When Social Networking is Social Contagion

OK. Those of us who have been part of the Kimkins saga have come to expect the unexpected. Once we got over the staggering shock of her shadiness and the depth of her duplicity, we came to see that Heidi Diaz simply knows no shame.

I think she really does believe her own stories.
I think that, in her own Etch-a-Sketch way of thinking, she has shaken the screen of her mind to erase and redraw the beginnings of Kimkins, so that all those years of painstakingly crafted and vociferously protected lies were just a tiny well-meaning marketing blunder from "just a housewife" with no business experience.

From her revisionist viewpoint, she was only trying to help poor fat people when she was viciously betrayed by a sinister cabal of jealous and greedy ingrates. Simultaneously, though, she considers herself a shrewdly superior businesswoman who will outsmart and outlast us all.

I'll say this much for her --- she's tenacious!

Most of us would have crawled away in mortification or just plain old good sense long ago. Not her! She has bluffed, blustered, barefaced lied, blogged, blamed everybody but herself, battled in court, and now she is blasting all the social media trying to trump up new business for as few bucks as possible.

She has had blogs on and off, as herself and under other identities, for some time now. She had her Kimkins newsletter, too.

She spammed Craigslist and Freecycle pretending to be a bunch of different people in a bunch of different towns.

She spammed Yahoo!Answers and Ask.com under different guises to plug Kimkins.

She plugged Kimkins at other kinds of forums under different names, too.

She wrote pro-Kimkins puff pieces under her own name for viral article sites. I guess she has been learning about branding.

Then, with action at Kimkins dropping to almost nil, she started beating the bushes by sending past and present newsletters out to what seems like everyone who had EVER been on her mailing list, including many she has already banned from her site. I get them. My husband gets them. He never even joined Kimkins. We've both unsubscribed --- it doesn't matter. We still get them.

Then she must have signed up for a course in marketing via social media or something. She has dabbled in MySpace before, but this time she seems seriously determined.

She's all over MySpace. *yawn*

Then, she invited me to add her as a friend on Facebook and join her new Kimkins group.
*Yes, me --- you know, one of the ones she tried to sue for a million dollars a few months ago? Right!*
No way! Stay outta my Facebook, lady!

Yesterday, she sent an email saying she was following me on Twitter.
*So, you know, follow her back by clicking on the button? Sure, like that is going to happen!*
Please, lady, back off! Don't follow me on Twitter, or anywhere else for that matter.

So, tonight, my HUSBAND gets a LinkedIn notice that Heidi Diaz has joined LinkedIn and is looking to make connections.

Heidi Diaz

Owner, Kimkins

Location
Greater Los Angeles Area
Industry
Health, Wellness and Fitness

Current

* Owner at Kimkins

Connections

7 connections
Websites

* My Website
* My Blog
* My Blog

Public Profile

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimkins

Interested In

* consulting offers
* new ventures
* job inquiries
* expertise requests
* business deals
* reference requests
* getting back in touch

Somehow, that was the last straw for my husband. He reported her avatar to LinkedIn as misrepresentation, and told them to do a Google search about the Kimkins law suit.

Yep, she's tenacious!