How To Get More Diggs Follies, Part 1

Digg Tactics 101: The How To Get More Diggs Follies
- Useless advice which may, or may not, sound good
A logical fallacy is an inaccurate or intentionally misleading misapplication of logic. I first ran into the term about 30 years ago while learning about how the art of persuasion and propaganda was used commonly in our society for a variety of things which included advertising, politics, religion, and just about any topic of debate.  I don’t normally concern myself often with unintentional logical fallacies, we all make them,  but I do make exceptions where humor can be involved.  Some things people say, which sound logical when you don’t think them through, can be hilarious when examined further.

Let’s use the subject of How To Get More Diggs, since that is a hot topic that just won‘t seem to go away, and start out by pointing out some of the more humorous advice given when answering the question How To Get More Diggs.

‘Join Digg’ or ‘Create An Account’

This bit of advice is something which is so obvious that anyone of a 50 IQ or higher ought to be able to figure out with-in seconds of first landing on the Digg Site. I find this as an especially bit of wasted advice because of the fact that if someone is asking about  “More Diggs”, then they apparently have “Diggs” in the first place! The bottom line concerning this bit of advice is that  the Join Digg or Create an Account at Digg are versions of the same advice which are a complete waste of time and effort to use in the answer of the question “How Do I Get More Diggs?”.

Submit Interesting Content

“I’ve seen this comment about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it!” My apologies to Michael Keaton and the movie Beetlejuice for the shameless rip-off of this quote, but I found it funny and fitting.

It seems to me that most people put this comment in their advice about How To Get More Diggs simply because it sounds good, from my perspective they mustn’t stop and thought about this comment.  If they would have stopped and thought about it, then surely they would have considered the fact of what is “Interesting” is solely dependent upon what the Individual decides is interesting and what some group or outsider tells them is interesting.

For example, Digger A submits an article about  Paris Hilton.  Digger B looks at the article and thinks “What a bunch of  mindless fluff” and he thinks it’s the most boring crap in existence.  Digger C, however, love Celebrity News and buys all of the supermarket tabloids every week to read when shows like E! are not on the television… so she diggs the post and shouts it to all of her friends.

So tell me if this the article interesting, boring or spam and who decides?  If your choice is anything other than “The Individual reading the article” then there are issues at work here that needs help far beyond my Psyche 101 courses. LoL  So this sage advice is actually useless crap that doesn’t mean anything of value.  A person submitting a post to Digg should find the item submitted as “Interesting“, or ‘Possibly Interesting to someone on Digg“.

Never Get Buried

I hate to say it, but I’ve seen some damn stupid comments in my life… but this one ranks right up there in the top 2. I am sure those offered this advice meant well, and I really feel badly about the possibility of making them feel bad over this, but after hours of contemplation I simply can’t pass this one up.   I just want to scream out “Damn People, use your head for more than a hat rack!”

Now to be fair…  this bit of advice does sound as if it originally came from some very sound advice and it actually made sense at one time, but due to it being copied and being tweaked it in order to make it appear different than the original - the meat potatoes of the advice was cut out and tossed away, leaving the fat and gristle. In other words this bit of advice was taken out of context and the person doing so wasn’t bright enough or aware enough to catch the error.

So I gave you a few seconds to come up with why this is a totally absurd comment to make, now I’ll tell you.  On Digg we don’t have any control over whether we get buried or not.  We can post the most entertaining or intelligent article in existence, but someone will run across it and view the article as stupid or a total waste of space.  That’s the beautiful thing about people, we tend to have different tastes in the things we read or hear.

I’ve seen numerous articles, which were excellent pieces of work, which were well researched and thought out, and they were buried simply because some friggin’ button pusher, who’s ability to read and comprehend was somewhere around that of the North American Tree Frog, decided to go for the spam or bury button.  So down the ole Digg Cemetery Road it went while articles pertaining to Paris Hilton or GTA or Golf Courses Around The World thrived.

To give someone wishing advice on How To Get More Diggs the impression that we can somehow control whether our articles get buried or not is misleading at best.  All the submitter at Digg can hope for is to post items they find interesting or they think others will find interesting and the rest is up to the Digg Staff and Management and the other members of Digg. We‘ll talk about friends later..

Digg Posts And Be Dugg In Return

This is a huge fallacy born out of the desire of a person who sees the world as a place where everyone is unselfish and kind.  This advice is another ’sound good” bit of false wisdom,  but at least it has a basis in fact.

The fact is that if you digg someone’ else’s post, they will not necessarily digg yours.  Some people will, others won’t for various reasons. I do advocate the idea that one should make friends and mutual friends, then digg their stuff.  I don’t advocate the idea that everyone of your friends will digg you in return on all your posts. This also ties into Friends, Fans and Mutual Friends.

Digg top stories again

Uh, excuse me one sec here while I snicker.

Ok, I‘m done.

I am one of the first ones to ask the question “How the hell do you spam a site like Digg, the whole damn site is nothing but a legitimate spam site.“  On the other hand I would be one of the first to consider anyone following this bit of advice a spammer.

I don’t care how you alter the “Top Story”, you are still working on the same article - or a similar article of the same topic.  One of the purpose of a social bookmarking site is to be social, so you should add your comments to the already posted article  Digg is not set up only to post your own stuff, it’s a community intended for people to interact.

Now if you can find up-dates to the article or story, by all means do a follow up of the Top Posted item and try to get it into Digg before anyone else can… then share it with all your friends through the shouting process.  With luck you can ride the wave and get diggs from some of those who dugg the first article.  .

Be creative, crappy and humorous

Ok, I’ve read what the person had to say about this and have one question:  “WTF?  Crappy??”  Perhaps “Crafty” is the word intended, but being crappy on Digg can put your feet on the road to low diggs and being banned from Digg.

Remember what I said about “Interesting”, being creative or crafty or funny can often attract people.  There also has to be a warning here, when you are trying to be funny… Remember, everyone’s humor is not the same.  You tread dangerous ground when utilizing humor, especially if there is any way your humor could be considered as an insult by someone.

Post like an American

Sounds like an 80s song by the Bangles.  LoL

When I first saw this, I thought “Good deal, dude, like let’s alienate people on the net even more by taking an approach of the arrogant and ignorant American.”  I still maintain that thought, time has not diminished my opinion on this one.  My hunch is that this was first thought up by an American.

Don’t post or think like an American - or any other group.  Post and think as yourself.  If the things you find interesting don’t work well, find other things that you feel may be interesting to submit.  When you begin projecting American Ideals upon things, people will find offense in it.  The internet has Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Japanese, and many other people on the net who are just as proud of their culture and society as Americans or Europeans are of theirs.  Don’t alienate on purpose, people around the world can often take it for granted that a person is an American or European, they will naturally view things from that perspective and post things familiar to them.

– Next “To Friend or Not to Friend, that is the question!“