Social media gurus: You’re on notice.

Humorist and social critic B.J. Mendelson has three-quarters of a million people following him on Twitter, but if you ask him, it’s all a load of bullshit. So he wrote a book called Social Media is Bullshit to debunk the cloud of hype surrounding Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and whatever else is coming next. Mendelson says these trendy tools aren’t the revolutionary social shifts that the futurist, utopian media geeks would have you believe. Take that, Mashable.

Mendelson spoke on the phone with Seven Days in advance of his Sunday afternoon talk at 4 p.m. at Burlington’s Phoenix Books.

SEVEN DAYS: First thing I have to mention is that you did pitch me via social media.

B.J. MENDELSON: (laughter) Well, that’s the thing that I’m constantly telling people, the platforms are just tools, and that’s something that’s been around forever if you look at the beginning of the web.

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Tyler Machado was the digital media manager at Seven Days. He mostly worked behind the scenes making sure the website, email newsletters and social media feeds stayed in tip-top shape.

One reply on “7 Questions for B.J. Mendelson, Author of “Social Media is Bullshit””

  1. I saw this asshat on CNN. It sounds to me like he tried to get popular on the net and failed and now he is mad at it. Social media works. Welcome to 2012!

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