A foray into football forums…
With less than a month to go until The Vanity Game’s publication now (!!), myself and Blasted Heath have been upping the marketing activity. A big part of this involves promoting Beaumont’s blog and Twitter feed (Beaumont is the protagonist in The Vanity Game).
We thought we would post a few links to the Twitter feed etc around football and other forums as the novel is about a footballer and football fans might find the blog and Twitter feed funny.
Now, I know no-one likes to be sold stuff but my foray into football forums has ended up with me having my IP address banned from one football forum (clue: Combine the name of a famous Liverpool FC manager with the last word in a Smiths song about a dreaded sunny day and Keats and Yeats being on your side). Sure, I’ve been banned from bars in the past, but never an online space.
As a Liverpool fan myself, I hate to diss my own and all that, but…
Perhaps my post suggesting people that they might like to follow Beaumont on Twitter contravened the (extremely well hidden) first-post rules, or rules about selling stuff (is promoting a Twitter feed selling stuff? You don’t have to pay to use Twitter?), but the reaction from a few of the users was slightly over the top. Instantly, I was aggressively accused of being a ‘manc’ (i.e. a Manchester United fan). Do Man U fans often go on this forum to suggest Liverpool fans follow certain Twitter feeds? Perhaps certain Twitter feeds that are full of vitriol about Scousers or push out tweets that have highly effective subliminal messages that will make Liverpool fans subconsciously convert to the dark side, or accept that their team is in fact shit these days, or accept that Luis Suarez did actually make a racist remark to Patrice Evra?
But the best comment came from this enlightened poster:
‘Books ain’t electronic media dipshit, books are bundles of paper about fantastic things like kids getting killed in a chocolate factory, graphic ‘Nam reportage or drug adventures in Las Vegas. What you’ve done is make a Microsoft Word document, and as we all know reading massive blocks of text off a goddamn monitor is INRAT central’
Oh yes, of course, us e-book authors have it so easy don’t we? Not like in the days when Hunter S. Thompson not only had to write ‘Fear and Loathing’ whilst totally off his face, but also had to copy-edit, typeset, print, do the illustrations, design the cover, bind the books and market them all himself. Isn’t it amazing he managed to get all the spines straight while being whacked on mescaline?
I love the way these people are so adamant in their assumptions. I am now adamant in my assumption that they are a bunch of twats. My IP address was banned after I posted a smart arse reply to the above comment and complained that one poster had posted a homophobic comment, aimed at another poster who had identified himself as gay.
In hindsight, I should have perhaps chosen an LFC forum that does not actively encourage users to post porn (in a non-search engine-searchable area of the site) and has no policy against homophobic (and likely sexist) comments, but you live and learn.
And what the hell does ‘INRAT’ mean?!