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Comparing Peeple to the TV show REVIEW
Reviewing people for Peeple reviews is nothing like the Comedy Central show REVIEW
Ten years ago I was kicked off a then-popular website for criticizing the way its management treated my friends. Today, that would be akin to being banned from Twitter and would never happen. Things change so quickly in the internet world. Sometimes you just can’t believe your eyes about what unfolds in front of you. Take for example the new website Peeple that is being marketed as “like Yelp for human beings.” I read about that site and thought WTH, are we living in the UK?
This is a new website launching shortly that professes to provide a platform for people to “review” not just their pizza delivery guy but their friends, arch-enemies, neighbors, the asshole who cut them off in traffic, coworkers, ex-boyfriends / girlfriends . . .. It raises the possibility of extreme raunchiness, vindictiveness and overall incredible stupidity affecting your life more than shows you don’t watch on Reality TV do now.
It would seem that if you do not sign up for that website, nobody can post anything negative about you. So right there the dilemma for a normal, rational human being is completely solved. Yet you know people will crawl over to that site just out of curiosity and before you know it, wham, they’ll sign up, because people are idiots.
Think what this will do to real estate agents because the 2 things a subscriber needs to post a review is the person’s name and phone number. Who has their name and phone number plastered everywhere? Real estate agents. Any deadbeat who plops his butt on the face of a real estate agent wrapped on a bus bench, say, in East Sacramento, can whip out a cellphone and, because the bus is late, say something nasty about the agent.
Now, Peeple reviews is nothing like REVIEW the wild show on Comedy Central that is so darkly hilarious. Most review shows are about books, movies or food. This show is about life experiences. The host, who sort of dresses like a Century 21 agent from the 1970s is like Superman’s Clark Kent, a mild mannered dude oozing with sincerity from southern California who accepts challenges contributed from viewers to experience life events and report on what it’s like.
The reviewer gives 1/2 to 6 stars for things such as: What’s it like to get kicked in the balls? Or what’s it like to be buried alive? What’s it like to sleep with your teacher? Burning questions that all of us must wonder about at one time or another. Except when the character Forrest MacNeil (Andy Daly) tries so earnestly to perform his job, he continually messes up his own personal life. This is an excellent show: REVIEW. Peeple is just plain creepy.
Would Jon Snow Know Anything if He Sold Sacramento Real Estate?
The slogan if Jon Snow sold Sacramento Real Estate.
Before I talk about Sacramento real estate, I’ve got to point out I noticed that John Oliver meets Snowden is a high trending item online today, although, that was so Last Week Tonight ago, and while an intriguing, amusing and informative segment, it was not half the hilarious sentiment carried forth when Jon Snow meets Seth Meyers at a dinner party in Manhattan.
Not that I stay up late to watch TV, but thank goodness for technology and the main reason why I do not know when anything actually airs on television anymore. My husband handles the delicate balancing of TIVO, Netflix streaming and DVDs to the point where I don’t know half the time if what I’m watching on our big screen TV is this week or last year’s programming.
Even though I used to own a 19-inch television (set, as they were once called, a television SET, even though it was only one box).
Yes, sirree, in fact I started watching TV way back before stereo sound was invented, and we had to use rabbit ears to get reception, plus actually lift our butts up off the floor to change the channel on the TV, of which there were only 4 to choose among. Being the pioneer television watcher that I am, you’d think I might know all about television because of my vast experience. Although, like I mentioned the other day, I am vastly proud of my ability to turn on my television, connect to the thingie on the left or the other thingie on the right to either watch TV or a DVD. Not every pioneer TV viewer can do that.
This is very similar to some sellers who have friends who used to be in real estate or sell real estate in some other city and try to tell me that they know all about Sacramento real estate and our real estate market. Just because a person has a real estate license does not mean that person should be selling real estate, that’s the first problem. They make it too danged easy to get a real estate license, and the scary truth is an extremely large percentage of agents with a license have little idea what they’re doing. Obtaining a license doesn’t teach a person how to use it.
Second, you’ve got to be in the real estate business, working in the metro area where the real estate is located to have an opinion worth measuring and, even so, that opinion could be completely offset / skewed by a myriad of factors. Third, everybody works differently. You’ll rarely find two agents who do the same thing the same way. Production numbers are also no guarantee, because we’ve all met clueless agents connected to a feeding tube of clients who, despite the agent’s inherent inabilities to manage a real estate transaction, miraculously close sales on the same bell curve as those selling 2 or 3 homes a year.
When a mistrusting seller proudly proclaims to his agent that the seller has a friend in the real estate business, that generally means trouble. Especially if that friend lives in some other part of the country and is handing out contrary advice not pertinent to Sacramento real estate. One can’t just respond: put a sock in it because they don’t really understand the source of that advice, only that they trust that person and they don’t know their agent, must less trust that individual.
When I hear stuff like that, it makes me want to ask if they’d like to take my husband’s 13-inch TV off our hands.
If you need real estate advice, take it from an experienced real estate agent selling a decent volume of real estate and who works every single day in the business in your area. Choose an agent with 5-star reviews and ecstatic clients. If you need help with Sacramento Real Estate, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. I answer my cell.
Humor in Dying and the Affidavit of Death
You never know who you will touch with your words when you write online, but you can bet it will probably be a person who is alive. An agent in my office yesterday asked how I can be “everywhere online,” and he asked if I spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Not really. I write a blog every day about what I do as a Sacramento real estate agent. I’ve written other articles online that stay there and continue to be read by people day after day and year after year. Like I reminded the agent in my office yesterday, I was sitting on top of a desk talking to him. I was not at my computer.
That’s the beauty of writing online. People will read articles long after they are written. I also write a homebuying newsletter that I send out every week to my subscriber base. I can’t tell you how many people subscribe to it because it’s confidential information that About.com won’t let me divulge, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I don’t have to maintain nor update that database of subscribers.
I often highlight a new article I’ve written in my newsletter. Most of the time, I never hear anything from anybody, but the article I wrote about an Affidavit of Death generated a lot of emails (positive, thank goodness). First, I must admit that it is a humor piece. It starts out pretty serious, and then it heads into a different direction, one that I hope tickles. It might take you a little while to figure out that it is one huge parody. Real estate agents in particular find it amusing. It was a real estate agent who initially asked me about an Affidavit of Death as a marketing tool and prompted the article.
I’ve had people ask if the agent who initially wrote to me had responded to this article, and yes, she did. She changed her mind after reading it, apparently. Another agent wrote yesterday to say she received my newsletter while she was in the hospital with her husband. He died a few hours later. Right when she was sitting there reading my Affidavit of Death article! . . . and laughing. She thanked me for it. I guess humor helps. See, it’s stuff like this that makes my day.
It also reminds me that no matter how bad a situation might seem, there is generally an upside to it somewhere.
