This #avvo used car salesman conference is deeply disturbing.

and

Remember something you avvocating maniacs, if you’re not a good lawyer, people will find out, despite your blogs and online garbage #avvo

Avvo was displaying the #avvo twitter timeline on the podium.

One of the attendees, Sonny Cohen, wrote a blog post, When Flames Erupt in the Twitter-enabled Conference Backchannel (no, seriously, that’s the title). Conceding that Scott and Brian “had some great points about abuse of social media, thoughtless blogging and even the alleged ‘social media gurus’ (SMG) who industrialize the process of building real human networks,” he nonetheless called them “harassers,” “flamers,” and “jackass” (half a jackass each, apparently).

Cohen’s post, and his Twitter response to Scott, were overwrought and self-important to the point of narcissism. It’s Twitter; if someone says something you don’t want to hear, you can block it. Brian and Scott didn’t even know that Avvo was displaying the timeline on the podium. (Had they known, they would have had a lot more fun with it.)

Saving for another day modern Homo Internetus’s tendency to throw around heavy words like “harassment” in response to the slightest criticism: are narcissism and hysteria prerequisites for a job as an internet marketer?

I posted a comment to the blog post, to the effect of “‘Harassers’? Really, Sonny? Credibility fail.” Or rather, I tried to post a comment, but Cohen did not publish it.

Add intellectual cowardice to the list of character traits that Cohen is displaying in this episode.

Brian’s target, it seems, pled guilty to mortgage fraud in state court in New York, and while awaiting sentencing and delinquent with the bar continued to “network” as a real estate lawyer on Twitter. When Brian inquired, she responded. There was some back-and-forth, and then she deleted her own replies to Brian and claimed not to have (“I don’t know why my replies are not showing up . . . what did I delete??? are you insane?” Then she changed her bio on Twitter—three times. (Tannebaum twitted, “I want to apologize to everyone for turning @kasesq94 into a “Social Media Consultant.”)

I sympathize with Scanlon, trying to make the best of the very bad situation she’s gotten herself into. She may well have a partner and employees (if you believe her website, she has a staff of beautiful people in expensive suits) who are depending on her to make a smooth transition to what she calls her “hiatus,” and a family depending on her to bring food home during that break.

I also understand the appeal of “Social Media Consultant.” It is a title that any idiot can give himself; it requires no sort of expertise whatsoever, and no equipment but a computer with an internet connection (which the former lawyer won’t be using to practice law). Barriers to entry in this specialty are very low. Scanlon will not be the first lawyer who, forced out of the practice of law, has redefined herself as a blog or other social media expert.

In fact, it follows from the basic premise of online marketing—that, as self-proclaimed expert Adrianos Facchetti writes, “You are what Google says you are”—that by merely marketing yourself online as an expert you become an expert qualified to take people’s money to tell them how to become experts by marketing themselves online as experts. It’s turtles all the way down.

So what’s wrong with that? If some naive lawyer, not having the first clue about online social media, wants to pay a convicted, disbarred, or otherwise disgraced ex-lawyer to show her the ropes, what harm is done?

None, if the naif knows what she is getting and the consultant doesn’t lead her to do anything untoward or deceptive. But when the disgraced lawyer is deliberately concealing the fact that he is a disgraced lawyer, these questions are raised: is the naif getting what she thinks she is getting (or is she trusting someone whom she would not trust if the truth were revealed); and will the consultant, for whom deception has worked, teach the naif to be open and honest (or will he teach her what worked for him: concealment and deception)?

I appreciate that it might be difficult for the social media expert to get hired if the world knows that he has been disbarred for raiding minors’ trust funds or convicted of mortgage fraud, and I believe strongly in redemption, but holding oneself out as something one is not seems to me an unlikely path to redemption.

So what did disgraced lawyers do before there was such a thing as a social media consultant?

Evan Sneider, who does public relations for a Miami-based website, told me, “Usually, if someone says they’re an ‘expert’ at anything, they aren’t. Most ‘experts’ have no idea that they’re exceptionally good at whatever it is they’re doing.”

There are experts in social media—people for whom the media are not the end, people who actually use social media to help, educate, and entertain others (example: Wichita reporter Ron Sylvester, who works in Twitter, text, and video). They don’t claim to be experts. Claimed expertise in social media is a pretty good indicator that one is not an expert.

This is more true in the area of social media than in other disciplines. To those who have been soaking in social media, using it to make a difference rather than trying to sell their ability to use it, the phrase “social media expert” is a term of derision. The self-descriptive use of a term that is widely ridiculed in the area of supposed expertise is a pretty good indicator that the “expert” is ignorant of how social media really work.

It’s kind of like a “writer” with spelling errors in his CV, or a “therapist” who talks incessantly about herself, or a “spy” who brags about being a spy. It’s a dead giveaway.

Not everyone who doesn’t claim to be an expert in social media is one. Nobody who does is.