Tom Coates Kicks PR In The Nuts

Tom expresses the feeling that most well-known bloggers share: a learned avoidance -- if not physical disgust -- of PR folks who bombard us with PR.

[from This is not a brothel...]

It really pisses me off that press people consider me an outlet to push their marketing messages. It upsets me that people in the world can look at me and only see ways that they can scavenge some limited advantage through which to push their agendas. They see my personal expression, my unadulterated opinion and they think they can use it as a host for their parasitic bullshit.

Worse still, I'm not sure they understand how revolting I find the whole thing. I'm not sure they get that I don't consider it part of my life's mission to carry the messaging they want to distribute. I don't think they understand that it's an insult to me for them to think that my voice is so apparently for sale. I find it degrading, patronising, cynical. It makes me want to hurl.

One of the absolute worst things that has ever happened to my blog was an article last year that named plasticbag.org one of the UK's most influential blogs. I think it was on PRBlogger.com. The amount of crap I received from people who now viewed me as a useful and exploitable commodity put me off writing for months. Longer maybe. Being viewed like a piece of meat by people who wanted somehow to carve off a little of my feeble authenticity. Disgusting.

At times, the entire apparatus of 21st Century PR seems slimy and artificial. But then, you have to recall that in richly populated biological systems, 50% or more of the lifeforms are parasites, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that so many otherwise nice people succumb to the temptation of becoming a PRasite.

Comments

[Jack Yan]

Gosh, I sound like I am lucky. When I have my publisher’s hat on, I get plenty of releases. Fortunately, the majority of them are actually relevant—which must mean I have not been hit the way Tom has. (And would never want to.)