Not so recently, I've been asked semi-seriously, "what's your job again?"
That's a tough question in my field. See, a lot of people in my field, in a bid to make the title sound cool less boring, like to append their position with guru, like this: Search Engine and Social Media Guru. Which raises the question:
What?
No. That's not what we do. That really doesn't mean anything, and it just sounds like Robert Duvall using Google a lot. The other thingsadcreative people do is add ninja, like so: Digital Marketing Ninja. Which again, raises the question:
Seriously, what?
Uh-uh. See, it's really less that guy ... and with just TV shows, more meme-like ...
It doesn’t take too much brainpower to mock Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who told the world boobs apparently cause earthquakes. Yes, literally. No, he wasn’t kidding. “Many women who do not dress modestly...lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity, and spread adultery in society,” he said, “which increases earthquakes.”
Now, come on. Mocking a guy who says that stuff like that is like trying to get the Kardashians to stop using “awesome.” And also, if what he said was true, then all we can say to the cast of Baywatch Hawaii is this: RUN.
So anyway, because of the sheer idiocy of the situation, the world just moved on and left the cleric alone to his aversion to plate tectonics and love for the boobquake theory.
No, wait. What happened was, the world decided that CNN should report it. That’s right. CNN, the giant freaking cable network that brought you 234 years of Larry King interviews. So people started laughing at how much the cable network has changed and how the mighty have fallen, and then moved on.
No, wait. What happened was, people started a movement to test the theory. That’s right – a girl named Jennifer McCreight asked 200,000 women to show off as much cleavage as possible to show that women’s breasts will not cause earth-shattering events, at least in the literal sense. As you can imagine, a lot of men supported this movement. So CNN just scoffed at what a movement they helped create, and left the movement to die a natural death.
No, wait. CNN blogged more about it. And things started to spiral, as is usually the case when boobs are involved, out of control. And lo and behold, 200,000 women INDEED showed up in as little clothing as they could muster, like on a playboy party on steroids, but with less tact. And mother nature let us know, once and for all that boobs do not, in any way, shape, or form, cause earthquakes.
No wait. What happened was, mother nature sided with the nut jobs. On boobquake day, Taiwan INDEED had a 6.9 magnitude earthquake.
Take a second to think about that. Imagine Eddie Gil promising to pay all Filipinos a million bucks, and then INDEED pushing through with it. Now imagine that in all facets of your life. Ricky Martin being straight. April Boy Regino getting a Grammy. Or a Pulitzer. Or both.
The next time you reach for your hippocampus to mock them about how absurd that is, they will have Boobquake day to reference. The nut jobs now own the streets. Everybody else is just passing through.
Mang Larry's isawan is a good place in UP for really bad stuff. If you're into roasted pig ears, deep fried chicken intestine, or makeshift microphones, you should really check the place out.
Anwyay, Mang Larry apparently has quite a business going - the place is typically packed, and they now offer shakes, shedding off some of that exclusive isaw aura.
But it's still a little jarring when you head over to a nice little isaw cart, place your order, (order!!!) settle on your favorite rock, sidewalk, or jeep, and you get asked...
Dine in o take out?
I know business is booming and all, but, uhm, where?
Hack 1: I know, I know. We could pay people to carry billboards on their backs! Moving billboards for the win. We’ll flood the Ortigas area…
Hack 2: Shomen actually beat us to that, those shameless batstards. But I like the way you think. Anyway, what if we took a giant speaker, put it on a truck, and just blasted out the marketing message like there’s no tomorrow?
Hack 1: Pretty sure that’s illegal.
[Silence]
[Laughter]
Hack 1: So, anyway, I think San Miguel beat us to that. What if, what if, we made real people pose as mannequins, so we’d have mannequins who blink, move slightly…
Most events take a while to influence the world, but on rare occasions, a few manage to polarize or demolish opinions; to change frameworks in an instant; to let people know that the world is one way today, and the next time they wake up, the world is another way.
August 6, 1945, was one instance. The world changed that day. Up until then all the hubbub had been about a science nut named Albert who studied light and had a penchant for saying nothing in reality is absolute. Then, Hiroshima happened. It's not that the technology wasn't available before - nuclear technology has been studied since a lot of people figured out that the science nut was dead on. But on August 7, 1945, everybody knew for a fact that a nuclear meltdown was possible, and people woke up to a different world.
Up until April 26, 1986, nuclear power was a relatively safe power source that was on an energy class all its own. It was on its way to save the world by providing an energy source that doesn't heat up the world the way carbon-based power sources do. Then, Chernobyl happened. It's not like the risks weren't known from day one - nuclear power debates had been taking place for a while. But on April 27, 1986, people woke up to a world where it was apparent that a few corners cut was all that stood between power source and a major catastrophe. Last February, we had another world-altering experience. Up until then, the most evident proof that people on the interwebs were morons had been the fact that MySpace exists. Okay, that’s pretty big proof. But still, there had been no honey pot – you’d have to check out trashy page after trashy page until your eyes had given out to confirm. No more. On February 10, 2010, ReadWriteWeb wrote an article about Facebook – pretty standard stuff, saying that Facebook, like every other site in social networking history, preferred if you stayed there longer, with the site serving as a person’s main login. And then, something curious happened. People started commenting that, and I quote, “The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.” And it got worse from there. The seventh comment reads “I WANT THE OLD FAFEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!!” Denial and anger dominated the streams.
Clearly, something had gone wrong. People flocked to the blog in droves, angry that Facebook had apparently become all red, angry that apparently, Facebook had become a blog, angry that they had been locked out. They expressed this with all the urgency of a crack addict looking for the next fix. At a few dozen comments, some turned to bargaining.
Comment 113:"You reallllly don't want to know what I think. I was doing pretty good until now. I want a nice EASY login like I had before!!!!!”Some greeted the change with depression.
Comment 353: “I wish I could find my facebook login.”But then, anger slipped back in.
Comment 455: “WHY CNA"T I LOGING TO MY FACEBOOK!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IS GOIGN ON HEAR??????”
At last, after a grueling experience, some shot straight to acceptance.
Comment 873: “CANCELL MY ACCUNT!!”But some refused to give up. They went on to fight the good fight, and you could almost hear their heart breaking.
Comment 2202: “OMG WHAT THE F? Facebook is my life, if this is what it has come to, I'm just going to kill myself... Why would they change it like this, it's terrible!!!! WHY CANT I LOGIN OMG.”
To RWW’s credit, they tried to stop the mess. They had a message, written in bold…
Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here and become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook right now, click here. For future reference, type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or enter "facebook" into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.But by then, it was too late. The juggernaut had started rolling, and there was no stopping it. On February 10, 2010, we created the world’s largest pool of potential Nigerian scam targets, and for crying out loud, it’s what the Internet was made for.Join the party at comment 2261.
There are two kinds of employees. Those who change the world or build an empire, and those who attend fire drills. Yesterday, I found out I was the latter. Bah! Humbug!
In Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Borges' character argues that even though the fictional Pierre rewrote Don Quixote word for word, the the second story was vastly superior to the first, because of context. The world has changed, as did the meaning. Metafiction?
Bleh. Welcome to the 1930s, where they didn't take concepts far enough. What if the same author rewrote everything, word for word? Would there be meaning? Would one be superior to the other? Would anyone... hey, where'd everyone go?
Anyway, to take the concept and twist it until it's meaningless...
I just came back from Dos Palmas, home to an array of things you will lose yourself to - a magnificent mangrove beach, a plethora of Rico Yan references, and souvenir items that declare, “God created women and pearl as well.” And as with so many of these trips, the story starts out with the airport, where we arrived after using up enough batteries on digital cameras to run a small village.
The Palawan airport, we would later learn, is a place for contemplation, a respite clearly designed to take your thoughts off of stress, or take them off altogether.
The Palawan airport battle cry against stress reads,
Try and relax the soothing massage Of blind masseurs, While waiting your trip! It is for rajuvination, it releases stress
But the point is, airport. The place is supported by a fee travelers pay, money they use to tend to the cobwebs by the seats and - and this is what I really like about that airport - the guy who walks over the roof, holes on the ceiling and all.
From there, we took a bus ride and basked in the glory of Palawan, complete with a very enthusiastic tour guide. “The specialty food around these parts is... well, there’s really no specialty,” she began, and it dawned on me that it was going to be a long haul. “Notice how clean the place is. Palawan was voted cleanest city in 1994, 1995...”
About an hour and an MP3 session later, we arrived at the ferry dock, a small place with a thing for bathroom use. The comfort room sign reads,
TAKE-A CR - P5.00 SHOWER - P20.00
After having taken a CR, and then staring at the sign for a good few minutes, I got left behind by the ferry I was supposed to be on, and the rains began to really have at it. I got on another one, and there was another guide, replete and bursting with tourist information. “That is the bat island,” she began. “It’s called that way because there are lots of bats.”
“MP3 player, now!” said my feeble, tourist-information-overloaded brain.
“You can’t see it because of the rains but that’s the StarfishIsland,” she continued. “It’s called that way because...”
They were looking for me after the ferry finally docked on Dos Palmas, partly because the rains were really heavy by then, but mostly because I got left behind my designated ferry ride while I was in awe of the CR sign. So after the people from the office realized I wasn’t lost, just signage-inspired, we got to the business of checking out the beach.
The island is called Arreceffi - it’s a sweet little patch of sand and mangroves, and the beach makes some of the others I’ve seen look like a backyard picnic spot, and that’s while there’s vicious amounts of rain. There’s a range of things to do - we kayaked, played an array of beach sports, and watched the fire dancers play with, erm, fire, but we made sure we didn’t break any of their rules including - and this was on the tour reminders - not entering the restaurant topless.
On day 2, there were team building activities, physically grueling challenges that we journ majors refer to as “painful.” Excruciatingly painful, the kind that leaves you wondering later if oxen have been partying on your back - there was a four-way tug-of-war, a log race, and a range of other superb activities, and they warned us not to do “direct assaults on the marshals.”
We spent two nights in Dos Palmas, and there had been bottomless booze and countless cameras, concepts that are dangerous by themselves but taken together become monstrous entities. Want proof?
Sorry if this is not new to you, but I haven't been a member of Facebook for very long. In fact, I had viewed the social network the same with the same glasses that I had for, say, cockroach droppings. I know those things are there, I just didn’t like thinking about the subject.
Eventually, if anyone gave it enough thought, there’d probably be something to observe. (“those things look like black pepper?” or “did you know that image results come up first when you type in ‘cockroach droppings’ on Google?”)
But anyway, I’m trying to make sense of the whole social thing now, and man, have I been missing out. I mean, if anyone told me about what the news feeds read like, I’d have jumped on day one.
“X (or a random name, like Nicolas) commented on his OWN photo.”
“Nicolas commented on his OWN status message.”
“Nicolas has NO FRIENDS. Help him find people he knows.”
There are few ways to beat that in terms of making someone look like a complete loser, and this is something I am deeply, deeply interested in.
The thing is, these things are not accidents. They’re not missteps – they are calculated moves designed to make people more social, more cutesy, more actively engaged in commenting on anyone’s picture about the latest in flower-growth. And when those feeds are not there, people worry.
But then, what gives? If you’re Facebook, why pull your punches? If you’re willing to make someone look like a complete dope for not being social enough and not understanding the concept of captions, why not tell Nicolas that he needs a clue , and that he’s a complete dope who needs an IQ bump to get the concept of captions?
See, what facebook needs is a good subordinate clause. Or three.
I'm a Spielberg and Zemeckis fan. A J.J. Abrams, Aaron Sorkin, and David Kelley zealot. A Dave Barry buff. A Frank Miller, Joss Whedon and Chris Claremont freak.
I like playing table tennis, I love comic books, and I can't live without reading and writing.
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