Recently, the Daily Mail unveiled a new journalist in the Liz Jones / Jan Moir mould. She wrote a controversial article claiming that men often gave her free stuff and that women hated her for how she looked. More than 5000 comments on the article and a Twitter storm of epic proportions have disagreed with her.
Of course, some women hate other women just for being beautiful – but they are far more likely to dislike this woman because she’s arrogant, unpleasant, or a threat professionally. I’ve had female business rivals or bosses obstruct me – not because of how I look, but because we’re competing for similar positions and personality clashes happen, especially when there’s money at stake. She may also be disliked because a lot of women pay for their own train tickets, champagne and flowers, with their hard earned cash, and prefer to.
Most successful women have had to struggle to be taken seriously at work, and a female who talks about deliberately flirting with her boss to get ahead is bound to irritate women who have gained success through study, hard work and sacrifice. She minimises and dismisses their achievements. It’s also pretty insulting to men! While the Daily Mail must be rubbing their hands with glee, and many people may read Samantha’s future articles, they will be doing so with a sense of outrage, planning unpleasant rebuttals before even reading her words – no doubt perpetuating her persecution complex.
The link to the article has spread like wildfire around the web – thereby boosting the Mail’s link profile and earning them a tidy packet in advertising revenue. She has followed the article up with another claiming that the backlash simply proves her point. I’m sure they hope for a similar profit spike. Posting something controversial to get sales or links is a common tactic – indeed it’s pretty much how the Daily Mail works! Kris Roadruck tried this, stating that white hat seos were defrauding their clients, prompting an impassioned defence of ethical SEO from Rand Fishkin, titled White Hat – It F$%&*£$% Works. Both writers gained links, publicity and social currency from their articles.
It’s a useful but tricky tactic, that needs to be handled carefully. Larger, more respectable organisations who wouldn’t want the risk or stigma of being associated with a practice that could get you banned from the search results. It might also prompt the human evaluators at Google to have a quiet look at his websites and see if anything needs to be penalised – even his ‘safer’ sites could end up plummeting down the rankings. Kris Roadruck’s endorsement of black hat SEO may win him a few customers impressed by his results, but as Samantha Brick has learned, courting notoriety is a double edged sword.
