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Effective, Efficient Content, and how to Share it

We have all seen the soulless, mindless social media advertising.  Even me, who admittedly hardly uses any social media to begin with, can name off some of the better examples of effective content sharing, and some that are anything but.

I begin with Shimano, famous first for their bikes and more importantly to me, their fishing tackle.  Maybe it’s just that I’m a huge fan of their seemingly immortal fishing gear, but I really think they have a pretty efficient twitter for the most part.  Sharing posts such as this shot:

This is a multi billion dollar global company, but here is a shot that hits so close to home for me that it is uncanny, and it isn’t because of their electric reels.  This was taken about a mile from the canal I depart from when headed out into the ocean down in the Florida Keys.  Marathon key, specifically.  Bud n’ Mary’s isn’t at all world famous, but I can pick that building out on the horizon from miles away.

They aren’t throwing a bogo deal in my face, or raving about some sale, neither of which key me in very much.  Instead, this relatively simple photo immediately puts me in the mindset of departing my dock at o dark hundred to go hit the humps for some Tuna.  While also reminding me I’ve got a brand new Shimano Tiagra waiting for me down there come start of the better season at the end of May.

For anyone else, even a lot of other hardcore fishermen, this is just a photo of a boat and a few rod/reel combos.  But for me, it’s a perfect reminder of all the memories I’ve had out at sea, a lot of which happen with Shimano gear.

Now to contrast, this is the twitter of another company I love, Fabrique Nationale d'Herstal, more commonly known simply as “FN”.  Makers of the handgun I strap on just about every morning, that has some twenty thousand rounds through it with not a single jam yet.  Fantastic product, terrible twitter.

Come see us here, look at these rifles we don’t even actually insert a picture to and instead direct you to our facebook.  Please look at our online store, if you buy something we will give you a hat.

This, to me, is everything that a good twitter page isn’t.  There is not an ounce of anything to engage even a long time customer like myself.  They haven’t even bothered to post pictures of their new offerings on the twitter account itself, just links to their facebook page.  This is the vanilla of twitter pages.  It is bland, boring, and soulless.  This is a twitter page made and managed by a robot for the sole purpose of advertising.

There is nothing on that page that makes me relate at all to their company or the products of theirs that I own.  There is nothing that keeps my interest for a minute, let alone makes me want to engage them with a comment.

I know that the running joke is that the Germans are for the most part boring, completely work focused, with maybe zero sense of humor.  However, H&K’s page, one of FN’s direct competitors, is alive with pictures and videos and not a single tweet in sight begging you to visit their Estore.  Maybe it’s actually the Belgians who are just corporate robots?

I look at FN’s page and think, “all they want to do is sell me something.”  I look at H&K’s page and think, “Damn I shoot the USP well.  Why do I not own one yet?”  And they don’t even mention their store.

What it all comes down to is making your content relatable.  Humans relate to humans, to images, and life, and memories.  Plain text about something being in stock somewhere means basically nothing to me.  If I want it, I’ll find it.  That picture of a guy hauling in a 50lb cobia on a brand new shiny Shimano reel, though?  That makes me want to go catch a cobia on my brand new shiny Shimano reel!

For me, that is the only thing that really matters about business content shared on social media.  It’s an experience versus a newspaper ad.  Nobody remembers the advertisement they flipped past.  Everybody remembers their first car, which is why Ford posts stuff like this instead of just advertisements for a deal on a new Focus.

They haven’t even made a Bronco since 1996!  They don’t link you to a picture on their facebook, or a used car searching site.  They give you a picture, a single sentence, and they let your mind do the rest.  If you don’t look at that and think, “I really want to jump in that and go cruise a beach.”, get your pulse checked because you may in fact be a zombie.

You can’t become a social organization just to do it for profit and expect the money to come.  People don’t follow you because they want to know you made a new online store, or that your product now comes in beige.  Humans don’t relate to that sort of thing, it doesn’t bring up any recall in our minds to tie one thing to another.

I think that maybe it has to do with companies doing nothing but chasing after a better quarterly report, that some companies do nothing but hound after more followers or “likes”.  Hootsuite mentions the stark difference between a smaller group of dedicated followers, and a large throng of people that aren’t very drawn in by what you’re offering.  One is engaging, people seek out images and comment on them, they want what you’ve shown them.  The other is just an online coupon letter.  The digital version of all the things that end up in my recycling bin.

When your company shares something, most people can instantly pick up on what you’re laying down.  Are you flooding them with discount offers and a heap of garbage text?  Or are you offering them a chance to remember and smile about something they did, hopefully with your product?

The first is meaningless, machine.  The latter is part of what it means to be human.

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I think the time aspect is something a lot of modern companies simply can’t get correct.  Not in the day and age of seeking nothing but a better quarterly report and if numbers are down, heads begin to roll and the sky is crashing down.

The best business, while quickly being able to grasp opportunity when presented, don’t thrash around erratically when things are stagnant or not going their way.

It’s more than likely this lack of patience that leads a lot of companies down the road of paid followers/likes/reviews, which leads to more and more of those shady groups that even offer such services.

If you look at the most successful company media accounts, they’re almost always the ones trying to actively engage their community, rather than peddle their own product endlessly.

Building a Community

After reading the assigned chapters on online community building, it seems to me that those strategies are very similar to in-person community building. However, they are just executed in different ways online. 

The definition of a community is, “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”

The definition of an online community is, “a group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time.”

As we can see, the definitions are incredibly similar; the ends are the same, but the means are different. Because the means are different, there are some specific strategies that can be beneficial when building an online community.

1. Give it some time.

Like any sort of relationship, it can take time to build and develop effectively. Something that many online contributors lack is patience: you need to let your users have a chance to get to know you online, and find those niches that the community has in common. The online community definition includes the words, “pursue…interests over time.” Nothing great is built overnight. 

2. Don’t be afraid to invite.

Many campaigns remain internal, and basically hidden from users that would fit very well into a community. Never be afraid to send out an email, advertise a little bit, and reach your market in an efficient way. Part of building community is the building part, and to do that, you can’t stray away from different methods of recruiting.

3. Decide and Commit.

If you decide to start building a community you need to commit to it. It takes a routine effort to create a community that users can depend on and look forward to checking out. The facilitator needs to use consistent posting strategies, integrating photos and other media to keep users engaged. If you’re going to decide to do it, decide to do it right.

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I know I already commented on GoPro when it was brought up a few weeks ago, but I can’t help doing so again.  Before they ever grew to the size they did and had actual television commercials, I think the brilliance of their strategy had already shown itself.

Why spend any money on advertising when your consumers, who already bought your product, are more than willing to use them to take phenomenal videos and post them to your social media pages?

A ton of those videos went viral and pretty soon it got to the point everyone has just assumed if you’re shooting a really awesome video of a head cam on a helicopter ride up to snowboard down a mountain, that you’re doing it on a GoPro.

They are the pinnacle of community advertising.  Everybody should try to model themselves off that same idea at least to some extent.

Effective principles for online community building

    Through the reading, one thing I learned is that it is just as important to maintain relationships with customers as it is to make new ones. Doing this will increase the amount of community driven content that is created. One company that does a great job of this is GoPro. Most if not all of their content is user generated. Users will send in photos they take themselves and GoPro will pick their favorite one to post. Examples of this can be seen here.

https://www.instagram.com/gopro/

   This is extremely smart on GoPro’s part as it is free advertising. Their customers are effectively showing what a GoPro camera can do.

  While interacting with customers is important, having a company vision is a necessity for successful social media. One company that has a successful vision is Dove. Dove is trying to use their social media to spread positive messages that can range from body positivity to accepting compliments. Examples of this can be seen here.

https://twitter.com/Dove

   By being so positive it increases the chances that a customer will interact with their social media page.

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Online Community Building & Growing Your Community with help via Hootsuite

As I’ve made pretty clear before, I’m not a very versed social media user.  It doesn’t constitute basically any of my daily routine.  I don’t use my facebook, I only have a twitter for this class, and I’ve never once even visited instagram.

At the same time, I’ve got two perfect examples of business managing their social media.  One fantastic, the other an absolute lesson in how not to.

The first example, the good one, would be Pelagic.  For those not familiar with the company, they make a wide range of products based around fishing.  Big game saltwater, to be precise.  I don’t use their twitter or their facebook, because I don’t use mine, but I do leave positive reviews when they are warranted.  When I had an expensive ($100) shirt of theirs develop a tear in the underarm after landing a single tuna, needless to say I contacted them.

Their team took one look at the photo I sent, assured me that should absolutely not happen, and immediately mailed me a new shirt without fuss.  I gave them a pretty glowing review along considering my new one arrived in two days which coincided perfectly with a fantastic Mahi day.  They followed up asking if they could share the story and I assume they did, though I never did check because I was only a handful of days into a three week saltwater binge where internet access isn’t easy to come by when the weather is good and you’re 25 miles offshore.

I see the same sort of things on their twitter.  People tag their photos and Pelagic retweets them for the world to really see.

The big kicker for me is, having met some of their team guys, I know their account isn’t just some soulless entity for marketing.  It may be a retail company, but the same friendly positive attitude was just as apparent in person with guy that were off the clock and not trying to sell anything except a fish story.

I doubt I’m the only one to pick up on that sort of thing.  I think for the most part, the average Joe can tell fake enthusiasm apart from the real deal.  You can certainly try to generate the illusion of enthusiasm about your product, but I doubt most people are going to buy it.  But when the excitement is externally generated and centralized around the common love for one thing that the company just so happens to be involved in?  Well that may be the perfect base for success.  You can’t fake it, it has to be real and tangibly so.

Now onto the negative experience, it actually comes from a close friend of mine who bought a nice $800 monitor for his home office computer from Newegg.  Big enough to watch his movies on, do his stock trading, whatever.  It arrived with a few dead pixels smack dab center of the screen.

The rest is a long story, but the short of it is they more or less told him to just deal with it and that they weren’t going to do anything.  He took it to their twitter and facebook accounts, hoping to maybe generate a bit of community rallying cry behind him.  Instead he woke up the following day to find his twitter account temporarily banned and himself blocked from their other social media pages.

Unfortunately according to him, his plight was more or less just snuffed out as best as the company could manage.  But they can’t stop word of mouth and when it came time that I needed a new PC monitor, where I usually would have gone with Newegg the way I always had, Amazon got my business this time.

Moving on to how best to grow an online community, as discussed in this latest hootsuite lesson, I think a lot of these same principles apply.  People notice how you really are.  Even a company like Newegg, which is quite wealthy, can’t just fake away a customer being unhappy and rightfully so.  Unfortunately it seems like a lot of these social mediums allow them to somehow remove the negative from the positive.  I know for a fact that new companies exist that actually sell such services, along with others such as fake facebook/twitter followers to artificially swell the numbers.

Thankfully it is usually pretty easy to distinguish the real reviews/comments from the fake.  Probably because the fakes seem to almost always be written by someone with little understanding of English, or perhaps even generated via a computer script.

I can’t see such services bringing about any actual social community centered around your company or group.  It seems more like a snake oil sales type of situation to me.  Though the ability to remove negative comments/reviews is a terrible concept to me.  I would on principle alone never purchase something from any company I found engaging in that sort of censorship.

Now for a company like Pelagic, which is a big name in the fishing industry, having fewer than 7000 followers on twitter seems like a pretty low figure.  However of that number, I imagine they have a much higher rate of real participation and communication than a company inflated to ten times as many followers.  I think it’s the excitement not for their products, but for the sport as a whole that carries the day here.  Much more than some massive company with little actual care aside from the money.

Hootsuite offers the suggestion of offering incentives to have consumers follow your twitter or facebook.  I think that’s a middling idea that can lead to a lot of bloated figures if done wrong.  At the same time, there is a certain effectiveness to it as even someone like me could be persuaded to make a twitter and follow Pelagic’s account if they were offering a 20% discount on orders or something.  That would be some pretty tempting bait.

Now the event idea has some concrete merit.  I had a chance to meet some of the Pelagic crew, as I mentioned earlier, which was both at a boating event and the bar afterwards.  They had a great group of people that were just as dedicated to landing big fish as anyone else, and it showed completely in how they handled themselves.  It wasn’t just a big sales pitch, it wasn’t phony.

To bring this all into the discussion about the client project, I think I unfortunately didn’t choose the best of them.  The group I chose isn’t a commercial entity, there is no product, it’s a relatively small nonprofit that operates as a club.  There isn’t any social outreach because there doesn’t need to be.  Memberships are limited and don’t often make it to the open market.

I can appreciate the concept of making it easy for people to join your social media accounts, which is absolutely one of the major principles I’ve hammered home in my memos.  It’s along the same lines as the rule of six concerning queues.  Most people will only wait in one for six minutes before giving up, and most won’t even bother if there are more than six people already waiting.

If you want someone to use something, especially something they may not be familiar with, you’ve got to make it as easy and simple as possible.

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I should have thought about GoPro when I wrote my article up.  They must have one of the best social media campaigns ever if it was enough to hook someone like me.  Their “Be a Hero” advertising and everything that goes along with it is absolutely fantastic marketing, and the crews they have worldwide are phenomenal at what they do.

I may not share all of my videos and whatnot online the way some people share everything to the gopro pages, but I cannot deny the genius at coming up with that concept.

GoPro & UGC

     GoPro, in my opinion, has one of the most interesting and eye-catching social media strategies out there.  The strategy that GoPro uses better than anyone else is known as user-generated content (UGC).  GoPro looks externally for amazing social media posts by harnessing the power of this user-generated content. GoPro openly encourages those using their products to send in some of their best shots. This not only makes for great content to share on social media, but it also shows off the products in action.

     This makes GoPro’s job a whole lot easier when it comes to generating content. Their audience enthusiastically has taken over the promotion for the brand. This has lead to insane rates of engagement and customer retention/loyalty.  From GoPro’s YouTube channel alone they receive over 6,000 tagged videos every single day. 388 of those videos have come from GoPro’s sponsored athletes, and those videos have received more than 50 million combined views on YouTube. The GoPro channel has over 4.5 million subscribers, and that number continues to grow.

     Not only do users of GoPro post videos from their own experiences, but GoPro also goes out and buys the rights to some of those self-shot videos. Videos or photos that prove to be unique and inspiring are polished up by GoPro, and then posted to their various social media channels for additional distribution. By doing this GoPro is inspiring users to believe that they, too, can “be the hero” by using a GoPro camera to record their experiences.

     GoPro has partnerships with over 130 professional athletes, as well as musicians. They use these celebrities to provide glimpses into what the experience might be like to be a professional snowboarder, rock star, skateboarder or even an NHL hockey player.

     GoPro has also formed partnerships with various locations around the globe that have proved to be popular travel destinations. Some of these partnerships include Marriott hotels in the Caribbean and Latin America. These partnerships allow the hotels to offer complimentary cameras to guests during their stays and encourage those guests to upload their own, personal GoPro pictures and videos to share their adventures.

     Capitalizing on user-generating content (UGC) has made GoPro a marketing and social media juggernaut.  With this amount of engagement from their users they will not only continue to grow and retain their customers, but they will also never seemingly run out of content to showcase their product’s capabilities. Not many companies even have the product offerings that can yield user-generated content in this manner, so GoPro is very smart for capitalizing on these UGC opportunities.

Below I have attached some screenshots of different posts and videos from the various GoPro social media accounts:

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I think that one of if not the most major of issues is that big data is not concerned at all with anonymity.  In fact that actually contrasts directly with what they seem to want.  Anonymous data being far less valuable to them monetarily as it wouldn’t include things such as addresses, names, phone numbers, etc.

Everyday users need to be the most on edge and the most educated, as it’s their information that is mostly being shared and they don’t possess teams dedicated to managing all of that the way a large business does or at least should.

"The Legal Side of Big Data"

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data”, businesses should be aware of some things when using big data. Big data presents some challenges. One of the biggest in my opinion is privacy. When companies look at large pools of data they have to make attempts to protect the privacy of individuals. The best way to do this is through anonymization. This is not always as easy to do as it seems. It is only going to get more difficult, too. The Internet will continue to grow more people will have access to it.

The privacy concept goes both ways. Businesses should be aware of it, as well as consumers.

I think that the best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data is to just be educated and preventative. Businesses and consumers a like should be aware of the threats and take caution in order to not be affected by them.

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The Legal Side of Big Data

As I’ve said before in a previous blog post, I’m not a fan of big data or their storage methods.  I don’t think that there is much need to store the vast majority of information that they do.  I think most of it is used for less than upstanding purposes.  This last decade has proven to us that the information is not ever truly secure no matter who is managing it.

I actually just got a notification that one of my mastercards has maybe been part of a breach in security by a “merchant processor”.  Potentially exposing my card information to outside parties.  Thankfully this isn’t a card I use frequently and I’ve already since canceled it. However it brings up the questions as to who had been storing this data for it to be breached.  What else had been stored alongside it? Was it at least salted or is it all there in the open for someone to try to use?

It just hammers the point home for me that there’s really no valid reason to be storing all of this information, especially on any data center connected to the internet.  It would be one thing if government employee data was stored on an unconnected server or internal network with no exterior connections.  Closed circuit systems are inherently more secure than anything connected to the web.  But as we all know by now, this data isn’t being stored like that, and is being breached repeatedly and openly.

There is only one way to balance the threat and opportunity of all of this data, and that is to simply stop collecting or storing it for any longer than absolutely necessary.  Merchants should keep card data long enough for the transaction to go through and then destroy it.  Storing it basically indefinitely carries no good purpose, certainly none with positives to outweigh all of the potential catastrophes.

Now there are some cases where massive amounts of information are required to be stored. As Doug LaLone describes about the jet engines, companies like Boeing and Grumman and such are basically required to store some of this information for a very long time.  The best thing they can hope to do is to break up the information and make it difficult for someone to try to harvest it.  Think about it like cutting up a sheet of paper, on their own a shred or two isn’t going to be very valuable.  Now the company itself would have the correct algorithm to place all the parts back together again in order to use it.

Companies are becoming more aware of just how valuable much of their data is and how easy it sometimes can be to access.  Sony’s massive hack lead to all sorts of issues for the company, not to mention all of the lost revenue.  That hack was so simple to pull of that the basic “in” that the hackers got was an employee opening up an email he thought was from his boss, when in actuality it was sent by the hackers looking for someone to fall for the bait.  Fishing.  

Consumers need to be more and more aware of how easy it is for some of their personal data to be breached, and how to combat it.  I, for instance, use a spam email account for just about any signups.  I don’t store any passwords on my phone, or my computer.  Nor any usernames.  What few of those I have written down are stored in a massive personal safe that is fire and water proof with a difficult mechanical locking mechanism involving six inch and a half diameter hardened steel locking lugs.  The weight of the empty safe alone is 1400 pounds, and considering it is bolted to the floor of my basement, nobody is going to steal it without a very obvious crane.

Now I don’t advocate everyone spend several thousand dollars on a home safe, unless you want to protect things like your firearms, passports, etc. But it’s that same idea that I do push for.  Anything you aren’t fine with the world knowing, don’t share online.  Whatever you have to share, such as credit card info, make sure you protect.  Monitor the account for abnormal behavior, don’t use it on shady websites, store the card in a safe place and immediately cancel it if lost.  It isn’t overtly difficult to safeguard a ton of your personal data, but it isn’t immediately straightforward all the time.

At the end of the day, the one with the most control over your own information is you.

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Companies with Excellent Social Media Presence

I actually don’t have a very long list of companies I think do well in the social media environment.  In fact, I’d actually argue that most do terribly for people like me in that they are overbearing and vocal to the point of obnoxiousness.  While I’m fine with being notified of sales, it loses its savor when it happens every single day in the form of a torrential rain of spam.

Amazon is among my most favorite companies for a handful of reasons, one of which being their almost flawless customer service.  Any time I’ve had an issue it has been resolved above and beyond my expectations and in a quick amount of time.  There’s a reason I pay for Prime and it’s because they take care of their customers.  Never mind that I’m a Top Gear addict and they funded that same crew to do a new show for their Prime video.

Are they nailing it at the social media thing?  Well for people like me, absolutely.  My inbox isn’t bombarded with countless spam messages, they don’t pester me about discounts for tagging their twitter or something, however they sometimes politely ask I review the big game saltwater trolling plugs I order every time a shark bites one off.  I’ve reviewed a lot of trolling plugs.

When it comes to something like a package showing up late, I’ve actually had them add a gift card to my account without even saying anything before.  I mean yes, I pay some $12 a month or whatever it is for Prime, which is two day shipping.  However it’s rather impressive when you get a $10 gift card for a $5 headphone extension shipping slowly and arriving in three days.  Call me old fashioned, but when a business does right by me, I’m a return customer.  It’s the same reason I’ve been using the same archery shop for over fifteen years despite them not necessarily being the cheapest on everything.

Speaking of, the place is Archer’s Archery here in midland and I’ll make a shameless plug for them as the best bow shop in the tri cities if you want things done timely by people that will remember your name.  For infrequently as I use facebook, I will check it on occasion to see if I got the date right for a benefit event.  Or to see if the .357 magnum arrowheads are in stock yet, which they are, and they are a blast.

https://www.facebook.com/Archers-Archery-LLC-105772906122072/

It doesn’t have a pile of needless information and only updates once a month or so which is perfect for me.  The same way the crew there don’t heap a bunch of junk at you.  There’s a reason their facebook page has a 4.7/5 after 32 reviews, these guys are awesome.

I think what leads these two companies to such success is their ability to take the foot off the gas when it comes to social media.  Maybe by not hiring someone to chunk out facebook messages or tweets on the hour, they can afford to take better care of their customers.  For someone such as myself who uses social media rather infrequently, these two companies have it down to a T, and I’ll take good business over inbox spam every single time.

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My Professional Social Media Presence

I’ll be upfront and frank right from the start, my personal social media presence is effectively almost nothing, and my professional accounts are nonresistant.  I do plan on rectifying that with strictly professional accounts on Linkedin, Facebook, and maybe a twitter account if I ever actually find a good use for it as a personal professional account.

I do at least possess a very neat business email address that is easy to remember and very professional.  I use this account strictly for professional and academic purposes, and have a secondary account reserved for things like Facebook bombarding me with candy crush invites.

Thankfully I do posses a plethora of professional contacts from every job I’ve held since I started working at 14.  Some more useful than others, to be sure, but there’s no such thing as too many positive letters of recommendation.

Thankfully in the outdoor business world, proof that you aren’t just a desk jockey trying to act the part is better than just about anything.  Excellent for me considering I’ve got proof of my hunting and fishing exploits in spades, as you might be able to tell from the profile picture I selected here.

Actually if anything I’m lacking self photos without fish or game.  Not that this is much of an issue, as it doesn’t take nearly as long to snap a few suit photos as it does to drag a 200lb black bear some five miles through the woods in the dark UP night with nothing but a sled and the resolve to do so.

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Top Qualities for a Social Media Consultant

The first; foremost, and of greatest importance of any quality regardless of position or field is patience.  Patience is a virtue.  Patience is what separates the wheat from the chaff, the hunter from the prey.

The patience to deal with all manor of internet trolls, dumbfoundingly mistaken consumers, and the panicked hivemind of the general public.  The patience to get rear ended at a stoplight in Detroit and then having to drive home two and a half hours later than planned and still sit down and write these.  Without losing my mind about the uninsured Canadian behind the wheel of the other car, or the fact that the police took 40 minutes to even arrive.

The next is the ability to plan.  Intricate, comprehensive plans, like shucking out the extra cash every month for broad collision coverage so I don’t owe any deductible for non-at-fault accidents.  Planning is the difference between a fantastic marketing drive on twitter, and accidentally mistyping something so it displays as an offensive slur.  Without a good plan going forward, shooting from the hip only gets you so far, and usually not where you intended to go.

You can’t plan away every single problem that will crop up.  Life has a way of saying it’s throwing a curve ball only to actually toss a hand grenade.  Which is where having good business instinct comes into play.  Sometimes mistakes turn out to be the opening of a path to something brilliant.  The internet has a love for latching onto something and rolling with it, and recognizing those situations enough to capitalize is a boon.  Whereas someone with inferior instincts might not even have the guts to pounce and seize opportunity when presented.

Certainly there are a plethora of other qualities that are fantastic for any businessman, let alone just a social media admin.  However I’d place these three, patience, planning, and raw instinct above any others.

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Not only could all of this mined data fall into the hands of hackers and other web criminals, it has in the past and likely does on the daily.  In fact, many of the techniques companies use to gather this data are built on methods once utilized by such harmful individuals.

You’re right on education and in that many social mediums already have some tool in place to limit what sort of data you just let leak.  Unfortunately most of these aren’t the default settings and can often be almost arcane to implement.

I’m with you in that I don’t believe for a second that all or even most of this collected data is for some harmless purpose.  Especially the amount and the type of information gathered, as well as how it is all mined in the first place.

Hopefully the future is less bleak, but to achieve that end something has to be done to educate the average user that simply doesn’t know any better.

The Dangers of Big Data

Big data, or the storage and analysis of large and complex data sets, is changing the way that businesses today market their products. In the 60-Minutes segment, “The Data Brokers,” we learn how companies are taking data from the Internet and connecting it together to paint a larger picture; often capturing trends or similarities. What’s scary about this, is where the information comes from: the consumers, or us.

Big data essentially gathers personal information including, but not limited to consumer’s health, additions, and even financial information. Data brokers who gather this information then turn around and sell it to others. Because many consumers do not realize what is happening, it poses a huge threat to our personal privacy. Although some may argue that the information gathered by these data brokers is used for harmless marketing tactics, others disagree. I tend to side with the latter.

Just like many citizens in the European Union, I believe that big data poses a huge threat to our personal privacy rights. While I can agree that it has positive characteristics, I believe that it is too much of a potential threat if given to the wrong set of people.

What many people do not realize, is that some of the data gathered could easily fall into the hands of hackers or even companies that cross the ethical line. If given to the wrong person, sensitive data about someone’s financial history or health records could cause them serious harm. There is a reason why people ask for their personal records to remain confidential and I do not believe that companies should be able to gather and analyze this information for personal gain.

To limit harm caused by big data, both on a personal and societal level, I think the first thing that we need to do is to educate. Because the majority of people do not realize that this problem exists in the first place, they fall victim to the dangers. If we simply begin to inform others about big data and its potential threats, we can offer advice on how to limit potential threats. We might offer advice on how to lock down social media profiles to limit accessible information, give insight on how to limit the information/access that smartphone applications are able to gain, or simply inform peers about what big data is and why it could potentially be harmful and leave the choice up to them.

[jimbicknell-blog]

Sometimes the worst things are done with the best of intentions.  Just because the internet has operated commercially for a bit of time as this ad strewn mess where companies spy on their users doesn’t mean it was always like that, or that it has to continue down that path.

There’s no reason to have to choose to give up privacy in exchange for use of the internet.  Rather, the internet should be one of the greatest bastions of privacy.  Companies survived well enough prior to the days they could clog your screen with their clutter, and would continue to find ways to thrive if disallowed to collect personal information to do so.

I would argue that ads aren’t integrated.  Forcing a user to watch a 30 second ad before the 60 second youtube clip they want to view isn’t integration.  Plastering a screen with banner, side, and even sound/video ads isn’t integration.  I don’t consider billboards an integrated part of my highway driving experience.  They are just there, and often tremendously annoying if not downright disrupting.

The alternative of getting rid of surveillance and even the ad experience as a whole isn’t giving up on the internet.  There was a time when the internet didn’t operate under such shady principles and I’d argue it was a better time in internet history.

Being accepting of blatant and intrusive surveillance isn’t a comfortable thought process or living standard.  It shouldn’t be something people are simply fine with.

Companies are morally and ethically in the wrong here and the more they push the envelope the more blatant their breaches become.

Always Watching

After watching and reading about internet surveillance this week, it is clear that it has been completely integrated into modern business models. Now this sounds pretty scary, but when we consider the numbers, it makes perfect sense.

Number of times Americans Check Their Phones per Day: 8,000,000,000+

If we’re spending that much time on our phones, why wouldn’t businesses integrate internet advertising into their models? It’s nearly required in this day and age. 

I have worked in Marketing at a large non-profit, and even their business model and marketing allocations depended on third party data mining. I would spend an hour or two every day going through the data, marking which profiles would match the best with an upcoming event the organization was putting on. 

So, even business models with the best intentions depend upon data mining to give them necessary intel. Now, whether this is an invasion of privacy is up to the user, but there’s no doubt that just about every company is using it in some capacity. It’s clear that many people feel it is, indeed, an invasion of privacy. But we have to consider the alternative: would we give up the use of the internet to stop companies from mining data on us? 

Personally, I would not. Just like data mining is integrated into modern business models, the internet–ads and all–is integrated into the lives of people across the globe. Considering how much we use the internet for, there’s no way people would give up using the internet to rid of ads and data mining. Although we’re always being watched, we are allowing it to happen by disclosing information with every keystroke and click of the mouse.

[jimbicknell-blog]

Big data, data brokers, and the future of the internet.

An analogy I like to use for the internet is that at its first real public availability, it was a rather VIP club.  Computers were complex, expensive, and ignored by the vast majority of people.  You needed the means and the knowledge to do anything online, and most folks didn’t bother.  My first PC ran DOS, something most people now aren’t familiar with. The internet on that machine was as basic as it came, and the computer that ran it was ludicrously expensive for what little functionality it offered.

Even when Win95 came around, most people hadn’t graduated to the internet.  By then, dial-up had become more stable and I had a direct line rather than sharing a connection with the home phone.  My family had a dedicated car phone which made calls only from the car and was about the size of a small laptop.  It was here that the VIP club started to end, as the GUI for just about everything became substantially more user friendly.  From about here and the time Win98 and true high speed connections hit, the internet became the new wild west.  Back then, unlike now, the villain robbed and shot you publicly in the town center, instead of offering an easy smile while you signed the family farm away by not reading the TOS.

For the average individual, the internet was little more than a curiosity, a wonder. Something with rudimentary chat applications, a new method of shopping, and malware that would cripple you after one misclick. Malware, one of the most common tools of “Big Data”, didn’t get its start the way it is now.  Modern malware is deceptive, doing its best to remain as hidden as possible, for the most part.  Something as simple as a keylogger, relaying every stroke of every key.  An app tracking your every search and location.  In the early days, malware wasn’t quite as subdued.  The real days of the “pop-up” are gone for just about everyone, but back then it was as rampant as it came.  All it took was one bad program, one clicked link, to often just about doom an entire PC to a required reformat.

So as more and more regular everyday Joes got a modem and hit the internet, another market arose for those same people to combat this slew of annoying pop-ups and such.  The giants, Kaspersky, Norton, etc.  Eventually reaching the point that the tracking companies, big data, had to find new and less intrusive methods than simple spam.  Here really began the modern age of these businesses, lurking in traffic well away from most security software, or simply requiring you to oblige your data to use a service.  It quickly became apparent that most people had no qualms whatsoever about handing over personal data rather willingly, which has allowed these companies to become as wealthy and concerning as ever.

My personal view on how to combat big data?  Remove it.  Remove the companies; shut down their means of access, thermite their server farms, and publicly put each and every CEO and higher up on trial for their theft.  If that means the death of many “free” services, so be it.  There was a point when the internet wasn’t just a means of advertisement, when programmers offered things for fun and fame.  The internet might well change from what it is currently, true, but it would survive.

I understand why and how these companies and their business have grown so large. Information is at its heart, power.  What is meaningless information about you to one company is a goldmine to another that wants to directly target ads at you at its lightest, and at its darkest is willing to supply information about your daily travel to prospective thieves, or even the less obvious identity theft criminals.  I’m not dumb enough to believe for a second that these companies all or even mostly operate on the up and up.

The buying and selling of personal information isn’t any more a tool to me than a thief using a crowbar as easy access to your car.  None of it has a place in a civilized society, and all of it should be punished harshly and without reprieve from the law.  In my eyes there is no good use of any of this data, nor in its sale.  It is at its very core abusive, and has only remained mostly untouched out of ignorance and extensive lobbying of politicians.

Unfortunately, politicians are for the most part downright useless, and prone to the natural greed of man.  The mostly unaware consumers mean nothing to them when they can line their pockets in one way or another by appeasing large, wealthy companies.  Thus, very unfortunately and much to my anger, I don’t foresee a real societal solution to this blight.

Thus it becomes necessary to arm oneself with any and all tools available to protect yourself from these data brokers.  Multiple up to date ad blockers is a good start, as many outright cut off errant forms of communication. Avoid those that are less than reputable, as many of these ad blockers themselves have been bought out rather secretly by the companies they once sought to protect you from.

Malware scanning utilities is the next step to shield yourself.  Allow frequent scanning and don’t stop the thing from updating when it needs to. It is a constant cat and mouse game, and by stopping updates you leave yourself vulnerable.  Again, avoid programs that aren’t on the up and up.  Norton, for instance, is now about as useless as they come, especially for a paid program.

Lastly and most importantly, nothing beats knowledge.  The best means of defense you have against your life story being available for sale online rests right between your ears.  Don’t click suspicious looking links, don’t download suspicious files.  Share only what you’re fine with everyone in the world knowing, even if you mistakenly think you’re only sharing with a friend.  Disable all tracking methods you possibly can, turn off your location services when you aren’t actually using them.  There is a plethora of things you can do to at the very least limit what data of yours is available to someone with the cash willing to buy it.

But it’s on you to protect yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you.

Moving on as to the reasons this blatantly broken system is still in place, it really is sort of the way that practices between the generations differ.  The reason that the internet is bombarded with ads is entirely monetary, and the method is decided by those with money.  Those with money being, generally, the previous generation who posses little if any real knowledge of the internet or most of its userbase.

The average person, for instance, will hardly if ever buy anything they have seen on an online ad.  For the most part, pop ups, banner ads, etc, are just clutter.  Clutter that a growing majority simply turn off via new content blocking services.  It should really say something that I’m more willing to, and have, paid for a content blocker.  I’m not going to go into great detail, but it was for my phone and did a substantially better job than any freely offered blocker.

Moreover I, as a consumer, am less likely to buy something that gets intolerably shoved in my face.  The same way I’m going to push aside a street peddler trying to get me to shell out for a trinket, I’m going to ignore and avoid anything and everything shoved into my web experience.

I don’t actually see the web moving away from the ad system for the next decade at minimum.  Two decades being more likely.  Long enough that the previous generation raised on magazine and newspaper ads are dead and buried instead of controlling multi billion dollar media empires, either directly or via investment.  I actually think a new type of service will arise, and it will be an industry based on removing you from tracking and surveillance.  It already exists in its infancy, much of it still free, but all of it a bit basic.  Even with its current limitation, companies and their websites are already starting to catch on and try to combat it.

Forbes, for instance, tells me that I need to disable my adblocker (of which there are several) in order to view the content of their page. Rather than leading to me begrudgingly disabling my blockers, which I never do, it has instead led me to never ever use Forbes or their product.  In fact, even were they to reverse how they handle ad blocking software, I would still continue to not use them out of disapproval of their prior business practices.

Maciej brings up a few good ideas at the end of his video.  Ideas about how long user data should allowed to be stored, about what sorts of data can be stored and how it can be collected, about users being able to “opt out” entirely.  All valid and good options.

What I would add is that these companies are powerful via wealth, and more than willing to flex that muscle at the rats nest of DC.  They will, for the most part, never agree to any of this willingly.  Rather they will fight against any and all of it tooth and nail, and even if they were to lose, they will bitterly bog it all down with endless appeals and lawyers to make it as jumbled of a mess as they can.  Turning what could be a 10 page document into a basically illegible 10,000 page fiasco.

That is part of the reason I advise everyone I know to use content blocking software in every conceivable fashion.  These companies understand one thing, which is money, and it will be hard for them to convince any investors about ad revenues if it becomes apparent that nobody is viewing the ads.

But as long as some board of baby boomer geriatrics think they can somehow generate more revenue for their business via online advertising, there will be a demand to market services for them.  As long as they think the market is there, waiting to be further unlocked via ever more nefarious methods, the Orwellian surveillance will only get worse.

I suppose what I’m getting at is the fact that the current system of online advertising being the primary source of internet revenue is a failing system.  A walking corpse prodded along by those not far from the grave themselves, based on the lack of any understanding or desire to keep up with the times.  Dinosaurs that like the hulking beasts themselves will either evolve to continue or end up as an archaeology project on how things used to be.

The current model is outdated.  It is corrupt.  It is not good for any of us as consumers and it is morally wrong at every level.  As I’ve said before, if it were left to me I’d burn the data centers to the ground and incarcerate those responsible for putting these systems into place.  

The somewhat sad part is that it could have been a fine system, online ads, if the quest for profits hadn’t driven it all to madness.  Instead of being this shady underworld of secret data mining and selling, it could have been a system meant to actually properly advertise to demographics.

If I’m on a website devoted to trying to decipher the problem the incredibly over-engineered German car I own is having, make the banner ads unobtrusive and relevant.  If someone made a relatively inexpensive code reader (nobody does, they don’t even start working until you’re in the $200+ pricepoint), I’d probably buy one.  If only to save me the hassle of going to someone willing and able to scan a BMW which based on working with this car is probably a process that probably involves nine techs, one actually German, and six computers.

Instead, were I to disable my ad blocking, I’d undoubtedly receive zero relevant ads whatsoever.  At least that has been my experience when browsing the internet on a device other than mine.  Sure, ads aren’t exactly targeted on a public PC, for example, but they shouldn’t have to be.  It doesn’t need to be that complex.  If it’s a car website, make the ads about car stuff.

My youngest sister received a letter detailing all the points she should sign up for AARP and an investment firm to protect her retirement savings.  Along with, upon her 14th birthday, a male razor from Gillette congratulating her on her 18th birthday and explaining why she should shave with their product.  Somehow she has been confused at the same time for a retiree and a young adult man.  This is what all that data collected has lead to for its targeting.

It is obvious it doesn’t work.  Obvious it shouldn’t be collected, stored, or sold.  Obvious to me, at least, that at some point this dinosaur is either going to die or become a chicken.  Change is required, and I think it’s about time we stand up and be the giant meteor impact that makes it happen.

[jimbicknell-blog]

For me, connecting with people over great distances was the one real draw of facebook.  People that had moved away to the far corners of the US or even the world.  Friends in California and in Afghanistan.  I suppose it could still serve that purpose but for the most part text messaging has filled those shoes.

I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking just how annoying it is when someone you’re talking to suddenly becomes so engrossed in their conversation that they blatantly start fumbling with their actual words.  One nice thing about the old flip phones, you could just push the thing shut and tell them to focus.

Hopefully parents become more aware and the next generation of kids doesn’t grow up with their nose against an iphone.  Sadly I think it just as likely that the next generation of kids is half raised via facetime.

Sherry Turkle, Louis C.K., and Social Media’s Impact On My Every Day Life

The 2 interviews with Sherry Turkle and Louis C.K. were very similar in ideas and in their stance on the impact of technology and social media on society.  I want to touch on a few quotes and topics that really stuck out to me. 

One topic was that people get an overwhelming feeling - that they can’t overpower - to check their phone to see who could possibly be reaching out to them at that moment in time.  I have experienced this feelings many times and it is honestly so sad that we are so reliant on this type of communication more than face-to-face interaction.  It is just a semi-constant need to see if anyone has contacted you since the last time you checked.  Always waiting for a response or a continuation of your conversation.  It is such a distraction in people’s and my every day life.  Turkle says technology has caused people to “always have their attention divided between the world of the people we’re with and this other reality.”  When it comes to face-to-face interaction, almost always one of the parties has their phone nearby and doesn’t hesitate to interrupt the conversation happening in their life right then and there for this other “reality” as Turkle calls it happening in their phone.  This need to check your phone distracts you from face-to-face interactions, family dinners, class, etc.  I guarantee even if someone doesn’t check their phone all class period, they think about checking it which distracts them as well.  Then as soon as class is dismissed, the first thing they do is check to see if there are any new notifications for them on their phone.  

Society has become so dependent on having this form of communication through technology that they actually prefer it to normal face-to-face conversations.  In Turkle’s interview she presents an example for when someone she was talking to stated that they very much dislike having conversations with people because, “It takes place in real time - you can’t control what you’re going to say.”  This is because society today has grown up with this standard of communicating through technology.  Making conversations seem like something we can avoid by using technology instead to edit, backspace, redo, and get it right before sending it.  Like Louis C.K. said, kids need to figure out how to have conversations when they are young.  They need to see the reactions of people to their comments starting young. So they know how what they say affects people’s feelings.  Technology is now preventing kids from ever getting the chance to figure this out on their own.  

Another idea that was talked about and that I personally struggle with, is that people are wary or becoming wary of excessive sharing or time spent on social media, but still do it because they don’t want to miss out because it is crucial to their social life.  I know this concept hits really close to home with me.  I want to so badly give up social media and give up my smartphone, but that is one of the only types of communication I have with certain people.  Friends that now live so far away from me, we don’t even have that alternative of face-to-face interaction.  So if I gave up Snapchat, I would never know what is going on in some of my best friends’ lives because that is one of the main channels we communicate through.  I would love to find other ways to avoid social media but keep these relationships, but it is definitely hard.  

Both of these interviews were great things to see and great perspectives to hear.  I do dislike how prevalent technology is in our every day life.  I don’t like when I’m hanging out with friends and they’re on their phones instead of actually spending time with the people around them.  I don’t like having to repeat myself in a conversation because they were too busy scrolling through Instagram to really listen and care about what I am saying.  I think society as a whole is way too invested in technology and social media and people need to start realizing what it is taking away from their daily lives enough to want to change it.

[jimbicknell-blog]

See the thing I never understand is when people tell me they have “nothing better to do” during that time anyways, so they just go and browse facebook for two straight hours.  My average gym time runs shy of two hours.  That could be two hours of better sleep.  Two hours of testing new knots to best tie mono to braid while fitting through an eyelet!  OK, maybe the fishing stuff isn’t for everyone, but still, you can accomplish a ton in two hours.

There is also a ton of documented data concerning screen use prior to sleep and how it has a negative effect on your REM cycle.  I know a lot of people that use a screen even while hitting the sack and then have to hit the coffee first thing in the AM.

I think you’re headed in the right direction if you start limiting your overall use.  You might be amazed at what you can accomplish with your new free time.

Social Media Experiment

For my social media experiment, I decided to go 24 hours without using my social media. On a normal day, I am either working through out the day or going to class all day, so I use my social media accounts in my free time. I also really use social media first thing in the morning when I wake up and before I go to bed at night. Before doing this experiment, I never thought I would be able to go 24 hours without being on social media. This is because I would have to find something else in my free time to do other than just grab my phone. 

As I started the experiment, I had a really hard time trying not to grab my phone. I always have my phone on me for work e-mails and school e-mails, so its just a habit to grab it and check my e-mails than hop on social media. During the 24 hours, every time I grabbed my phone I would have to check my e-mails than put it somewhere out of my reach so I would not be tempted to grab it. In order to pass my time, I decided to do homework because I usually do not grab my phone or think about social media when I am trying to do homework. I felt this was the best option because it not only helped me for school, but it also helped me not feel tempted to get on social media. As the experiment when on during the day, I never really felt like I needed to be on social media. The hardest part was at night. This was because I was alone and had nothing better to do than be on my phone. Instead, I plugged my phone it and set it on my night stand and went to bed. 

After this experiment ended, I was happy to finally be able to get back on social media. However, it was a complete eye opener to me to see how much I actually rely on social media to keep me busy in my free time. Now that this experiment is done, I plan to lower my social media time during the day and figure out new things to do, or continue to get ahead on homework, so I do not feel like I need to rely on social media when I am alone or have nothing else to do.

[jimbicknell-blog]

My Social Media Experiment

As I stated previously in my initial log concerning the amount I use social media, basically zero, my experiment was to ramp up use to 11.  To really put it in perspective how little I use my phone, I generally don’t drop below a 75% charge over a 10 hour period even at max brightness.  I logged in to my facebook for the first time in months, put snapchat on my phone, and generally had a bad time for the entirety of a day.

Don’t get me wrong, both of these services have their uses and their user base.  I am still rather apparently just not meant to use these things, at least not in my personal life.  Maybe as a business advertising aid with money in mind, but not to post pictures of my breakfast to.

To kickstart it all, it was snapchat.  I have some friends and friends of friends that all use it, so contacts were passed around quickly and fairly soon every half hour or so I’d be getting messages.  Mundane stuff for the most part, with only the odd thing thrown in that wasn’t completely dull.  Harvey, freshly cleaned of mud (sorry again, Matt), managing to pick a stick and soccer ball up at the same time, which for a dog is apparently a big deal.  About as good as snapchat apparently gets in my group.  Still not something that is going to keep me using it. Especially when every fifth message is someone sending their face only turned into a squirrel.  Just why?

If anything it was just a constant distraction.  I even took my phone in with me to the gym and it was obnoxious to say the least.  Just set up for heavy bench, bzzzzt, message.  About to step out the stacks for cable flies, bbbzzzt, snapchat.  Doing the combo for my locker, buzzzzz, three new facebook notifications.  Siri has detected you’re angry, would you like to tell a snapchat story about it?

I’ll be honest, if it wasn’t for a select few things only available on a smartphone, I’d go back to my old construction grade dumbphone in a heartbeat. My smartphone use consists basically entirely of checking the global news, working my gopro into the right position to best capture the fish, GPS to notify me of any accidents or traffic ahead, and a bit of an addiction to fantasy football.  Though even then, I’ve already decided to take at least next year off of fantasy sports because it annoys me to have to  be on my phone that often even.  It also detracts from the joy I get watching a game when I’m partly worried about needing Mike Evans to go off so I have bragging rights over my coworkers.  Thanks, Mike, I had trash talking rights basically all season.

If snapchat was boring, then facebook is straight out as frustrating now as it has ever been for me.  Basically my entire page consists of just a handful of things.  Baby pictures from someone I maybe vaguely remember from high school, though not someone I would ever really consider anything more than an acquaintance.  A friend showing off the wings jersey he just got signed at probably the last game he’ll ever attend at the Joe.  Cool, but something I’d already been sent. Dumb videos of people doing dumb things that I’m not going to waste five minutes watching any time other than today.  Lastly probably half of all posts either bemoaning the new President, or others smugly commenting on the tearful, childish meltdowns.  Oh and a staggering amount of junk from people I don’t know and don’t understand where it is coming from.

Then there are the game requests.  So many game requests.  Tabitha wants you to play Candy Crush!  Well, Tabs; if I wanted to play candy crush, if I even knew what that was, I’d probably have done it already.  But sitting huddled over while tapping my phone screen is about as interesting to me as watching paint dry.  I thought I heard somewhere sometime that you could disable these notifications.  Either I did and they keep happening or I couldn’t be bothered considering how infrequently I use facebook at all anyways.

I think what gets me most are people sharing images of just dumb quotes.  So, so many just outright stupid images.  It is almost physically painful to me to sit here scrolling through and seeing so many of these.  Although there was one that I did like, “May your life be as awesome as you pretend it is on facebook.”

But hey, I made it through an entire day doing my best phonezombie impersonation.  A little more annoyed and frustrated than I usually care to be, but at least it’s over now and I can go back to ignoring it all for the time being.  How some people check their phone out of compulsion every five minutes is beyond me.  As I’ve said before, I really do think of all of this stuff as an addiction, and it is a vice I’m glad I don’t have.

[jimbicknell-blog]

Turkle’s interview, Louis C.K.’s video, and my daily social media use log.

I’ll preface this by saying that, as a whole, I despise what is quickly becoming in my opinion a bit of a pandemic.  That is, if it isn’t already the modern Spanish Flu only with batteries.  The same sort of thing both Louis and Turkle touch on.  The death of actual conversation in favor of staring dead eyed at a phone screen.  I hate this current shift toward some sort of Facebook generation.

At its inception, Facebook, and the idea behind it, were remarkable.  It was a place to keep in touch with your one group of peers, college aged students. No parents, no preteens, no grandparents.  There were no games at the start, no “likes” if I remember right.  It was simple and served a legitimate purpose.

How far gone a purpose is perhaps debatable, though I’d argue that for the most part, the site as a whole is essentially an internet vampire sucking the life right out of you.  I can think of a thousand things in a second that I’d rather do than share something on Facebook.  I don’t have the app on my phone, my account/password aren’t saved on it, I check it maybe once a year for all of sixty seconds.

Though as I do this, all around me are the people that get netted in.  Especially the young.  I can’t even have a proper conversation with some of my youngest family members because even the youngest of my cousins has a smartphone at this point.  And they don’t just own one, it may as well be welded onto their hand.  Their eyes are downcast to the LED glow, they bob their head as if listening, but their answers are vague and often not on topic.

I remember my first cell.  I was fourteen working a job at a gun range and wanted one for the sole purpose of being able to call my parents for a ride back home.  Something they could call me on if they were going to be late, that sort of thing.  Web wasn’t really a thing on them back then, and while it did do text messaging, it was 10 cents sending or receiving and something I did not use.  I bought the device and paid for my plan both.  Fast forward a bit over a decade and here we are, where my 8 year old cousins have more modern smartphones than I do.

I absolutely agree with Turkle’s idea of sanctuary zones, where you put the phone away and leave it.  Dinner, especially.  This doesn’t apply just to family, either.  When I’m out for a drink with friends, we often have a rule.  Everybody puts their phone away, and anyone caught sneaking a peek is buying everybody else a round.

I will never understand the people filming at a concert.  Especially if they are filming a big screen at a concert.  Louis is right, you’re never going to actually watch that.  People throw it up on facebook or twitter or whatever else and just seek the attention that they were there.  The funny thing is, I actually employ my phone with my gopro setup to do a lot of filming.  Mostly fishing and underwater videos, mahi on the line, sharks bumping against the lens, that sort of thing.  I don’t throw them up on youtube, I don’t put them on facebook, I share them face to face with somebody who couldn’t have been there with me.

Why?  Because nothing starts a conversation off like showing somebody a video of a big, toothy critter about six inches away from the camera.  Or of hauling in tuna in twelve foot rollers some twenty six miles offshore as lightning cracks overhead and waterspouts kick up around the boat. Maybe the one video I wish I’d posted somewhere because I lost it when I accidentally wiped the flash card.

You don’t get that by posting it on facebook or youtube.  Sure, you’d get some likes. Maybe some PETA vegans blowing up the comment section.  But not a conversation.

I think that smartphones are every bit as addictive as maybe even heroin.  There are people who can’t live without it, as described in both videos. They practically live through the device, more attached to it than the world and people around them.  Maybe it is to fill some sort of lonely void as Louis seems to think.  I find it at least equally plausible that it is more a vanity issue.  People get addicted to the “likes”, to the thumbs ups on youtube, to more tweets in their direction.  If tweets in their direction is even a thing, I don’t know, all I’ve ever used it for before this class was when I heard about sports news via some insider.  Even then, I wasn’t actually going to twitter, it’s just where the info first broke.

Moving on to the social media log assignment, it didn’t really take me very long to get a baseline reading.  I don’t ever use my facebook, which is the one social media thing I even have an account for.  I do a tiny bit of texting, if that counts.  Today it was to let my one friend know to head out to meet at the gym, and to another that he isn’t going to stop being pre diabetic by sleeping instead of deadlifting. Another to let a different friend know that, while I let his dog out, he did a bit of a roll through mud while chasing a soccer ball and is probably going to need a bath.  Sorry, Matt, I did the best I could with the towel by the door.

I’m sure that there are people who would share all of this on facebook or instagram or something else.  I see them snapping selfies after two reps, hashtag it with a #swole, and then sit there for another few minutes clicking the pretend cows before leaving and acting like they actually accomplished something.  Arnold has a great term for cellphones in a gym.  “Mickey mouse stuff.”  I’d actually go a bit further and say that applies to just about any situation.  If you’re doing something that should require your full attention, or something amazing like jumping out of a plane, documenting it on your cell should be the last thing on your mind.  To be honest a lot of fishing trips I don’t even remember to turn my gopro on, if I even remembered to charge it, or even pack it.  If you read my first post this week, you’ll note that I don’t even bother uploading these videos anywhere.

I even know a guy who lost his chance at a once in a lifetime trophy deer because he was fiddling trying to do a snapchat, dropped it, and had the buck run off on him.  He feels a bit different about trying something like that now.

It’s a real conflict for me to manage all of this.  I know that social media is basically required for a modern business to actually thrive.  Not because it is really some necessary thing, but because there are billions of phonezombies out there who pay in the same cash everybody else does.  Sure, it has a few other uses, making announcements easier to spread and such.  For the most part, though, it’s just another form of advertisement spam.

All the while I’m actually perfectly content with not uploading my daily life to the web.  If I want to know what somebody else is doing, I’ll usually call or at minimum text.  Maybe an email if it is a bit long winded. I only use these as tools in the cases where an actual face to face conversation isn’t possible, usually because of distance or time.

Concerning my social media experiment, I am actually, for a 24 hour period, going to attempt to use my phone as much as my peers.  I’ll log in to my facebook, I’ll read whatever inane information people have slathered all over, I’ll maybe even confirm those dozens of people I’ve met who send me a friend request after.  I’m writing this little part ahead of time as a way to give my predictions as well.

I have little doubt that I’m going to hate it.  Likely for all of the same reasons I stopped using any social media in the first place.