I kind of hate unwritten rules. The self-policing that everybody is just supposed to know gives people a really good excuse to look down their noses at people. If it’s a good rule then it should be written down. Begging people for retweets on Twitter is one of those unwritten rules. People usually don’t do it because they know it can annoy others or because it can bring unwanted negative attention.
But there can be good reasons for doing it. Let’s say that your favorite hockey team is holding something you’d like hostage to the demand for an unreasonable amount of attention, essentially FORCING you to beg for those RTs to even get close to your goal?
Such is the plight of our friend Jimmy here:
RETWEET PLEASE to help me get a free jersey from @DetroitRedWings pic.twitter.com/MrUEY47P3P
— Jimmy St.Denis (@JamesStDenis35) September 9, 2015
10,000 RTs for a kid with 200 followers is a big damn ask from the Red Wings‘ social media team and it doesn’t quite sit right with me. The Wings’ Twitter feed has 645,000 followers and I can’t find a tweet from them that even has that many. Dangling a carrot like one measly jersey over the head of a fan like that almost seems mean. I understand that they can’t just give jerseys away to any kid who asks for one, but if you’re going to respond in the first place, responding with the equivalent of “take a long walk” isn’t a great move. You could always set the bar lower for him and then just casually ignore the legions of copycats who would demand the same.
Well, when Jimmy came across our mentions doing the Twitter equivalent of going door-to-door begging for donations, we heard him. However, since we’re also businesslike, we made our RT contingent upon us getting something out of it.
@JamesStDenis35 Only if we get to pick the player.
— Winging It In Motown (@wingingitmotown) September 15, 2015
Honestly, I have no idea why Jimmy would agree to this demand, knowing full well that agreeing to let the internet decide any clothing decision for you is a bad choice (especially one that’s dependent on getting at least 10,000 people to help you out). My original thought was to say that we would only help with an RT if he accepted a Dan Cleary jersey, but instead wanted to go another direction with it:
RT this guy’s tweet. He said we’d get to pick the player if he gets there. We’ll put it up to a fan vote. https://t.co/9X4EcVx2kr
— Winging It In Motown (@wingingitmotown) September 15, 2015
To tell you honestly, I don’t know if he’ll get to the 10K threshold. He’s a bit over 1,000 right now. For further honesty, I don’t know if the Red Wings were ever planning on giving him a player jersey rather than a blank one, so it could all be for naught anyway. I am extremely curious to see what direction the internet would go with this though. Should we help him and get a player he would like (He has indicated Mrazek, Tatar, or Green would be nice), or should we punish him for asking for our help by helping get him a Jason Williams jersey?
I want you to do two things:
2. Enter a player name into the form below. Please put only the last name.
Even if we don’t get to the 10,000 RTs needed to help this kid earn his jersey despite the Wings’ setting a mountain in front of him, we’ll release the results of the voting before the season starts.
[Voting Closed]
