It’s not big huge Earth shattering news, and certainly came as no surprise to creator Jill Gollick, when Facebook deleted the profiles of her characters from her online social media saga “Story2Oh!” - what was most disappointing was how it all transpired.

Facebook just deleted the profiles for Ali Barrett, Simon Beals, Devon Ross and Jory Goudge. Coincidentally these are all of the characters I mentioned during last night’s CaseCamp presentation. Apparently some of the people who got friended by Ali and Simon were very offended and blew the whistle on the project.

It’s sad because it was fun having them on Facebook and using Facebook for storytelling way back in January was a really effective way to communicate with the audience. But even by early March when we ran the second experiment, Facebook was already too crowded an environment and we did very little storytelling in that venue.

It seems to me that early this year, Facebook took a strong cultural shift. Instead of being an underground play space it turned into a business must-have. People are serious about and on Facebook.

I made a rather large boo-boo in not taking this cultural shift into account. Some of the attendees had gotten friendship requests from Simon and Ali and were upset to learn that imaginary people were rubbing shoulders with them. I did apologize to them, from stage and again in person — rather profusely in fact. But too little too late apparently.

The outpouring of support for Jill and her project has been sweet to see and read. While no one disputes Facebook’s TOS and inherent right to remove the fictional profiles there has been a very visceral reaction against the vocal opponents of fictional narrative within social media who were also attending CaseCamp.

Some samples from the Story2Oh!’s comments:

And if the people who raised an uproar at Casecamp worked for me - I would have fired them for being near-sighted sticks in the mud.

What you’ve created is a tremendous opportunity - and if those F*cks can’t see that then they need to be thinned from the herd.

and

Now it comes out that the woman with the biggest bee in her bonnet? A marketer. Are you kidding me? Someone who spends their lives trying to figure out new and interesting ways to get us to want to buy shit we probably don’t need.

and

But what’s really heinous is the idea that people who attended a conference in “new” media were so closed-minded and somehow offended (though I really don’t see how they could be. You would think they would want to learn how it was done) that they decided to “tell on” Jill and her storytelling team instead of simply ending the “friendship.”

Those folks will never think to the future. Those folks will never be able to innovate, adapt or overcome. Those folks hold the rest of us back. They are a sign of the “grim meathook future” (look it up) that awaits us if we keep doing things the same old way we always have instead of getting down to the business of learning and growing up.

And let’s be real - no page on FB represents “reality.” Every page is crafted, sanding off all the blemishes and warts and presenting the best possible “you” there is.

That’s just a sampling and by no means among the more vitriolic expressions of support for Jill - and, to be fair, there were opposing perspectives posted as well but moat of those were equally sympathetic. The true outrage seems to be how CaseCamp became a focus for using social media as a marketing tool - and how any use of creative expression within Facebook or other social media outlets should be subjugated to the needs of business in reaching people.

Excuse me whilst I blow the bad smell of marketing from out of my nose.

There - that’s better.

What a bunch of fucktards to think that Facebook or MySpace or any other site is the exlcusive domain of marketing. But, of course, that’s just my opinion.

Check out Eden Spodek’s One Degree post for more angles on it all - the initial post is a tad self-serving, the comments are more interesting.

CaseCamp has obviously stumbled big time by showing just how behind the times and limited in their imagination they are in their attempts to partner marketing money with creative minds. They are as dull little children in the corner of the schoolyard whom no one wants to play with anymore because they just smell too awful.

On her Running With My Eyes Closed blog, Jill wrote:

I never wrote anything for television that raised this kind of passion.

On Blue Murder, Cal Coons and I wrote a two-parter about a string of abortion doctor murders. that came down hard on the pro-lifers. Blue had an audience in the million range back then and the thing still airs. Nary a hate mail.

When I was on Metropia, which admittedly had a far smaller audience, we used 50 euphemisms for cunnilingus. Even the broadcaster didn’t blink.

But put a character on Facebook and send out an offer of friendship to people?! That created a furor.

To be fair, it wasn’t just any people Ali and Simon friended. They friended the entire writing community and a lot more strangers without consequence. It was when they friended new-media-marketing-guru-types that the controversy started.

One of the most offended, Eden Spodek, states her case in this post on one of her blogs, One Degree.

I know lots of people are afraid of making friends on the web. But the internet through the world wide community of writers connected, communicated and become more cohesive, especially during the WGA strike. It is an atmosphere of creative support. Through this blog I have built friendships with some fantastic writers around the world. Their generousity amazes me.

The social networking gurus and evangelists? Not so much.

Worth considering if you’re thinking of creating for the digital space.

Well said.

For me the best thing to come out of this whole clusterfuck is the number of people who used the word: Fucktard. Good for you, Denis McGrath!

I could go on forever abut this but, frankly, I have more creative things to attend to - like telling stories. Let me just fill up a bit more space with one of the comments I posted out there in the tubes:

“Social Media” includes every possible way human beings interact. We are not mere pawns - consumers - dully waiting to be told or sold what to do and buy. We converse. We share. We share our ideas, our views, our songs, our poetry and our art. We engage with others in gossip, political discourse and shameless marketing punditry.

Social media is where we gather to tell each other the stories of our selves. We have done this for millennia - around the fire, in the marketplace, in the school yard, around the water cooler, or whilst lying on a hill together beneath the stars.

We tell the stories of ourselves. We tell the stories of each other. We create ourselves and we create new worlds. We tell stories.

Creating characters and scenarios in social media is not a crime - it is not an aberration - it is not deceitful. To lie to gain power or money - to lie to deceive, manipulate and abuse - these are acts of deceit which must not be tolerated. To create, to craft, to entertain, to enlighten, illuminate and engage - these are not lies - these are stories - they are songs and dances crafted with words and images, sights and sounds, characters which generate empathy and bring out the best of ourselves. That this happens in a social forum, instead of in the lonely dark of a room with a TV screen, should be deemed a good thing and encouraged.

To “rat out” someone who makes this effort - as if they were committing some crime - is pathetic and small minded. Because someone creates something that is “not real” doesn’t mean it has no value or no purpose. That fiction can draw together people in their real lives is something to be valued far more than the so-called “reality” of plain talk, sales and marketing.

Interactive screenwriting - social media theatre - should be encouraged. Toss a few coins at the busker, if you will, or walk past and ignore them whilst hearing their songs. But don’t push them off the streets and claim the path as yours alone.

Shame on anyone who tries to silence the telling of our stories. No doubt you shall find yourselves as cretinous characters in a tale yet to come - and deservedly so.

I had a dear friend who once told me: We are the stories we tell of ourselves and each other. Her words meant a lot to me then - as they do now.

Keep writing yourselves.

The future will be better tomorrow.

Cheers.

Disclosure: I’ve known Jill for years and have had the pleasure of working with her on Canadian Sesame Street and through her continuing involvement in the Writer’s Guild of Canada. I think she’s very smart.