Welcome to Not Me! Monday! For those of you that read MckMama, you've heard of this. For those of you that don't, feel free to check out her blog to get the background on how this started as a way to tell about some of the funny things that you generally would refuse to admit to doing.
Fifth Installment...
I'm not really a huge fan of Facebook, particularly lately when it seems that it's only good for spreading viruses and causing my co-workers' computers to be confiscated by UNC technology services for upwards of 4 weeks to get them "cleaned". (Which is a totally different story in and of itself. 4 to 6 weeks to get a virus off of a computer? Really? At one of the leading public institutions for higher education in the country? Okay. If you say so.)
In fact, I initially opened a Facebook account only so that I could have access to the pages of our student-athletes if I ever needed to "check in" with (or on) them. There were many times, during those early days, when I would deny friend requests from my actual friends, telling them that I did NOT want to get involved in the time-sucker that is the Facebook "News Feed".
But I eventually relented, started adding "friends", and am now a regular Facebook peruser. It's one of the four windows that I keep "open" in my browser all the time (with the other three being my email, my blog, and the NCAA database through which I find interps for work). It's certainly helpful for keeping up with what is going on in the lives of my friends and acquaintances, particularly those whom I know from my childhood in Owensville, Missouri and my college days at Westminster.
But I'm still not addicted. Or that's what I tell myself. I haven't yet been pulled into Pathwords. Or Farmville. Or the distribution of "gifts" or "flair". And I don't feel compelled to keep my status updated on a regular basis.
Which is why I would NEVER think about participating in a photo contest that is based entirely on (gasp!) "popular vote" via jasmere's Facebook fan site. Because, to take seriously the objective of winning the $250 jasmere shopping spree, I would have to actually solicit votes from my Facebook friends. Which is certainly not my style, and, admittedly, flies in the face of my goal to not devote much time to the site.
But I entered. Because, for goodness' sake, I COULD WIN $250. On JASMERE. And that, my friends, made it worth it.
But I would NEVER stoop to the level of keeping the window with my entry (a picture of Ivie holding several purchased-from-jasmere bags) open at all times from the beginning to the end of the contest. And, whenever time permitted (let's just say several occasions during the day), refreshing the window to see if any friends had voted.
Nor would I enter it as my Facebook status not once, twice, thrice, but, well, six (I think, but might have lost track) times during the course of the contest to make sure it rose to the top of my friends' "News Feeds". And I certainly did not ask my siblings, husband, and visiting friend, Stacy, to post it to THEIR Facebook statuses, as well.
And I would never create a Facebook "Note" and "tag" up to the limit of 25 friends so that they would get a personal email with a request to "Please Vote for Ivie!!!".
And sending Facebook messages out to dozens more Facebook friends to get them to click on the picture and vote? NO WAY.
Also, since I've never been very competitive (I hate games!), I promised myself that I would just focus on obtaining votes for Ivie. And see what happened. Because, seriously, there was no way that I was going to be able to actually win, anyway, right? I mean, how many times have I entered my children into online photo contests that were based on popular vote, knowing that it was a complete and utter waste of my time? So I would not pay any attention to the other contestants' pictures and vote count. It would just be something fun to try, and maybe, just maybe, I would be selected by the jasmere folks for one of the "runner-up" $50 credits that they were going to pick from the group of non-winners...
So, if you looked over my shoulder at my laptop at any point during the contest, which began late Tuesday night and continued through last night, you would NOT have seen four Facebook windows open. One to my "home page", one to Ivie's picture on the jasmere fan site, one to my friend Brooke's picture on the jasmere fan site (more on this later), and one to the general "fan photo" page on jasmere's fan site. And, had you observed me for an hour or so, you would NOT have seen me occasionally refresh these pages and count the number of votes received by the various pictures. Nope! Again, that would have been a total waste of valuable time.
And you also would NOT have found me actually emailing the jasmere folks to confirm that 1) a person could only "vote" one time for each entry, since there was one photo in the contest who had several obvious repeat "voters", and 2) a person did NOT have to be an actual "jasmere fan" in order for their vote to count. Nope. I did not take the time to do that. Because, remember, I went into this thing telling myself it was just for fun and I wasn't going to put much time into it...
So. Enough about this. Other than to show you the picture/caption I used for the contest (for those of you who read my blog but aren't my "friend" on Facebook).
I know you're all on the edge of your seats wondering what happened, aren't you?!? Well, wait no longer...
After all that STRESS and Facebook work, I ended up with 103 comments/votes. The next closest entry finished with 72.
So I won, right? Well, ultimately, yes. But, due to a glitch in the system initially, I didn't get the "official" win from jasmere. I won't go into details (no one other than me really cares, anyway), other than to say that when I brought it to their attention, they were quite professional (as they always are), very apologetic, and quickly corrected the mistake by giving me $251 of jasmere credit (an extra dollar to make up for the oversight).
They asked if I needed a "public" congratulations. I said, "HECK NO!". The jasmere credit is all I wanted out of this!!! Though I DID tell them that I already had this story planned for Herman Nation, even before the results were published, so I was going to need to comment about it on there. They were okay with this, given that they are fully aware that Herman Nation has a readership of about 15!
Anyway, moving on. To make this even better, Brooke was awarded one of the runner-up $50 credits by the jasmere judges! Her photos of Emerson were adorable. Here's her collage (which I jokingly told her was "cheating", since she used more than one photo, but I agree wholeheartedly that showing off these cute clothes would have been difficult to do in one picture without Emerson looking like a pink, unable to move (let alone jump!), amorphous being...):
And because Brooke and I are "in it together" when it comes to jasmere and social shopping websites, we agreed early on during the contest that if either of us won, we would share $100 of of the prize with the other. Win-win that way, right? So now we each have $150 of fun money to spend on jasmere! What a great weekend!
So. The moral of this looooong story? I still deny an addiction to Facebook. And I still believe that I'm not competitive by nature. Whether or not you agree with me, particularly after reading this post, is your call. But I'm certainly ecstatic that I can now go back to only having ONE Facebook browser window open at any given time.
Oh, and I almost forgot. For the record, I'm very glad I didn't ship the bags featured in the photo off to their intended recipients (my sister and sisters-in-law) until after they were able to help me win a shopping spree! But girls, they'll be on their way to you later this week, I hope, if I can get my act together...
Lastly, a HEARTY THANK YOU to all my Facebook friends/blog readers that took the time to "Vote for Ivie!!!". You guys rock. And, now, I'll leave you alone.
3 comments:
And I certainly did NOT put it as my status, too, because I wanted you to win! ;o)
And I did NOT make Ted vote too-who usually completely ignores things like that on facebook. I would NEVER do that! :)
And I certainly was NOT offended that you pointed out to the vast readership of Herman Nation that I was unaware that 102>72. Thanks for the great blog - jasmere nation is a big fan of herman nation!
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