-related! Only 10% is politics-related! His readers are attacking him!

I’m no social media expert but Scoble seems to have broken just about every social media “rule” that I know of.

Which begs the question: how can Scoble be considered a credible authority on social media and blogging when his actions are in direct conflict with the advice that he’s made money selling to others in Naked Conversations?

The same question was asked about his Naked Conversations co-author, Shel Israel, after heexperienced a massive breakdown of his own after being parodied by Loren Feldman.

Apparently both Israel and Scoble hold themselves to a different standard. Do as they say, not as they do. Got it?

Personally, I find Scoble’s “It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to!” temper tantrum to be acceptable. It is his blog and he can write about whatever he wants. After all, I actually have a vested interest in seeing the quality of his content go from uninsightful to amusingly disturbing (more content for me).

On the other hand, Scoble’s recent focus on the personal and divisive issue of politics is a bit puzzling. Scoble has built a name for himself as a “Tech geek blogger.” Not a “Political geek blogger” or “Angry geek blogger.”

Ostensibly, the people who read Scobleizer on a regular basis are looking for technology commentary, not inane political commentary. After all, it’s not like Scoble brings a unique perspective to political discourse in the United States. He’s an average American citizen with opinions. Big fucking deal. Nobody cares. As they say, “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” You’d hope that if someone like Scoble is going to stick his head out of his ass, he’d do it for a good reason. None exists here.

Furthermore, Scoble has sponsors. While he seems cognizant of the fact that his political rants jeopardize his relationships with his sponsors, you think he’d take a more responsible approach than simply accepting the risk that he might lose them. After all, his sponsors have obviously paid to associate themselves with him and it’s likely they did so based on an expectation that Scoble would stick to the script. Watching Scoble go apeshit over a presidential election probably wasn’t part of the deal. Thus, it’s fair to criticize Scoble for putting his sponsors in a position where they’re associated with a man who clearly has no control over his emotions and is incapable of exercising an adult level of restraint.

It’s all very ugly.

Bottom line: Scoble wrote a book that, amongst other things, advises companies to listen to their stakeholders using blogs. Yet he doesn’t listen to his own stakeholders and to add insult to injury, insults their intelligence and thanks them for not reading. At the same time, he chooses to put his uncontrollable need to make incoherent political statements before the interests of companies that have paid him to be a “Tech geek blogger.”

In other words, Scoble has not only proven that he’s an idiot, he’s proven that he’s a self-centered asshole. And if there was ever a perfect example of just how much bullshit has been published by “social media experts” who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, this is it.

Unfortunately, I have no doubt that in the ADHD-ridden tech blogosphere, Scoble’s blatant credibility problem will be overlooked and soon forgotten. After all, in the tech blogosphere, there’s no limit to how many times you can put your foot in your mouth. People will continue to compliment you on your nice shoes.