The Poetry of
Jack Scott

Notebook

Dec 6
2015

Facebook Redux

My Twitter infraction was embarrassing, however innocent. I didn’t realize I had been infracting. I still don’t understand clearly what spamming is. Vaguely it seems to be the sending of unsolicited messages to people who don’t welcome them. I was posting, not to individuals per se, but rather to publications or to those representing those publications. My message was, “I’d be very pleased if you if you would give some attention to my new website: Poetry of Jack Scott Poemystic.com. Thank you.” I sent about fifteen of those and I got busted. As I said my suspension was rescinded in a couple of hours, but I’m left with the quandary of guessing at what exactly was my offense. Was it quality/content or quantity? I could not find out whether a complaint had been made against me. And I don’t know whether the fact that I was not selling anything carried any weight. My attempt at “publication” is free.

Now it seems I have gotten myself in water of the same temperature with Facebook. I entered into a very systematic and thorough exploration of as many Poetry Groups as I could find. I then scanned them to see which ones seemed suitable for my poetry. I joined as many as would accept me as a member and then gradually submitted one poem each to several at a time. There are a lot of them and I came nowhere close to sending to all of them. My strategy, if it may naively be called that, was to see what kind of reception my work might get from those I applied myself to and then narrow the list down to those with which I felt most comfortable. I don’t, for instance, court an audience whose vision through rose colored glasses is exclusively of daffodils and tulips. This was unfamiliar territory to me, but I felt that my approach seemed sensible and logical. To make a long story short, Facebook suspended me from making any sort of contact with any and all Groups for a week. When I tried to find out from Facebook the reason(s) for my suspension I got nowhere at all. Again, I couldn’t find out whether a complaint had been made against my actions. In fact I couldn’t get from them any information at all. Consulting my Facebook for Dummies the closest reason I could guess was that I was accused without accusation of spamming again. I see very clearly that other poets make multiple submissions because I see their identical work in several groups at the same time. This makes me timid, even afraid, to test the waters with more than a toe at a time once I am back in business. I’m going to try again to find out what the boundaries, the limits and parameters, are- their definition of what they mean by spamming. Having discovered Facebook I fully realize how much I need it. It has become a necessity. I fully intend to play by the rules, but I think I need help from someone more experienced to find out exactly what those rules are.

Meanwhile, I have used my time- a lot of it- to place the Copyright line beneath all the poems. No maybe I’ll be free to do some writing and other work on the website itself.

 

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From Poemystic.com