Chasing Likes...A Decade Of Starting At Liquid Crystal
Every Friday morning I open my eyes and stare up the ceiling. In the summer I watch the fan blade a while. In the winter I squint to see the ceiling because it’s usually dark.But before I get up and make my coffee I always make sure that I have located that something in my head that I really want to transpose to this particular column.
I named this the Friday Nite Sermon because I wanted it to be different from the other stuff I write. I wanted it to be about things that I feel, as opposed to just the things that I know. Or the things I have seen. Or the opinions I may have about things that have happened.
That stuff is all valid and worthy, IMHO, of writing about. But on Fridays, it’s all about belief and getting out the things that could potentially build and fester inside my psyche and cause mental anguish.
Social Media…The Best Addiction Of All, ‘ Cause It’s Free
I have four social media sites that I participate in, maybe a few more occasionally, but mostly it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, beBee. BeBee is where I write all my posts and then link them to the other sites and Google+.
I am on these sites every day and, for different reasons, enjoy the time I spend there. But I will also be the first to admit that I am also mildly addicted to visiting and spending time on those sites. And not just because I field comments on my posts there, which is kind of how I rationalize it.
No, it’s because these sites provide me with the ammunition I need to attack the things I think are worthy of attacking. These sites keep me up to speed on stuff that’s new, a lot of which is cool. These sites keep me exposed to other people’s opinions because writers don’t work in a vacuum. And these sites are, quite honestly, the easiest way to see opinions of all kinds on clear and concise display.
We Are All Just Targets For Somebody
For the ability to do all of the above, I have relinquished a certain amount of my privacy, I have given these sites a certain amount of data which they have promised to keep confidential but never do.
They never do because our data is their capital. They sell it, or at least rent it, to advertisers which helps them stick ads in front of us that they think we might find relevant and appealing based on our preferences.
And you know what, I don’t begrudge them any of that. Maybe it’s because I am an ad guy from way back and have an intrinsic understanding of how this shit all works.
Maybe it’s because I don’t really mind ads on these sites because I can either pay attention or not and make the decision in a split second, so it does no sweat off my ass.
And because I know how much bandwidth and propellerhead- based effort is required to keep hyperactive sites like these going, I don’t really begrudge them the billions they make from these advertisers.
Where I Fall Out Of Bed With All Of This
Two places.
One is that I know enough about advertising to know that the digital marketing community, generally speaking, knows fuck all about advertising in the classical sense.
To them, this is all about sales. And the reason it’s all about sales is that they prey on people’s ignorance about digital marketing and its inability to create genuinely effective reach right across the board.
They tell everyone and their uncle that this is the place to be, without regard for whatever that company’s strategy might be.
They offer a perpetual, extremely low ROI, shotgun approach that is only useful to a relatively small percentage of product businesses and also completely useless to service businesses.
It’s a con job on a well organized and massive scale.
Two is something we have seen quite clearly with the most recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle, where the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were downloaded and used to influence, in as much as it could, the outcome of the 2016 US election.
This is something that is happening all over the world these days. Political organizations hiring hackers to steal ‘protected and confidential’ user data, or infiltrate sites with ads and sponsored links filled with lies designed to created negative perceptions of certain political candidates.
File this under ‘Dirty Tricks” if you like. Or ‘Shit Happens”. But the bigger issue is that now that these mechanisms are in place, what happens next? Data piracy and high jacking? Oooops... already happened. Cyber Bullying? Oooops...there’s a ton of it. Increasing Alt-Right opinions polluting your space? LOL. The list goes on.
It feels very much like all these so-called ‘free’ social media sites are costing us more and more every day.
What Are The Options Going Forward
Only two. Maybe three
1. Drop out, although most of us are so deeply embedded in this system that that might be impossible.
2. Shrug it off and hope for the best. We lost our privacy, and any right to bitch about the sacredness of it, way back when we joined our first social media site or wrote a little bio for Wikipedia or built our first web site or sent our first email blast or wrote our first blog or signed up for our first YouTube channel feed. Or…
3. You can take the Jimbo Option and rage against the machine. It’s fun. It’s good for your soul and it lets the powers that be know that the world is not 100% filled with disillusioned sheeple just hoping they are not the next unwitting victim of…well just about any of the bad shit that can happen to you here.
Amen.
Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional. He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, mildly opinionated op/ed blogger & beBee Brand Ambassador.
He is also a partner at Bullet Proof Consulting. www.bulletproofconsulting.ca
Follow Jim
On beBee: https://www.bebee.com/bee/jim-murray
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-b8a3a4/
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jimbobmur
On Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y97gxro4
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