corporate colonization: on and offline.

In a recent post I mentioned the type of response that corporate invasions of a digital public space can expect. While pre-corporatized spaces (such as paid-subscription video games) are usually tolerant of colonization, free and anarchic spaces aren’t.

What’s interesting about this to me is the comparatively nonexistent backlash when a company invades a real-world public space, in blatant contravention of law. This is what illegalsigns.ca does, draw attention to how often, and how shamelessly the laws protecting public space are ignored for profit and marketing purposes.

This is only a good idea for companies as long as no one cares. Sadly, the kind of public outcry that makes such practices a bad idea is thousands of times more intense in Second Life than it would be in my home city of Toronto, where IllegalSigns operates.

It’s easy to understand why companies think injecting themselves into social networks, and virtual worlds, where they don’t offer anything useful, is a good idea. They’ve been conditioned by the real world to expect that such invasions will be met first by silence, and then by increased sales.

This happens in the real world because we’ve already accepted that marketing messages are unavoidable in public space, regardless of the law. This has already been accepted in the majority of online life, but not in free, immersive virtual worlds.

This is a battleground worth watching, because it’s the best indicator of how tolerant of marketing online identities are – these are the extremes of those who stand against it. If they surrender, we’ve all lost something. In real life, it’s easier to take a different route to avoid a sign, legal or no.

let's try that again (second life).

Upon re-reading, I realized I can summarize that entire Second Life post into one sentence.

As a direct consequence of not having a clear or profitable plan, the Second Life experiment has stayed relevant beyond it's logical shelf life.

stop talking about second life.

This slideshow is a great introduction to social media, why there is no option but to care, and what the basic rules are.  I’m not posting it for this reason, however.  I’m posting it because it brings up what so, so many slideshows, articles, and blog posts reference.

Second Life.

There’s nothing wrong with Second Life.  It’s a playground, an interesting way for people to test out ideas, and a virtual world where people get to decide their own identity, own actions, and own morality.

My only problem with Second Life is that I think it’s become more important as something to be trotted out by specialists, journalists, and scared executives, when they want to demonstrate an understanding of the new world media order, than it is as a world or platform.

Social media is normally about projected selves.  There are varying degrees of anonymity and realism, but the general outcome is a projected identity that reflects how the creator wants to be perceived.  When you read a blog, you are reading a blog written both by John Smith, and the guy John Smith wants you to think he is.

This is important, because the guy John Smith wants you to think he is is the guy who buys non-essential products.  Possessions are often social signifiers, and social media puts on display what kind of projected persona, and therefore what signifiers would interest the person making the content.

Second Life is, by and large, different.

Second Life is a fantastical wish fulfillment and exploration tool.  This is probably demonstrated best by the fact that off the bat, everyone can fly.  Wish fulfillment is useful, except when you consider that only realistic wishes get fulfilled.  And while someone might be able to find a servable niche in a virtual society where a hail of digital genitalia greets uninvited corporate presences, no one who operates mostly out of meatspace has yet.

And they keep trying.

People resist the comparison between World of Warcraft and Second Life, saying that SL isn’t about fantasy, or quests, or winning, it’s to explore.  But, other than a massively larger subscriber base, I’d argue from a business standpoint that there are a total of two differences that matter between WoW and SL.

WoW doesn’t let a corporation try to invade a realm that has no use for it, and WoW subscribers all demonstrably have disposable income that they use for entertainment.

Second Life just manages to keep the buzz going by being less easy to categorize.  

the transition from english lit to communications.

I studied English Literature for two and a half years at Wilfrid Laurier before I decided what I really loved was communication theory.  At the time, this seemed a little nuts, as I was fully committed to English as a path of study, and had taken a totally of one credit (2 courses) of Communication Studies.  I immersed myself in it anyways.

I didn’t have an explanation for why the transition felt so organic until recently.

My interest in English was mostly about techniques.  I liked reading and analyzing books because I found it rewarding to pick apart how certain effects had been used, what they accomplished for the overall story, the characters, the effects on the reader.  I liked learning about the history and range of different literary devices.

Basically, I liked media theory, studied in a Petri dish.  Arguably the most closely watched, developed medium for sophisticated, durable transmission of ideas in human history, the written word.

I was explaining recently to someone involved in Ontario Youth Parliament that getting an English degree is really about learning how to read critically.  And once you can read a novel critically, really critically, on the level of a trained expert, you can adequately dissect any piece of creative work, assuming you are willing to put in the time to learn the context, the background information, and the tropes of the medium.

The best explanation I can give for why the shift from English Literature to Communication Studies came so naturally is because English Lit is the best place I’ve seen to hone specific dissection skills for creative work, and Communication Studies is for people who want to use those skills, but have gotten bored of the novel.

my english degree vs. my new media savvy

Vacations are good for creating a distance from one’s normal circumstances.  This has been useful as I’ve got a more accurate, I think, view of what I’ve been doing right and wrong in many creative and professional endeavors.  I’m not going to examine every conclusion I’ve come to, but I’ve spotted a large number of holes in how I’ve been conducting my online life, especially through this blog.

I’ve been playing to my personal strengths and habits, rather than the strengths of the medium.  In other words, I’ve been spooging habits from other writing I’ve done in my life into my blogging.  My English degree is showing through the cracks in the following prominent ways.

1)    What I write here is generally far too long.  Reading 1200-1500 words on a blog isn’t pleasant, and most people won’t do it.  But given my experience writing Lit papers, this feels like a short amount of space to express complex ideas from beginning to end.  I’m naturally verbose, but this is an easy thing to fix in two ways, I can either be concise, or break things up into multiple posts.   Which brings me to…

2)    Blogging is naturally serialized.  As in, nothing HAS to be expressed in terms of one long essay and complete idea.  I can take it piece by piece and spread it out, as most of it isn’t time sensitive.  If I published more complex ideas in 3 -5 post sections, it would also help me with my other major problem…

3)    Inconsistency makes it difficult to keep people interested.  I tend to not write at all, and then write 3000 words in a week, then not write for another 6 days.  Things don’t need to be all boom and bust, but here we are.

I’m hoping that by addressing these issues, I can point them out to other people, and watch them more closely myself.  The other big issue, or course, is that all I’ve posted here in a long, long time is text, which is, to say the least, not very engaging to all readers.

More to come.

things i learned while in jamaica.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been in Jamaica for the last week. As a slow intro back into the blog-wilds, here is a short list of things I noticed during what was likely the most un-connected week of this digital native’s life.

• I get all of my news from social media. If you had asked before I left, I would have said the majority. But I was in a hotel room with satellite TV, with a large enough segment of my family watching it that I should have picked up some news by osmosis. The only thing I knew about the outside world during that week was who won Wimbledon, mostly because there were TV’s over the resort’s main bar.
• I have no idea how to live without a cell phone. More than a hundred times, I attempted to reach for my phone. This is apparently my first instinct when I can’t find someone instantly, when I need information about something and I am away from a computer, and when I’m trying to organize group dynamics. I cannot express how lost and frustrated I was when I could not contact people (not rooms or locations) at will.
• The cell phone is the only platform that matters worldwide. In a country with widespread poverty, everyone had a cell phone, operating on a pre-paid basis. This was used socially and for business, but literally everyone I encountered. Resort staff were showing us pictures of their homes and families, then texting other resort staff when they needed to reach them instantly. This technology also enables the ‘side-businesses’ that most resort staff seem to use to supplement their income.
• I sort through an absurd amount of data, even ignoring work communications and research, in a week. The amount of online magazines, PDF mags, articles, rss items, etc etc etc waiting for me will, I think, take at least three weeks to catch up on, when you take into account work, and the amount of further incoming information.

The next couple of weeks / month should result in some changes as to how I do things on brokengentleman.com, as well as online in general. I’m going to refrain from saying how, because it’s a large overall personal strategy change, and I don’t want to be held to a certain path or timetable.

risks of personal branding online.

two things everyone agrees on: 1) people who attain a sufficient level of notability are brands; and 2) the owners do not get to decide what the brand is - the consumers do.

the question: why are ‘personality brands’ always disgusted and shocked when the consumers of their blog / vlog / twitter / etc. completely misrepresent the brand?

the brand is NOT UP TO YOU.

this, i think, is the one point that is usually ignored when transparency comes into play.  transparency seems like a wonderful idea, but i can understand why someone would want to participate anonymously on a larger scale.  if your brand is your real life identity, and other people get to decide what that identity means in the most important communications medium of our time, then who are you?

as the title suggests, i know that the issues are more complex than this.

but still.

[cross-posted from my tumblr account (see sidebar)]

[in relation to this post, and my response.]

the importance of persuasive communication in leadership.

Just thought I'd stop in and link to a post explaining my stance on whether a leadership candidate being a 'Marketing Genius' is a good or bad thing.

Also, I'm leaving the country in not too long, so another week will be added to the long, long, long drought in new posts.

Letter to my Member of Parliament

June 13, 2008



The Honourable Bryon Wilfert


House of Commons


Dear Sir,

I'm writing as a constituent to let you know that I am strongly opposed to the amendments proposed to Canadian copyright legislation on June 12, 2008. While I understand many Canadians, voters or otherwise, don't understand the technical implications of these changes, I find them a direct infringement of my liberties as a Canadian citizen.

By criminalizing workarounds for Digital Rights Management technology, this Bill allows any company to essentially determine the bounds of copyright law - destroying fair dealing options such as time or location shifting of content, with no legal recourse for users.

Most importantly, to enforce this legislation, the entire concept of a right to privacy would have to go out the window; any actual enforcement would require monitoring and inspecting the usage history of every Canadian with an internet connection, and likely allowing companies to do so.

My privacy, as a Canadian citizen, does not outrank essential concerns such as the safety and security of my fellow Canadians. However, I must insist that my right to privacy comes before the rights of entertainment industry conglomerates that seem to have dictated the content of Minister Prentice's Bill.

I ask that you stand against this legislation.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Crowley


Vanity Fair stumbles into Social Media relevance.

Every once in a while, an dead-tree outlet does something that's either a beautiful accident, or a rare moment of brilliance. Vanity Fair seems to have one going on at this exact moment.

"Five weeks ago, when I started working as as editorial assistant here at VF.com, my boss casually mentioned that he was giving me until August 5 to attract 10,000 fans to the Vanity Fair Facebook page. It was an onerous and epic assignment, and I responded to it the way any sensible person would: I brightly answered “Yes, sir,” and then did nothing, hoping he would forget about it."

The actual idea is absurd, legislating a quota for something that is 1) opt in, and 2) offers no reward, is more or less a recipe for failure. The difference is that the larger picture, giving a new employee an impossible assignment, and having it incorporate social media in an integral manner, taps into the point of something like Facebook.

This isn't about Vanity Fair anymore. It's about Bill Bradley, it's about overbearing bosses who don't get it, it's about the way new media is being glued to anything with a faint pulse in hopes that it will be revitalized. Vanity Fair now has a story on Facebook, or more accurately, Bill Bradley has a story on Facebook that draws attention to Vanity Fair.

I'm assuming this is a well planned and low budget attempt to go viral, but given my job and my interests, I see campaigns where there are none all the time.

Still, it's a good lesson for anyone trying to figure this Facebook thing out; the point isn't to put your brand into a social network. The point is to attach your brand to a person, via a story, that creates associations. Social networks are about people. People are about things. But this order needs to be maintained to generate interest without coming across as a colonist.