I was not a popular child. Despite all efforts to the contrary, I find myself to be a pretty friendly adult. It’s rare I have to tell someone we’re not actually buddies. In general, I welcome friendship. A person never has too many positive relationships in their life. Except in the case when a random healthcare provider tries to bro me without knowing me in a really creepy way.
When I’m up sick at six in the morning, I usually welcome some encouragement or well wishes from my Internet friends. Providence Health & Services, you are not my friend. Internet or otherwise. So, when I tweet this:
It is in no way cool for you to tweet this back at me:
Are you just trolling the Internet for sick people so you can tell them the kind of services they might be entitled to if they were Providence Health users? And what kind of weird robot script are you running, because why are you talking about second opinions?
Or is “Sounds horrible!” the first opinion? What would the second opinion be? “Yeah, that sucks, bro.”
When a person is in extreme pain after hours of suffering and days of similar suckiness is not the best time to educate them about your services. Especially when they aren’t your customer, haven’t initiated contact with you, and don’t in fact know you from Adam.
Those of you who know me know that social media management is just one of the things I do professionally in my real life, and this is maybe why this is bothering me so very much. I can’t decide if Providence Health & Services let the intern run their Twitter account, or if they let the 60 year old director run it after one 45 minute seminar put on by the American Marketing Association.
Pro tip: Organizations founded in 1959 may be a lot of things, but on the cutting edge of digital marketing is not one of them.
Tweeting weird and disjointed copy at me on my early morning sick-bed is the social equivalent of pressing your face to my bedroom window and whispering “You should have gone with Providence…” through the glass.
Especially when I point out just how creepy this is:
Posted about headache, got this. Does anybody else find it creepy? This isn't my insurance. SheDoesntEvenGoHere.gif https://t.co/0cIEanIab2
— Marina Rose Martinez (@Marinaisgo) September 13, 2015
And get this little slice of psychopathy:
No, bad healthcare service provider. I already called you out on being fucking creepy. You don’t get to wish me anything. At all.
In the analogy where Providence Health & Services is panting against my bedroom window, this tweet is them leaving me flowers after I chased them away with a broom and told my neighbors to keep an eye out.
The first rule of the Internet is there’s no girls on the Internet. But the second rule of the Internet is to try and keep the creepiness to a minimum. I know it can be difficult, it’s not like we can see each other and pick up on micro-expressions or tonal shifts here, but for fucking real, who thought this was a good campaign plan?
They’re doing it all over, not just to me.
This is legitimately their social media strategy: creep on people one at a time until someone signs up for their service. How’s that ROI chart even look? Who’s in charge here?
Don’t answer that. Just stop creep tweeting me.
UPDATE: It continues….
