Real relationships, not the digital kind...

I haven't been blogging that much. Staying away from Facebook as much as I can, too. Remember, I'm pulling back from the digital world, and funny, just when it's starting to be kind of fun.

But I'm getting back into the real world, with real-world face-to-face connections with real people, rather than this jerking off that happens in the digital space.

My cousins, who I haven't seen in 16 years and with whom I was just about inseparable between the ages of about 11 to about 21 came to visit...and we all had a blast reconnecting. I don't know about Cousins Jerry and Doris (yes, where I come from we call each other Cousin this or that; and yes, I do have relatives with two first names--get over it) but there were times when I was 17 years old again, and it was fun and it was alive and it was living, and living good.

I was in a play a couple of weeks ago, with two stupendous actresses (yes, they are stupendous to work with, very giving and open and free on stage) and we had a blast on stage, going out every night and just having fun.

But funny, the digital world is starting, for me, to pay off the way it does for other people. I'm starting to "meet" new people and have reconnected with people from my past--someone from school, 29 years ago, and someone who I acted with but lost touch with. There are musicians I'm slowly starting to connect with, which is so cool because music for me is such a new and exhilarating experience, and I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say I'm still alive today because of music, because of the day Baxter walked into my apartment and handed me Lulu and said, Here, this is yours. You need this.

All this is playing against the death of the King of Pop, a person who people are mourning but frankly I can't seem to even conjure up more than a simple, Ah, that's too bad, because I at least understand digital relationships but I don't for the life of me understand people who cry for famous people who they never met.

Finally, here are two videos I grabbed at Club Passim last Wednesday night when Noe Venable opened for Blame Sally. I posted these on my Facebook page, but if your not one of my "friends" maybe you didn't see them. Two wonderful artists--well, one artist and one group--from San Francisco, and what is going on out there with the music scene? First The Bittersweets come through Club Passim, now Noe and Blame Sally, all twisting music but making it all so enjoyable at the same time.

The digital world: Back in the cage...

It's been over a month since I've blogged. The digital world and I are slowly parting ways, even though the work I've been able to scrounge of late is all Web work.

I last blogged about a week before we left for Spain and Morocco. That last week was pretty hectic. I purposely didn't take a laptop or even a cell phone with us, and the two times we stepped into an Internet cafe it was reluctantly and only because I had to get messages to Allison. Those two weeks of not constantly glancing at a cell phone for messages that either were or weren't there, not thinking about a status line on Twitter, not wasting 45 minutes at a crack on Facebook, just randomly clicking with drool coming out of my mouth, were golden. Then, on returning to the States, I got a small contract working for two weeks on-site where they block Facebook, MySpace, and all that.

All those digital tools are great. I wouldn't want to live without Google, or something like it. Just today I was talking to Johnny, and wondered which band Peter Frampton was in before he went solo. Johnny Googled it, and the quick answer came. I'm not going to say the answer; that's for you to find out. And just this week I connected on Facebook with an old, old friend. But in the two years I've been on Facebook, this has happened exactly once. Yeah, it's a nice service, but that's about it. It's not much more than a time suck, that I can see, and I've been meaning to hit the delete button for a while now.

I actually leave the apartment more and more without a cell phone. I like being untethered. I like being untethered in so many ways.

I'm writing a play, and think that communicating that way might be a better way than even this blog, which I still think is super, but...I know people read it, I know some read it consistently (because they tell me and I also run some pretty decent analytics on it, so you can run but you can't hide) but I miss the face to face. This weekend we went to a friend's 50th birthday party (happy birthday, Joan!) where we saw some old friends and new people. Yesterday we went to Sue's niece's graduation party (congrats Jenn!!) and it was great to see some of Sue's family and just sit around and talk and laugh--in person.

Facebook keeps getting curiouser and curiouser...

I don't quite understand why a person who reads my blog on a fairly regular basis refuses to be friends on Facebook.

Or why we Google old boyfriends and girlfriends and kind of lurk in the shadows of the digital world.

Fear? Unresolved feelings?

Just sort of curious, huh?

There is a reason...and God love him, I think it has to do with Einstein. One of the many things that the digital world does is change time and space. And in the old days, if we broke up with someone, time and space would separate us, and except for people with serious boundary issues, the time and space would allow us to heal. (If you don't understand the meaning of that last sentence, check out the latest edition of the DSM.) Now, the Internet eliminates time and space and lets all those unresolved feelings work their charm/magic/undoing.

The digital world fascinates me. How it works. How it's changing us; not just how we do things, but actually changing who we are as a species. (We're going to have to realign ourselves with time and space, for one thing.) That's one of the reasons I took this job at the agency, to be immersed in what's happening in this new world. Not that any of us know what's going on. Trust me on this one: We're all feeling our way, making things up as we go along.

But Facebook...hmmm...I've already blogged about it once or twice before. I was about to quit a week or so ago just because I think it's pretty much a colossal waste of time, and kind of boring. You click a lot, but not a lot happens. But then Sue joined up. And then this other little issue cropped up (it's none of your business what it was; it's just not as seedy as you think), and suddenly...

For someone like Sue who has friends all over the world, it made for a handy tool to reconnect with people who she hasn't seen in a while. But what's weird is a lot of us tend to run in different circles. I have work friends and theater friends and music friends and crazy friends. And that's where Facebook falls flat. It just lumps all your "friends" into one big pot. Sue reconnected with friends, but plans to move to standard email soon.

Plus, when you're a certain age, the whole high school aspect of Facebook just makes it a bit juvenile. While I know there are lots of people who can't seem to get passed their high school years, some of us do like to live life in a little more adult fashion.

Just a couple of days ago I changed my Facebook picture, and changed my relationship. John is in a relationship with Sue. (The person you're in a relationship has to be on Facebook for you to do this.) Then I looked at it, and it looked so stupid. So I changed it. And suddenly it said I was single. Shit, I'm thinking, all my "friends" are going to think that Sue and I broke up. Suddenly I was in high school mode doing damage control. No, John is in a relationship. He's not a loser. He has a gf.

Gimmeabreak.

I joined Facebook for work. It's a fun little fishbowl to watch and not that hard to figure out on a superficial level. Get your friends together. Write a message. Write on your friends' walls. Update your status. John ... is tired ... happy ... stressed because he can't think of something witty to write every morning on Facebook.

Then it takes over. Rack up your number of "friends." Super poke this person. Kill this Vampire. Post pics, vids, links. You end up spending an enormous amount of time clicking around. Why?

Sue, during her teen years, was a champion dog trainer. Shelties. She taught me something with Bob. (Bob is a dog, in case you're new to this blog.) A trainer simply gets the dog to do what it does naturally. And that's what Facebook does. It sets up an environment so we can do what we do naturally. Why? For advertisers. Why else all the numbers? Why else would Facebook encourage developers to code apps like Take this Quiz: What kind of drug/drink/Lord of the Rings Character Are You? To attract all the members like flies to honey.

Co-worker Ryan, who knows infinitely more about this stuff than I do says that Facebook isn't ad-driven, but I think it is. I think it's just a lot less intrusive than most sites, which is the way to be in the digital world. Heavy-handed just doesn't work in the digital world. I mean, what was that little ad in the left-hand column today on my profile page asking the innocuous little question, Are you a songwriter? It took me a minute, until I realized that's in my interest. And then you can expand the page for even more appropriate ads.

And what about:



And:












These ads, and many more like it, are taken clean from my interests. Big deal. It's commercialism. It's just capitalism. Well...excuse me, Dr. Pavlov, I'm hungry.

Facebook and like sites remind me of a gyroscope. You spin it, and a little kid (or even a big kid like me) will just marvel. But then someone puts it in an airplane and suddenly that airplane can fly straight and true. Facebook is the toy. No one has figured out how to make it fly yet. But they're working on it, and in the meantime most of us are too busy poking and wracking our brains to write clever status messages to be paying attention.

Mark my words, the day will come when, instead of throwing a sheep at a friend, you'll be throwing Perdue Chickens at each other.

Torrence Boone is leaving Digitas

We were told yesterday that Torrence Boone is leaving Digitas. He's heading up an new initiative between Dell Inc. and WPP Group to handle all of the computer maker's marketing and advertising duties.

He's leaving for New York City, but Dell is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Mecca for all things alt/indie. Hey Torrence, I have twenty years in the computer industry. Omigod, please take me with you.

Anyway, he's going to be missed around here. And it's worth telling a story.

I had only been here a couple of days when C and I got in the elevator down in the lobby. Torrence got in the elevator with us. We didn't know who he was from Adam. Or maybe C did; he's more up on these things than I am. Anyway, that same day there was a little party on the Deck to welcome new employees. I'm standing there all by myself, minding my own business, which I've learned is pretty much SOP for me around here, when Torrence walks in. I noticed him, for the simple reason Torrence is the kind of guy who you notice when he walks into a room. He has that kind of presence.

And don't you know he walks right up to me, gives me a big smile, sticks out his hand and says, here's somebody I don't know. I introduce myself, telling him what I was hired for and then I asked him what he does around here. Yeah. He starts telling me and I guess my jaw dropped. Nicest guy in the world. We talked a bit more, including the difference between working in an agency like this versus being on your own like I had been for five years. (The difference is you work a helluva lot harder on your own. You hustle a lot more on your own. As a matter of fact, you don't hustle at all in an agency; and by hustle I mean looking for work.)

Torrence is the kind of guy who knows you among the 800 other people who work in the Boston office. That's the kind of person he is, and I truly wish him luck.

Facebook

Sat (well, actually SRO) through a presentation on Facebook today. That's one of the cool things about Agencyland, there are some interesting presentations made by Somebodies. Pretty interesting until the agency marketing, strategy, and general old guard started peppering the guest with questions about click rates and branding campaigns. One exec even was either bold enough (or tactless enough, depending on your pov) to say our clients weren't interested in groups as small as 5,000. Well...goodness...give me 5,000 good leads over 5,000,000, but welcome to the world of Big Business.

I do the Facebook thing, and I'm not sure why. Peer pressure, I think.

On a slow day I'll check Facebook numerous times an hour, just like I'll check email every five minutes even when I didn't have email five minutes ago. (Where is everyone? Does everyone hate me? Why don't I have friends? I need some attention here, people....) I want/crave to see what others are doing. There's something reassuring to seeing someone updating their page, like seeing a far-away light in the darkness, that there are other living, breathing people out there manipulating the bits and bytes in the same sphere that I inhabit. I feel connected, but only slightly.

Facebook is a helluva lot of work. Forget Facebook, social networking is a lot of work. I guess if you want friends, you gotta work for them.


There's the touch, and that's really all there is. C thinks it's all a bunch of bunk, made for the self-absorbed who all they can do is talk about themselves and don't know how to have real relationships. And I think there is a heckuva lot of truth to that. But truth be told, I don't think there's really much difference between dressing up your Facebook page and choosing the shirt you're going to wear to work. It's all for show. Hello?

There's the status message. Updated, it has to be clever and funny and smart. It's hard work to come up with that everyday, and it's important you stay within the boundaries dictated by white middle-class America. John wants to live in a trailer in the middle of the desert with a loaded shotgun by the door is not an appropriate status message on Facebook. At least not in my little world of friends. You gotta fit in, but you don't necessarily have to join the team to play the game.

The shallowness of a Facebook relationship isn't, quite frankly, any more shallow that most relationships I've had in my life. Just like you can count on one hand the number of great teachers you've had in your life, I'm sure most of us hit a certain age and can do the same with the relationships they've had in their life. Most friendships and relationships are just training ground for when the shit really hits the fan, when the chips really fall, and if you're ever unfortunate enough in your life for some general crisis to turn you into a human World Trade Tower you'll find out fast enough just how deep your friendships and relationships are. Most aren't.

Face it, peeps, as a species, most of us are pretty shallow. And I think we all know that. And I think, like it or not, that's exactly the reason that Facebook and MySpace and Bebo and Friendster and Reunion.com et al exist. It's the reason they can exist. People crave touch, and most prefer a poke or SuperPoke over the real physical deal. Whatever their excuse--they don't have the time, the energy. Some will even tell the truth and say society has twisted them to the point where they are emotional cripples and a digital relationship, one they can control with a keyboard and mouse, is preferable to a real one. Did I say preferable? I meant to say required.

But given my rant, I still think there's something there. Something really big. And the problem is we haven't tapped it yet, and I don't think we will before the marketing and strategy and analysis people catch up with their need to quantify clicks and page views. (One page view, to the right person, is worth all the big numbers. That's communication. That's relationships. One passionate true love is worth a ton of one-night stands.)

What's the next big thing? It's not digital. Never will be. The next real big thing will be when digital lets us cut the cord from digital.

Print Mags won't die

Then this from mediabistro.com's FishBowlNY (Daily) Feed.

Why Print Mags Won't Die.

I guess someone should forward this to No Depression. There are just some things that a piece of paper can do that a computer can't. And vice versa.

The argument that I just made for No Depression in the previous post could also be made against them, too. The magazine business is changing, the model for making money is digital and just like the music industry doesn't know what it's doing, the publishing business doesn't understand the Web any better and how to make money off it.