“Digital Gossip” and playing it safe

One of the best things I’ve found about working for yourself is the absence of a company social media policy or online etiquette rules. If you work for someone else, you usually have to be quite guarded about what you say about your work on any publicly accessible websites or social media accounts. This is why every BBC personality has to state that their boring opinions “are not that of the BBC” in their Twitter bios just to avoid needless controversy.

So let’s say you work for an agency and you want to blow off steam. Most people are fine with a few pints after work and a good bitch in private. Some may decide to channel that energy into positive creative endeavours like Front Page’s excellent Poster Project. Others – like myself – may decide to post dumb shit on the internet that no one will read.

Introducing Digital Gossip, a lame attempt by After Digital (the agency formerly known as both We Are AD and Alienation Digital) at a cathartic blog about digital bullshit. I wonder where they got that idea from.

I assume the original intention of launching a whole new website, a brand and social media accounts was to separate Digital Gossip from their agency brand. That would have made more sense if the Digital Gossip Twitter wasn’t constantly retweeting their agency and staff member’s accounts though, wouldn’t it? (Not anymore though, see below).

Digital Gossip features disruptive Onion-style satirical articles such as “TimeHop posts to outnumber new Facebook statuses by late 2016” and “Instagram celebrates 5th by telling you something you already knew“. Haha, you tell those multi-billion dollar companies, guys.

My favourite article is the one where they detail the “Staples of digital agency life” where they jokingly list a bunch of quirky agency clichés:

“Your office probably looks like you stepped into a Google catalogue. Wait! Have you heard of Google!? Surely you haven’t been to a meeting with these guys and bragged about it ’til the end of time. Surely not.”

“I think we got the memo – agency life is less about the 4P’s and all about the 4B’s – beards, brogues, blazers and black-framed glasses right?”

Is this Digital Gossip? No, it’s dumb agency in-jokes. It’s flies hovering around the bullshit going “Haha, look at that bullshit.”. Compare this to Agency Spy which actually is gossip and has no qualms about claiming one agency ripped off another or pointing out how fake a burger looks. That’s some quality reading. Incidentally, if anyone knows what a “Google catalogue” is, let me know.

“What’s your point, asshole?” I hear you cry.

Here’s the thing, I’m trying to corner the market on Scottish blogs that talk smack about digital. What if they suddenly grow some balls and decide to post an article or two with some actual teeth? Maybe even featuring some real industry gossip? I’d be ruined.

But hey, as long as the good folks at After Digital/We Are AD behind Digital Gossip keep playing it safe, I shouldn’t have a problem.

UPDATE:

After tweeting this off to After Digital/We Are AD, they removed all the AD and staff tweets from the Digital Gossip Twitter. I forgot to take a screenshot and now I look like a liar. Thanks guys. Also, in the interest of balance, they claim to be a collective of bullshit merchants, not just folk from AD:

@habanerotweets @HeyFromAD We’re a collective of crap-chat contributors. Feel free to DM us if you want to add your sh*t to the site ?

— Digital Gossip (@Digital_Gossip) June 16, 2016

Would be a bit more believable if they hadn’t just deleted all the AD content off their Twitter account, yeah?