Bow your head as the “double exclamation point headline” dies a brutal death at the hands of Facebook. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Somewhere, an English teacher smiles, as the double exclamation point headlines die.
Six years, four months, and two weeks after the birth of Coupeville Sports, in the moment right before I hit 6,600 articles, Facebook has done me dirty.
Three times in the past four days, Zuckerberg’s computer algorithms have momentarily paused in their work of stealing all of our info and dispersing it willy-nilly for profit, to inform me I don’t meet “community standards.”
When this happens, Facebook, which never, ever responds to my queries, blocks the story link I’m trying to publish and makes it so I, and I alone, can see it on their website.
Which is a major pain in the tushie. And not the first time this has happened.
I’ve logged 7,579 tweets, many of them featuring links to my stories, and never once been blocked by Twitter.
But, the reality is Facebook overwhelmingly dwarfs Twitter in an ability to drive an audience to my blog.
Which is the whole point of this. Not to collect retweets or likes or shares, but to have people read what I wrote.
Facebook is where the most parents are camped out, the most grandmas and uncles, the most next door neighbors from your old hood, and where I can tag 150 people on a story if I choose.
As much as I scream and rage at my computer when Facebook refuses to work and show a photo with the story link, or any of a thousand other irritants, I need it to drive people to my work.
And I can’t do that when the links to my stories keep on getting blocked.
So I went through and looked at Facebook’s “community standards,” and laughed and laughed and laughed some more at the company’s rules, a load of sanctimonious drivel it definitely, positively does not uphold in any kind of consistent manner.
Trying to find where I was bothering their monitoring system took some work, especially, since as I mentioned, Facebook has no intention of every actually interacting with me.
And this is what I came up with.
The only one of their “community standards” I come remotely close to bumping up against is their “crackdown” on fake news.
And it’s because a computer system is flagging my links, and not an actual human.
Instead of looking at my articles, instead of reading six years worth of reporting, the system is tripping on the most basic of things – the double exclamation points in my headlines.
Facebook’s faceless cops see those eye-catchers, and immediately equate my words with the misleading headlines you see tacked on so many “stories” which are designed to, well, fool and inflame people.
Now I know why I use the exclamation daggers, and most of my readers know why as well.
And it’s not to fool or inflame people.
From day one, it was a way to interject an added layer of excitement, to set myself apart from the newspapers for which I previously wrote.
I’ve positioned myself as an alternative, with a more impassioned, more pro-Coupeville writing style than I used in my previous editorial life.
But I hold fast to many of the rules I learned from my newspaper mentors.
I don’t make stuff up, I get confirmation, I publish news.
A human being who reads my articles knows that. They might not like every story I write, but they can see I’m not some rabid nut screaming at the world from his mom’s basement, or a faceless bot trying to collect “likes.”
Sure enough, when I tested this out, simply removing the exclamation points and leaving my headlines exactly, word-for-word, the same as before, presto, no problem posting links whatsoever.
So, I face a quandary.
I can continue to be the same obstinate curmudgeon I am with most things relating to my writing, or I can, on this one small thing, be smart and accept you have to sometimes go with the flow.
Ultimately, the double exclamation point headlines are part of what makes Coupeville Sports what it is, but they don’t define it.
I can live without them, if I have to, but I can’t live without what is, regretfully, the biggest tool in driving readers to my work.
There’s a good chance you’re reading this article right now because you clicked on a Facebook link.
So fine, Zuckerberg, if it’ll get your soul-sucking bots off my case (and give them time to get back to stealing all my personal info), I can adapt.
The double exclamation points go on hiatus, at least for now.
Give a little, to get a lot.
Coupeville Sports 