Internet communities do not like interlopers.
I first experienced this phenomenon during my days as a regular poster on rec.music.artists.springsteen. (I’m a middle-aged dude who grew up in Jersey — what’d you expect?) Every so often, somebody would show up claiming to be an emissary from Columbia Records, or perhaps from the opaque universes of touring and ticketing.
Inevitably, the person would be dismissed as a narc who was sent to seize our precious bootlegs or report back to management on our idle chatter. The “chill insider” vibe he or she sought to convey shot off major aging-camp-counselor sparks.
Needless to say, these people rarely stuck around for long. Did they have anything to offer? Maybe. None of us bothered to find out. For all we know we could have become a de facto focus group and, in so doing, nudged the maniacally insular Springsteen organization toward transparency. Twenty years burning down the road, many of us lament the possibility that we blew off an opportunity to be heard.
That’s why “Pharma Enters the Chat,” in which we survey the new openness of patient and caregiver community members to interact with representatives from corporate organizations, filled me with such hope. For years, these communities made it clear that they didn’t trust the motives of anyone affiliated with pharma. Justly or not, they believed that these individuals were there to steer community members toward certain treatments or services, rather than out of genuine concern for their welfare.
A pandemic and two digital decades later, community members aren’t exactly throwing parties when pharma ambassadors enter their domains. But they aren’t dismissing them out of hand, because these ambassadors now come armed with coveted information. Anecdotally, there are reports of pharma people helping eliminate access traffic jams and extending invitations to be screened for participation in clinical research.
Just as importantly, these appeals are delivered transparently. They are “respectful and not transactional,” as Precisioneffect’s Jack DeManche puts it in the story.
Whether in the form of people helping each other navigate the twists and turns in their treatment journeys or halfwits with too much time on their hands debating the short running time of Disc 4 of Tracks, community matters. It connects and soothes and eases the burden of loneliness. The trend toward broadly inclusive patient communities is as encouraging as anything we’ve seen in some time.
From the February 01, 2024 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
