Banned (Almost) from CafePharma!

I’m not banned yet, but I soon expect to be banned from CafePharma. At the moment, all my posts have been deleted. Here’s the story, which is an object lesson in non-social online networking!

Recently, I have been visiting CafePharma and posting a few messages there to learn what the “other half” — sales — thinks of pharmaceutical issues. One of the more popular questions I asked was “Are Sales Reps Necessary?” This was part of research I was doing for this blog and an article that was recently published in Pharma Marketing News.

For those of you who have never heard of CafePharma, it is an online site for pharmaceutical sales representatives and features bulletin boards where visitors have anonymous “discussions” on a range of topics. I would characterize the majority of these discussions as “Potty-Mouth Gossip Fests.” Nevertheless, there can be some nuggets among the nuts.

[One such nut is “Boogalou Shrimp”, which is obviously an alias (everyone uses aliases on CafePharma – stupid me; I used my real name!). In his/her online profile, Boogalou Shrimp says his/her interests are “Leg humping.” Since joining on 11 September 2006, Boogalou Shrimp has made 3,212 posts to CafePharma; an average of more than one post per hour, 24/7. If this person is representative of the caliber of pharma sales reps out there, then it's no wonder Pharma has a public perception problem!]

All my CafePharma posts were deleted, including the entire thread “Are Sales Reps Necessary?”. Here’s what the CafePharma Administrator said:

“I’m sorry, but your posts are going to be deleted because they violate our board advertising and solicitation policy. Please do not continue to use this board to advertise your blog, or we will delete your account.”

A bit Stalinesque, wouldn’t you say? I was hardly advertising my blog, but doing some research for an article I was writing. I did link to a blog post I made as background, just as many other people do on CafePharma. The only thing is, I did it under my own name and not anonymously.

I expect now to be totally banned from CafePharma after they see this post and a similar one I made over there in response to a thread entitled “Why are threads being deleted???”.

What I said, in part, was this: “By deleting the entire Thread (which was “Are Sales reps Necessary?”) you effectively denied the free speech of all the members who responded to my original post and who wished to continue the conversation. I would have been happy to delete the link to my blog if it meant keeping the thread going. This, IMHO, is not enlightened moderation.”

This, obviously, threw down the gauntlet to nuts like Boogalou Shrimp who responded: “Is John Mack an asshat or a fagbot? I can’t decide?”

[“medrep1850,” another prolific CafePharma poster averaging 23 posts per day, had this to say: “Please go away, no one wants you here anyway, whiny baby.” medrep1850’s signature contains this solicitation: “Please help my special cunt foundation: stop the proliferation of cuntiness in America” plus a link to a video on YouTube. I have seen so many posts over there that denigrate women I can't even count 'em all!]

Interestingly enough, these posts remain on the CafePharma site despite policies that clearly forbid such posts. I refer to these policies: “we do not allow posts that constitute personal attacks on identified individuals.” And “Overtly racist posts and posts that seem designed to denigrate specific groups (i.e.. females, specific company reps,etc) will also be removed.”

It seems that some CafePharma users don’t like the delete first, ask questions later policy at CafePharma. Also,there may be some rebellion starting to brew among the rank and file members of CafePharma. Just today (19 January 2007) the following thread was posted anonymously: “Sarah please answer: EVERY thread now is hijacked by BL4, Medrep, etc.. People don’t want to talk about things beacsue (sic) they turned this once great site into a 16 year old’s playground. Why don’t you do anything?”

I second that motion! While the moderator has removed some posts in which Boogalou Shrimp and medrep1850 have threatened me personally, there still are one or two that denigrate me personally (unless I have misunderstood the meaning of “asshat”, “fagbot”, and “whiny baby”).

Others have also come forward with their own horror stories about CafePharma. Here are just a few comments I received:

“There is an expression that goes something like, “if you’ve never been sued, you’re not working hard enough.” This would probably apply to the response you received from CafePharma.”

“You’ve probably been censored from Cafe Pharma for not using the word “f*ck” enough and attempting to introduce some intellectual content. CP is a cesspit”

“After reading your post, I took a quick look at cafepharma to see how long it would take to find content truly worth censorship. Within 45 seconds I came across a post containing the infamous c word 3 times; language truly meriting deletion,. I don’t understand how they can justify removing all your threads. Like you said, if anything why not just edit the problem content. They saw who was posting, and were just looking for an excuse to boot you.”

“I’ve checked CP periodically over the years for a variety of purposes, e.g. check on my reps, research other companies, etc. I tend to believe that CP is not visited as often by high-performing reps; they’re too busy working. Go figure.”

Non-social Online Networking
There’s a lot I have to learn about social networking, but unfortunately CafePharma doesn’t have much it can teach me about that. I guess I will just be another one of its horde of anonymous visitors and posters who have as much community awareness as [insert your own species of non-social animal here; I am too stressed to Google one myself].

To paraphrase Groucho Marx: I don’t care to belong to a club that doesn’t accept people like me as members.

This was an edited post that appeared on Pharma Marketing Blog. I incorporated some additional comments I received from readers and fellow bloggers.

Resources

Read John’s Original Post at his blog, his article, Are Sales Reps Necessary? that started the whole flaming situation, or check out John’s free Pharma Marketing Network Forums.