“Mirror, mirror on the wall…”

Are you sure that’s “Me”?

In the half-darkness of twilight we all hide our crimes and misdemeanours carefully underneath a hard shell of well-worn words; words chanted hypnotically to convince and remind everyone  and ourselves of our “goodness”, “grace”, “kindness” and “caring”. This “virtue” chant conveniently conceals the deliberate and intentional mismanagement of ourselves and is traditionally accompanied by our eternal litany of excuses for this, that and the other. Counting virtues and flaws is the preoccupation of those who like to kick up a fuss over their misbegotten mediocrity and have nothing to talk of apart from their misgivings; either of themselves or others. Few, if any, can hold a candle to this “circus of self” paraded by the “better than, worse than” crusaders and we all, to a lesser or greater degree, come under this circus tent; we love to moan, rant, whinge, bitch and complain.

There is no real reason for it but it’s kinda understandable; it’s difficult to swim against the tide of what’s “expected” of you, whatever that is, be it positive or negative. No matter how much we might like to kid ourselves with our efforts of “fitting in” the irony is that nobody really “fits in”, everybody is a peculiarity unto themselves and everybody secretly knows it too. It’s a most public secret because if everyone did “fit in”, everything was the way it was supposed to be and everything always worked out there’d be a lot of smiling but instead, you see sad eyes trapped in miserable faces.  “Fitting in” has a cost, both to ourselves and others. It breeds an insidious and vicious cycle of hidden apathy; a culture of “settling” for things we “didn’t particularly want” that we “make do with” because we “can’t” see any other option or choice. Why? Because “that’s the way things are” and “that’s the way of the world”; we never question, nevermind challenge, such assumptions. It breeds a culture of fake contentment, deep insecurity and savage bitterness. We’ll go to extremes to “fit in”, we’ll willingly carve away huge parts of ourselves and others to achieve a “good” fit.

The non-smilers come in all shapes, sizes and colours, mostly garbed in the ego-centric trappings of conceit that belies a deep personal insecurity. The majority of non-smilers, will look up from their misery and then blurt “I’m just so unlucky” and the bitter non-smilers will just completely and utterly bathe in denial; switching on hyper-drive to harp on about their delusive “happiness” at their  dissatisfying lot; lying to themselves and insisting to others that they’ve got what they want and that everything is “perfect”.  The uncommon truth is that, we are acting in an artificial manner to “fit in” and hiding the discomfort that this causes; we practice so hard that these actions become engrained, habitual and seem “natural” to us.  So much so, we merge this behaviour into what we call “self” but in reality we have created an almost impenetrable blindness to our own actions.

This blindness results in a raft of contradictions in the way we feel and view ourselves. Our defence of our “self” develops into a hard-wired “blindness” or “oblivion” to our actions.  We are no longer able to pin-point the source of our distress because everything we do seemingly “makes sense”. Thanks to our blind spot we come to the misguided conclusion that our feelings don’t matter and are irrelevant, and thus we bury them. As our “blindness” becomes a permanent feature we notice that troublesome events (i.e. results of our actions) keep recurring, instead of taking notice of our feelings and treating them as warning signs of problems we need to deal with, we deliberately ignore them.  Instead, we arrogantly infer events are further evidence of what we deem as our “self” but somehow unfortunate consequences that emanate from those events are “circumstance” that we cannot be responsible for. Consequently, we end up founding and building our lives on and around this  blindness we label as “self”.

If we stop for a moment, we may wonder what to make of the miserable armies of non-smiling people and go “was it really their fault for the way things worked out for them?”.  “Surely”, we say to ourselves, “that wasn’t their intention, it couldn’t have been deliberate or knowing?” and we end with “of course, they didn’t mean it”. We go “it doesn’t make sense, nobody wishes bad stuff or unhappiness on themselves, that’s ludicrous!”. That’s true, nobody “wishes it” upon themselves but they do engage in the same actions that repeatedly result in the same undesirable outcomes. Then the logic goes something like this, “well, anybody can make mistakes” but if this is the case, it’s very striking how many people don’t learn from them and repeat the action, over and over again. Our “blind spot” shows up as duplicitous, repetitious behaviour; striking peculiarities of purpose that are easily spotted in others are conveniently overlooked in ourselves. We end up ignoring, excusing and even encouraging particular flavours of blindness if they are similar to our own, or conversely, we’re extremely judgemental if they’re not. We see it all the time in strange recurring, uncontrolled excesses of behaviour; people who cry for help but don’t need it, people who senselessly and compulsively brag, deride and ridicule,  people who are insidiously greedy, vicious and nasty… There is an endless list of extreme behaviour and all this comes out because we can’t keep the feelings in.

We are our own worst enemy, the tricks we play on others are the same tricks we play on ourselves; we will eventually become victim to our own delusive games until we give ourselves no choice. What’s very bizarre is that this “blind” spot behaviour finds more and more general “acceptance” and is increasingly written off as incidental and minor;  dismissed as things we are supposed to and expected to “put up with” and “shut up about”, rather than highlight or challenge. We may like to say things to ourselves and others like “oh well,  that just how I am”, “I can’t help it”, “that’s just me” and invent reasons and excuses for  behaving badly but, in truth, we have none. We are responsible for our behaviour, the things we do, how we feel and for the consequences of who and what we choose to be; the consequence to ourselves is inescapable, after all, you are the only person who lives your life.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

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Unthinking the imaginable

People have an allergy to “change” regardless of what that “change” is. Many harbour romantic notions about themselves, that they are  still flexible, adaptable, broad-minded and open to change. However, by the time adulthood has taken a grip on our lives, most of us have become frozen statues of a person that we used to be, and we have eliminated any source that might disturb the stagnant pond we stand in. We have, through obstinacy and willfulness, allowed neglect to strangle one of our biggest assets; our imaginations.

We possess an extraordinary ability to constantly reinvent and transcend ourselves; to proactively initiate change and transform our inner worlds enabling us to envisage and shape our external world. Yet, astoundingly, most of us busily ignore this superb natural gift and smear ourselves with a slime of confusion about ourselves. Instead of realising that we are a constantly changing entity, and that “change” is one of our major distinguishing characteristics, we go “if I change I won’t know who I am anymore” and “that isn’t me”. It’s as if we are a talking chameleon that’s got stuck on one colour, that’s scratching its head and muttering “… colour changes, don’t be silly. If that happened you wouldn’t know you’re a lizard any more. You’d start eating grass and thinking you’re a zebra”.

Changes in our state of being, our person or personality, people find extremely disconcerting.  If you change you’re upsetting the delicate social eco balance of your relation to others and it’s inevitable that they are affected whether they like it or not. Changing yourself challenges others to adapt; to change in regard to you. To conceive of and adapt to your change, they have to place you in a new paradigm and in so doing, they are vicariously placing themselves there. This very momentarily “being you” causes unease; the new perspective or paradigm is probably one they hadn’t considered before; the weaker their imagination, the less they will be able to entertain the idea and the more they will squirm in discomfort.

Jumpers like to fix us down; they want what they know and know what they want from us. Jumpers cement and glue us to tacit, unstated assumptions and “rules” (i.e. shoulds and oughts), via the private intimacy and emotional subtext of social interaction. We comply and uphold Jumper values because our unfounded fear elicits voiceless obedience from us. Predetermined and fixed ideas of consequence keep us in check, ensuring predictable automated Jumper behaviour. We gradually lose sight of ourselves, seeing ourselves and the world in a distorted fairground mirror of  social  dictates. We convince ourselves that such socially intimate blackmail is forced upon us “in earnest” and that somehow we are innocent dupes with no options and “no choice” but to  succumb to demands. We shut our minds to ourselves, our mouths for our aggressors and embrace unfounded, fabricated social fears and action with open arms; we become virtuosos of silent suffering, shame and hidden cowardice.

Our cowardice takes us to a dangerous place because if we constantly refuse to change we will gradually become unable to change.  We will become frozen in time; spectators watching life pass us by.

Jumpers live in a world deprived of imagination; their world constantly shrinking as they become less and less capable of entertaining new ideas and things; limiting their choices and forcing themselves to live in the past, where all is known and nothing changes. After all, there is no need to exercise your brain or use your mental faculties inside the somnambulant comfort zone of Jumper society. However, “change” and anything new is the bane of this Jumper existence as it reminds us we have choice. “Change” and the “new” extends and offers us new choices. Although Jumpers would have us believe that  “change” is always “thrust” or forced upon us to take choice away. “Change” forces nothing upon us; we are in full control of our actions  and the choice or decision remains our own. Jumpers will  stonewall and attempt to invalidate anything that smells of “change” or “new” with off-hand negativity; they will do their best to slaughter ideas and cripple our imaginations, so that the foundations of social dictates are never challenged.

Jumpers would have us believe that imagination is a rather useless facility that’s reserved for the likes of children, the foolish, the autistic, the “artistic”, the mentally unhinged and any other “misfits”.  However, having a fully functioning imagination is a highly practical and useful asset. Unlike children, adults can combine a wealth of knowledge and experience with their imaginations, envisaging new things, new combinations and a variety of possible outcomes and futures. We need to fully employ our imaginations to test things out  in our heads before committing ourselves to action and real consequence. With a fully functioning adult imagination we will always be better prepared, come up with more robust ideas and solutions, be more practical  and reduce our uncertainty and risk.  Perhaps, with the flexibility that imagination allows, we’ll also encounter a little less friction in our lives.

One thing that children know, and adults have forgotten, is that imagination gives us alot of joy and happiness; the childhood glee and elation of discovery, understanding and invention is an amazing and unique delight lost to most adults. The freedom of creativity and a fully functional imagination cannot be underestimated in regard to the extent it can enrich our lives. Ultimately, if we have well-oiled and sharp imaginations we give ourselves the opportunity to expand our options and choose more wisely; casting our imaginations into the future and reeling in what we need today. The only cost is time, but as we know, travelling alongside a beam of light is time well spent.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

“Dream Killers”

The Jumper Nightmare: Having cake and eating it

When we’re children we allow ourselves to be anything we want; we cannot see any reason why we can’t be what we want. However, a bit later we find out we were just practising and what “we want to be” is supposed to happen when we grow-up. So, we all look forward to being grown-ups. However, along the way to being grown-up we learn that it’s acceptable to not be what we want, in fact, it’s often encouraged and we learn about all the impossibilities of our dreams and aspirations; making them all useless, purposeless and fanciful. Until finally we grow up and embarrassed by our “childish thoughts”, we throw away our dreams.

Instead, we have children, houses, jobs, money, holidays and cars to replace our dreams. Dreams and aspirations are considered a temporary disease of youth and set aside for the young and innocent. It’s taken for granted such “foolishness” and “naivety” will get sucked out of us by life’s little setbacks, disappointments and potholes in the road. The best that most adults can do is dream and aspire for “better” children, houses, jobs, money, holidays and cars and that’s all we can envisage for ourselves; that’s all we can “realistically” dream of.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the biggest obstacle to us having “anything in the world that we might want” are the thoughts in our heads; what is “realistic” limits our tomorrows and makes a dissatisfying bed to lie in today. However, there’s a tendency to think the reverse; if we have dreams it’ll only make us dissatisfied and disappointed with our lot. When we see others achieve spectacular things, things that we don’t even allow ourselves to dream of, we secretly despise them; deep down we mutter to ourselves that those people are no better than we are and they aren’t that special really. Actually, they are. However, it’s  only a simple thing that makes them different; they’ve gone after their dreams. Those supposedly magical people among us, for whatever reason, have held on to that childhood spark; the wonder  and curiousity that allows them the breadth to entertain ideas, imaginings and thoughts that others would immediately dismiss. Their excitement and tenacity drives them forward to find out, to know how that idea, imagining or thought ends up; they take their dreams  with them into adulthood and are brave enough see how their dreams fare in “harsh” reality and often they discover that reality isn’t so harsh after all. 

Underneath it all, whatever “cake” means to each of us, we really do know that “having one’s cake and eating it” actually does make us happy. We don’t allow ourselves to even dream of “having cake”, nevermind about “eating it”.  If we can’t think what we want, we’re definitely not going to get it. We’ve cancelled out all and any opportunity of “cake” in one fell swoop because we don’t allow ourselves to “indulge” in the thought. All other “cake” disappears down the same disposal shoot;  the thoughts and deeds that never were. By the time we reach adulthood, we have no cake to eat and the idea of eating it gives us nightmares. And therein lies the rub.

The trouble is, we treat our thoughts like potential crimes just waiting to happen, and we stop ourselves from thinking. Worst of all we stop ourselves from thinking positively because we have learnt not to trust, listen and act on the good stuff that pops up in our heads. We are superb at rationalising and thinking ourselves out of it; we are incredibly fluent in the language of limitation, curtailment and censorship.  We have an extraordinarily large vocabulary of negativity and defeatism; words like “impossible”, “stupidity”, “failure”, “old”, “wrong”, “ridiculous”, “foolish”, “irresponsible” etc. Sure, we’ll encounter things that sometimes get in the way of “having cake and eating it” but it doesn’t mean we can’t achieve it. Unfortunately, for most, by the time we even have an inkling that anything is amiss in a “cakeless” existence, we have completed our rites of sheeplehood and the Jumpers, overseers of ceremonies, have sold us the sheeple way of life. We’ve learnt to be secretly terrified of what other people may think, so much so, we proactively defend ourselves by embodying those very thoughts and voicing them as our own. Meanwhile, gnawing away inside of us is the pain of regret, whispering “you could have had it all, why didn’t you try?”

At the end of the day, you are the only person who really knows your true worth; nobody else experiences your experience of life, nobody holds the yardstick apart from you, so why use it to beat yourself with? Jumpers (terrified we might be “better than” them) do that for us; they’ll merrily smack you down with their stealth rhetoric of  facial expression and implied guilt, triggering phrases in your head like “who do you think you are…”, “so, you think you’re better than me…”, “and what makes you so special… “, “how dare you… “, “oh, so you think you’re above it all …”, “what’s wrong with you…” etc. Couple that with our  language of negativity and defeatism and we’ve got a dumpster truck full of our cake teleporting itself off to another reality.

So, how do we reclaim our cake? Easy, we just take what’s ours. What we forget is that we have the right to be happy. We are all entitled to have our cake and to eat it; we all have the opportunity to shape the lives we lead and the world we live in…  but first we need to envisage what kind of life and world we want.

It’s cake time!

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

“The War on Happiness”

The Tidal waves of Jumper disaster…

Proactive undermining and fake praise is the “Jumper” currency and standard of communication. You can spot the “Jumper” by their negativity; they are beset by the rampant social disease of comparison. Everything they express is comparative, whether indirect, implied or explicit. Nothing said is simple or stand-alone and everything marks you on a scale of comparison; against someone, something or some social standard or value. Nothing has value unless set against something or someone else.

Lost is the idea of simple appreciation for the thing itself because we enjoy it. Appreciation and enjoyment is only possible through comparison and what is being enjoyed is the comparison, not the thing itself for itself. We even rename a “comparison” and call it a “reason”; a reason to like or dislike, adore or abhor because it’s “better than”, “worse than” or “same as”.  We’ve made it nigh on impossible to be happy with ourselves; there’s always some comparison or scale of measurement out there that we won’t score well on, and we’ll be sure to find it. We will constantly and automatically measure ourselves to find ourselves wanting. Bizarrely, it is the comparison we have learnt to enjoy and the thing itself is only important because it triggers a comparison. Our enjoyment of life becomes intricately entwined and nondetachable from scoring ourselves on various scales of measurement. Comparison has become the source of all “happiness”.

To compound matters we are trained from an early age to be cautious and to save up for a “rainy day”. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being “sensible” until “sensible” becomes an extreme unto itself; we become blinkered about being “sensible”. The pre-empting and prediction of our rainy days becomes our obsession; our focus becomes skewed and our attention centred on what pains us. We think about all the bad things potentially coming our way; we plan for them and we expect them. We spend an inordinate  amount of time toiling away in preparation and careful planning for these unfortunate events, that may or may not materialise. However, we spend little or no time expecting or preparing for “good”, pleasant or happy things happening to us. We generally only feel “good” because we think we’ve avoided something bad and we habitually mistake “relief” for feeling good. We think we are in the pursuit of happiness, when, in fact, we are seeking out sources of anxiety and things to feel bad about. We have adjusted our “happiness” gauge to register “feelgood” only when we perceive a bad event coming our way. Our “feelgood” is symbiotically attached to our anticipation and avoidance of suffering which has nothing to do with being happy.

People are so busy with the external comparisons and the oncoming tidal waves of disaster that everyone is secretly in constant terror and desperately trying to avoid themselves i.e. they can’t live up to all those externally generated standards and simultaneously cope with constant, oncoming catastrophe. Instead of starting with a reasonable idea of “self” we start with an externally generated, often extreme, idea of what we should be and go from there instead, no matter how ridiculous or impossible that may be. Our comparisons are no longer reasonable, related or anchored to ourselves, instead our “self” becomes highly dependent on the vagaries of external influences. The Jumper way of life is founded on the adoption of unquestioned, external social values; what we fail to realise is that these external goal posts constantly and arbitrarily move, making this pursuit futile. Unfortunately, people try so hard to be something else they give up on being themselves. It’s no wonder that happiness seems mysterious, illusive and hard to achieve.

What is the most disturbing aspect of all this? The various social values? Surprisingly the answer is no. What’s disturbing is our hell bent commitment to our war on happiness. If we were to actually keep our comparisons to ourselves they would be rendered harmless to others and that may also make our neighbour happy too. Practising what we preach may even make us happy and just minding our own business would do wonders. Unfortunately, we do the opposite, social baiting is commonplace, done out in the open with no shame or conscience. Our depravity lies in proactively inflicting our values on others, coercing/forcing adoption of these values and the pretence that we have done nothing. The most unpalatable atrocity and result of our hypocrisy is that we are not only proactive in this activity but we take great pride in it. The social degradation of our fellow human being, emotionally and psychologically, happens all the time. We thirst for it. It’s a very simple fact that we find it more than acceptable to treat each other abysmally because it is so hypocritically “important” to us that our fellow human being must be just like us; think, believe, exist and be identical to us, even when we know that is an impossibility.  Social baiting is done for one reason only, so we can get “high” on a comparison, making ourselves feel better at someone else’s expense. We busily degrade, hurt, ridicule, humiliate and patronise others under many guises; helpfulness, caring, concern, duty, obligation, righteousness, morality, beliefs  -  it’s an endless list. The result is the same, plain and simple intolerance.

Snatching back happiness from the jaws of oncoming disaster and the terror of comparison allows happiness to take on wonderous myriad forms. The trick is giving ourselves the freedom to be happy…  it’s just different strokes for different folks, including yourself.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

“Hey Sheeple, you’re in a stew”

Beware of wolves in bad jumpers…

A “Jumper” is a sheeple who pulls the wool over their own eyes and tells you “you should” and “you ought” to do the same … plus  they’re also better than you because they have the ability to tell you that. There are lots of different varieties of Jumpers but they have one overwhelming trait in common, an internal blind spot to one thing,  themselves. They have lost the ability to define themselves and cannot tell anymore what is them and their thoughts and what is not; they have a nasty habit of internalising values that go under their “me” radar and these values end up as them. It’s not like they think or  make a choice or decision about it; they just let it happen and that is their choice/decision. Consequently, they become a blurry arbitrary amalgam which they are guaranteed to enthusiastically defend tooth and nail.

Unfortunately, we substitute a self-defined, ever-evolving sense of being, for an obstinately defended blind spot of social conformity. It seems we are hard wired to be social. However, “social” is no bad thing but it has been hijacked and deformed into a mental straitjacket that we are pseudo-oblivious to. It is very much like a hypothetical situation of being tied up in a straitjacket and someone pointing this out to us; our reaction is to insist that we both like our straitjacket and that this situation is of our own choosing. When asked about the restrictive nature of our apparel we will sing the praises of confinement and restriction as if they were virtues. If the subject is pursued we’ll make justifications that “sound” rational and logical about our restricted state, talking freely about the straitjacket; making out there is nothing amiss or disturbing about our situation. We’ll be strangely unashamed of what’s supposed to be the “elephant in the room” i.e. the straitjacket but the real “elephant” is the humiliating fact that the straitjacket confirms we are out of control i.e. likely to cause harm to ourselves and others. The real reason we are so keen on our straitjacket is that if we direct focus on the “object”  that we are actually hiding  (our inability to control ourselves) remains hidden. Thus, we  hide our discomfort and everyone else who also sports a straitjacket will be encouraged  and will do the same. What was something to be ashamed of has become a source of pride. Unfortunately the people that don’t require confinement of this kind are shunned and humiliated for their abysmal lack of “respect for themselves” because they are “unable to control themselves” (i.e. their lack of a straitjacket demonstrates this fact).

Jumpers also, very skillfully “put the crime on an island“; divorce their unsavoury action from themselves, attach it to another entity and add distance. This is the “bad workman blames his tools” syndrome; it’s the table’s fault for stubbing your toe (whereas it’s your fault for not looking where you where going), it’s the corporations fault for that disaster (it’s the fault of the employees and the shareholders for acting badly), it’s the “relationship” that doesn’t work (it’s the people in the relationship that cause the difficulties), it’s the “nasty person” that made me do it (it’s your choice to act). The fact is, if we can get away with it or feel we can avoid being responsible the default is to be dishonest, first and foremost, with ourselves. Worse still, we are much, much more likely to do the wrong thing particularly if  we have a partner in crime but better still, is  to have a whole crowd pointing to an island far off in the distance.

It is rare that anyone questions the parameters of their social conformity, everyone’s too busy conforming. The problem is that even when we know something’s not right we’ll still continue merrily on our way. We are very good at rationalising and inventing reasons and we’ll do it until the cows come home but that doesn’t help us. We come up with criteria that supposedly indicates our “moral responsibility” but there is one thing wrong with that; we can just lie both to ourselves and to everybody else. Often re-framing the problem in the various disciplines of “knowledge-speak” just distracts from the issue, we just call it by a different name and give different rational excuses for our actions. We simply give ourselves varying degrees of culpability and simultaneously grant ourselves a new list of items to illustrate our “innocence” and defend our actions with. We rarely hesitate or pause to really consider our options if there is a “social value” answer readily available to us; if it is socially acceptable, everyone else must be doing it. Thus, it must be already proven to be right and is right.

How civil would you really be to your fellow human being if consequences of your actions weren’t in any way tied to you? Everybody likes to think that they don’t have it in them to be cruelly inhumane but the problem is that we assume it of ourselves. Daily we ignore the boundaries of  our morals, a little bit here and a little bit there. We just make it easier for ourselves to “turn a blind eye” and  behave badly more often with  increasing intensity. We give surprisingly very little thought to what we are doing and instead, employ socially acceptable answers and recite by rote the socially acceptable “reasoning” (i.e. excuses). These values are then socialised making any questioning of our sheeple-jumper values unacceptable. Thus, we become beyond reproach and never question ourselves.  The boundaries of our inner world need to be reinstated and respected. We need to know where social values stop and our own begin. Our penchant for not thinking and not thinking for ourselves is a crime against humanity, our humanity.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

Part 5: “Dr. Feelgood”

Brand New Me: Over the Rainbow

What is the most powerful element of brand? It’s the ability to produce  “feelgood”. The gifted among us ooze it from their pores; creativity, vision and the know how to wield their power with grace and dexterity. From the very start, the moment a brand comes into existence, its purpose is to make us feel good; even the act of promising makes us feel good and that’s only the brand prelude of what’s to come.

“Feelgood” is a precious, hard to come by and supremely coveted commodity in this day and age. No matter how unbelievable or fleeting it may be, we want it. We’re not fussed as to what flavour it comes in, we just don’t care. Even when “feelgood” comes labelled as perishable, as long as it gives us relief from our crippling insecurities or the banality of modern life, we’ll suck it up without hesitation. Wherever “feelgood” resides we’ll be magnetically drawn toward it. If it resides in a person, a place, a product or an idea, we’ll take out more than our cash to have it, hold it and hope that it’s forever.

Brand faces a new challenge, the growth and evolution of a new,  multifaceted digital existence and fragmentation of a once coherent hierarchy of mass social identity. “Feelgood” will be the most likely culprit for the failure of brand creators in their pursuit of the new digital dollar. So, what are the new values of “feelgood” and where are they found?

The real place that “feelgood” resides in is the mind and heart of the brand beholder. Ultimately, brand is an idea in people’s heads but a one trick idea is a flat line for commerce. Currently brands are still  screaming churlishly for us to imitate and participate/engage in it, but these are the old ways of swimming in an ever-shrinking broadcast pond. Times are changing and brands need to radically evolve to survive and flourish in a shocking new eco-system of digital diversity. It’s in nobody’s interest to contribute to a festering cesspool of mediocrity. Brand needs to be less of a prima donna-dictator and more of a factory that produces many subtle variations  and nuances of meaning under one umbrella. It cannot afford to be dragged down by the pathetic accommodation  of obsolete social standards  and outdated ideals. Instead, it needs be inventive and find the wherewithal to stand up, stand out and be noticed.

The aim of the game has changed, it’s no longer a matter of conquering hearts and minds, the objective is to become part of those hearts and minds. Brand has a fragile soul and survives on people believing in it. Thus, it needs to make a promise to itself, it needs to promise itself existence. Its longevity lies in making and fulfilling the promise that it will forever remain imaginative for all those that rely on it for meaning. New meaning keeps brand alive, without it the brand dies, vanishing in the blink of an eyelid; a fleeting idea sadly forgotten.

When people covet other people’s feelgood we know why, they go “I want some of what they’ve got”. We need to give them a whole myriad of opportunity for finding what they’ve got in themselves. Brand only needs to uncover what’s already there; examining social hypocrisies and the values that people hide. It is in this clandestine space where we will find the hidden values of what makes people feel really good and exactly what they’re not allowing themselves to express. Social values do not allow people to be “more than” or “less than” those dictates. This is the magic jackpot at the end of the digital rainbow. The key is giving people back the freedom to unshackle themselves from the thoughts that bind them.

Brand is nothing without the actions of its audience to buy into it. Of course, the obvious is often overlooked, the strongest familiarity and affinity will utimately lie within oneself toward oneself; unlocking this is the holy grail of the digital dollar. The new brand of “me” needs to come to the fore and brand needs to aid this development rather than attempt to replace it; otherwise it will fail dismally to compete with our subtle variation and infinite creative diversity. We need to be able to take what we need from brand “ideas” and assimilate it into our own  “brand new Me“. Yep, the cat is out of the bag, we’re all different and that difference demands recognition; just as my face is different from yours.

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s actually our individuality that binds us; our ability and also choice to be different. If here, in London, the “rebellious” teenagers are tedious 80′s clones and the couture catwalk brands of the aging rich is the fount of creativity…  then the street needs to be cleaned up. Brand needs to offer us a multitude of variety because our social “imaginations” have become our jailers. Being identical is no longer in vogue, it’s old, passé and soo out. A new era of commercially funky  and inventive social individuality needs to be instilled in the sheeple soup of boredom. We need to lay claim to the digital world we have created and our existence in it.

May the force be with you my digital friends, as you go forth and create a better world to brand in.

dmojo
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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

Part 4:”Mr Poogle and I”

Public Relations: A walk down the garden path

I was alarmed when I discovered that “Mr Poogle” was making inroads into my psyche and was attempting to make the word “advertising” interchangeable and synonymous with the word “information”. I knew that inherently there’s nothing particularly wrong with “information” and that it could be biased and tainted. However, even biased and tainted information wasn’t necessarily trying to transform me into a customer; if it was, it was advertising (i.e. “the act or practice of calling public attention to one’s product, service, need, etc., esp. by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc.: to get more customers by advertising”).

However, Mr Poogle’s trick bothered me. Mr Poogle, the magician, was performing a sleight of word rather than a sleight of hand trick. He was doing more than simply advertising to me, he had imparted the slippery rhetoric of pubic relations. Mr Poogle was supposedly “letting me know” about advertising and I was asking myself  “what was wrong with that?”  I posed myself a story about someone suffering from hubris to figure out Mr Poogle’s game. The hubris sufferer was outrageously and offensively bragging and boasting but when questioned about their behaviour, they’d say they were “just letting you know about themselves” and that would follow with a “what’s wrong with that?”  Of course, what was wrong was their bragging was offensive. However, the “look at the birdie” temptation would be to take issue with what they were saying about themselves e.g. whether what they were saying was fact or fiction, or the  manner in which they were bragging.  The “birdie” is always adjacent to the issue but isn’t the issue. What they were doing was offensive i.e. glorifying themselves. Thus, hubristic bragging was the issue (not the “how”, “why” or the particular style of self-admiration).

The PR techniques of the hubris sufferer are almost identical in structure to some of those used by conjurers and magicians in sleight of hand tricks i.e. the focus and subject of attention being simulated, misdirected and switched. In the hubris story, the bragger 1) misdirected the focus away from the unsavoury nature of bragging by suggesting they were “just letting you know” thus  making bragging suddenly “helpful” and “wanted” , 2) switched “bragging” for the innocent action of “just letting you know about themselves”,  3) simulated innocence with “What’s wrong with that?” i.e. pretended he had done nothing wrong. Thus, the hubris sufferer’s misdemeanour of displaying excessive pride magically ceased to exist.

The only difference between Mr Poogle  and the hubris sufferer was that he was doing everything to make himself seem particularly inoffensive, to appear like everybody’s grandpa, uncle and generally affable “wise” old man/father figure. However, even Mr Poogle’s title was slippery PR rhetoric; generally  it would be considered peculiar to call yourself by the occupational title of “evangelist” unless you were rabidly religious. In the old days he’d be labelled something like “public relations liaison”, a title giving some indication of what he really did, rather than promoting the spun idea of an “evangelist” suggesting that he is engaged in some “benevolent, higher and enlightened purpose”. Nevertheless, Mr Poogle is very similar to the bragger in that he 1) switched “advertising” for the innocence of pure “information”, 2) misdirected by suggesting the switch was “helpful” and “wanted” and 3) simulated innocence by appearing as an affable old “wise” man and calling himself an “evangelist” making it seem he could do no wrong.

However, in actually inspecting the mechanisms of sleight of word tricks, it is easy to overlook the fundamental issue, the bragger and Mr Poogle were both trying to pull a ready-knitted jumper over my eyes. Unlike magicians, they weren’t doing it for the purposes of entertainment, they were doing it to deceive and deceive for a purpose. The hubris sufferer wanted to “glorify himself” at my expense and Mr Poogle…  he wanted to conquer my heart and mind for commercial exploitation. Mr Poogle’s raison d’etre is to promote and make a designated term, a brand name, interchangeable and synonymous with all our online activites. To do that  Mr Poogle has to make “advertising” not only an acceptable social activity but one that is highly prized. Advertising, after all is good. Why? Because that’s what his employers do, they sell advertising space – it’s their core business. Mr Poogle is simply a PR pawn used in the game to realize the potential in all of us to be advertising customers.

Ultimately, the PR cherry on Mr Poogle ‘s cake  is that we, the sheeple, must advertise to each other for no other reason than because we want to, because the activity of advertising is deemed to be “wonderfully aspirational” and we all aspire. Advertising becomes a social value and an activity that is respected, admired and revered; we, the sheeple, will not only volunteer but fight to support, promote, proselytise and propagate it.  It will find open acceptance in society and we will be driven to say the words “there’s nothing wrong with advertising and pr” only because we ourselves will be doing it and if we’re not we will feel we should be… (and we will all know who to turn to to advertise with).

Mr Poogle’s bag of tricks seemed really neat, but then again, I’ll probably tire of Mr Poogle’s magic tricks now that I know how they’re done and I’ve been poogled already. The power and the glory disappears in the face of humility and humour. I learnt that from my walk down the garden path with Mr Poogle when he tripped me up.

dmojo

“I” was played by dmojo, “Mr Poogle” was played by Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist and the Digital Mojo blog production was premiered  Saturday 7th February 2009 on Google, opps sorry, I meant the “internet”.

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©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

“Playtime in the Playpen”

There is no commercial message etched on our hearts, minds or digital DNA… yet. The situations and online contexts we find ourselves in, whether we acknowledge it or not,  subtly change our digital psyche.  The interspace of digital life stretches beyond our own digital reflections of ourselves.

It is impossible to be precious about our digital “selves” in the Me-Zone; all digital property and content is open to use by all and sundry, regardless of what the law may say. Our spiel,  in videos, words, sounds and pictures, reverberates and bounces off the social media/network walls on an endless journey of communal montage and re-use. However, this “commune” activity belies the fact that we’re intimately hooked on the exchange of direct transmissions. This “tiny” addictive detail is the Achilles heal of those would-be evangelical ad-messengers; plaguing them with an “ugly appendage” that alerts us to their “interventionist” shenanigans. This  “ugly appendage” is a price tag that shouts to us “gimme your cash!” and this message has unsurprisingly fallen on deaf ears; it’s obviously not the way to win “friends” and “followers”.

Traditionally, “commerce” just talks “at” us which used to be called “engaging with your audience”. Times and mediums have changed. “Commerce” has a serious vested interest in infiltrating our social circles and “socialising” with us but it needs a “vehicle” to do so. Marshall McLuhan‘s well worn motto “the medium is the message” still stands in the digital age with one significant difference in application; the message is interactive. Thus in order to harness the power of the digital age the “interactivity” of the “medium” has to be  exposed and exploited to produce the message; seemingly a concept more easily said than understood in the the commercial world of would-be ad-messengers.

What does it mean to let us be “interactive” with the message?  It means giving us a caged playpen to “interact” with and “play” in. This caged playpen simply allows us to figure out palatable ways to hang ourselves; for us to volunteer and expose everything needed not only to make us buy but to keep us buying. Once the “playpen” is up and running (providing us with a “community” of the like-minded), customised “toys” will be built and provided to us so we can supply a ready stream of data for analysis i.e. our “interaction” e.g. conversation that reveals what makes us feel good and the things and activities that will continue to make us feel good in the playpen. Then  to obtain more demographic/data mining material e.g. identifying information and to make this activity not only palatable but desirable, new and more exciting customised playpen toys will be offered to us. However, we will understand that we can’t play with this toy or this toy won’t be “useful” unless we give away details about ourselves regarding X…. Finally, as with all well managed playpens, those of us that have been “good” in the playpen will be encouraged and rewarded accordingly; those of us who rampantly “interact”, those that give suggestions for new data-extracting toys, those who contribute to data that profiles customer base and those of us who are “influencers” and bring new friends to the playpen will be elevated in playpen status.

“Commerce” owns your playpen “activity” and you’ll be back for more, as you can’t conceive of anywhere else to play. “Commerce” has supplied you with their branding machine, a digital playpen. You will be identified by and become your playpen “activity” and that activity burns the brand into your digital psyche giving you a sense of ownership; you make it your own. You will become a “brand evangelist” without even realising it. You will defend, nurture and protect it. You speak it, breath it, interact and play with it. You can’t see it, hear it, smell, taste or touch it. In fact, it is invisible to you.

Why? Because you are the brand and it is you.

Without you there is no digital brand; you are the medium and the message. We all become brand evangelist supremos of the digital world. The brand identifies who you are, and you brandish your “brand” proudly to the world because it is you.

Congratulations! You stand as unequaled, unmatched and unparalleled testament to the brand. Why? Because you’re so  incredibly ordinary and banal, you appeal to all those just like you. “Commerce” has given you permission, with a brand, a badge, to say you are all the things you want to be…  all things desirable. “Brand” gives you your dream credentials.  However, “commerce” has just flattered your ego. The truth is that every time you parade that “brand” it quietly screams you’re a loser. Beware, in the playpen everyone can  be a delusively happy sucker but you’ll shiver and blush in your emperor’s clothing when someone like me points out you’re a naked sheeple.

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dmojo
(What do I do for a living? I knit jumpers for sheeple.)

©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

“Friends, Followers and sheeple, lend me your mouth…”

Every avenue of communication is infiltrated by an annoying breed of particularly ugly  and insistent marketeers/advertisers; email with spam and social media with  Me-Zone career “personalities”. These Me-Zone attention-grabbers are the self-appointed equivalent of c-list celebrities. They loiter at every Me-Zone portal doing an oily “meet and greet” on the unsuspecting visitor to the chattering society of social media. One inadvertent, innocent click and before you know it you’re a “follower” listening to their incessant  verbiage;  the BS that’s disguised as “helpful” or “interesting” that drowns their screams of  “look at me, look at me!”.

These primping vanity cases are really just empty ad-space and their digital noise is a signpost to their “cuddly” cry for digital dollars. You’ll momentarily forget that these noisy billboards have no standards and you may as well be the lowest scum on earth. After all, they deny no one the “privilege” of listening to them; you’re only there to swell the ranks of their  “friends” and “follower” lists. These Me-Zone career “personalities” have “no choice” but to prime us and aggrandize themselves because they’re desperate. They need to “look popular”, it’s their job; a prerequisite for readying their nest for business, as they lay in wait for the corporate golden egg to splash down for  on-message capital delivery. After all, it’s just a numbers game; if they aren’t perceived to have a “big”  audience the juicy digital dollars are unlikely to follow. Eddie Bernays wouldn’t be surprised, as nothing much has changed since his time (and death) despite the world going digital. Even in the 1930′s, Bernays was busy manipulating the public and public opinion by the indirect use of third parties and third party “authorities” to deliver the spun message. The only thing that needs to settle down is who is going to be that “third party”; every marketeer, ad/pr agency/consultancy, geek, groupie and conceited human being is seemingly trying to win that golden ticket.

These Me-Zone delinquents  skew the norms. When there’s a whole bunch of maniacal nuts running around like crazied squawking chickens, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “squawking chickens” was the norm and if you didn’t have tens of thousands of “friends” you’d die a horrible  fried-chicken death. However, psychologists would be fast to remind us that what’s most likely is that these poor suckers are actually bereft of self-esteem. Then again, many a “media” psychologist might well committ pot-roast suicide if their research ceased to garner “media” dollars one way or another. After all, they want in on that golden ticket too and are as unethical in their service to humanity as anyone else (and anyway, Eddie couldn’t have done what he did without the divine inspiration from his uncle).

The hordes of “golden ticket” seekers are licking their chops and drooling, as they try every means and method of tying the digital dollars to our every  digital movement. They’re digging deep into our digital psyche; tracking every action, interaction and sizing up our emotional connections, “affinities”, attitudes and opinions; labelling and measuring our ability as digital influencers or sheeple. The squawking chicken brigade of Me-Zone “career personalities” with their url-pumping “friendships”  only represents one cocktail in amongst the endless variety of psyche-altering influencers. Another example would be the widget-marketeers, the “utility-pump” friendships; they offer us free widgets that appeal to our vanity/self-interest e.g. “you pimp your mouth free to me, and I’ll pimp you (via my widget)” which is the digital equivalent of a promotional pyramid/ponzy scheme. Thus, we pollute our digital conversation and we end up ad-messaging our friends and repeatedly reminding them of how “much” they mean to us; obvious testament to our “friendship” and “loyalty”.

A long, long time ago, in a parallel reality far, far away it was frowned upon to have “words put in your mouth” and not to have a “mind of your own”. In our reality it is praiseworthy and admired to be one of the myriad of sideshows that constitute the biggest selling machine on earth… Roll up, roll up! Celebrate and join the sheeple show!

dmojo

©Dmojo, 2008-2009.

Becoming “Me” in the Me-Zone-

“Me” is on the mind of the “online” everyone. What does it mean to be “me” in the “Me-Zone”; the emergent “cloud-space” of TwitterFeed, MyFace and Youoogle etc? Maybe we’ll StumbleUpon it and Digg it? Maybe not. The Me-Zone quest is founded on our phenomenal ability to get outside ourselves and point at ourselves;  all we do is ask “Is that me? Is this me?” The age of mass comparison breeds a congenital dissatisfaction; a lack of “feel-good” about ourselves from birth; no one can be all things to themselves. Thus, we have “community”.

“I” have become the universal singular collective that everybody knows, wants to talk to but doesn’t understand. I am the new digitally social “me” and my “Me-Zone” desperately needs borders; hive mind “click-fit” identity needs to be defined, owned and signified. Why? Because we need it to function. It is “me” and I need it to shop, talk about shopping and then put down  hard earned cash and talk about what I’ve bought, so others can purchase too… but, of course, most of all I need it to “share” myself generously with the “huggy-world” community of everyone else. It is my passport into the “Me-Zone” of communal consciousness.

I am vicariously, through a fragmented digital “me”, being distributed, stored and accessed by others via servers across the world.  Each facet of “me” is expressed through mashup widgets that pipe “me” in to the Me-Zone; the more widgets connect me, the more the Me-Zone knows “me”.  The digital “me” is shared around, and that makes me happy…  I feel good because I can be all things to myself; I am the center of my digital universe, I have reached the Me-Zone…  but am I really assimilated into the new hive mind?

Who is and where is new the “borg-ian” Me-Zone? Where does this community really exist? Me-Zone exists in the tentacles that bind us digitally together; the connectivity conduits and the content of  communication. “Me” is my distributed self; the annotated “me” that’s  simultaneously referenced, positioned, identified, aggregated and assimilated as fresh meaning in the Me-Zone. The transformation of our means of expression is becoming a trans-media occupation;  we have to be conversant across the board. We have to make all and any  media bend to our will; mould it, stretch it, make it mean what we want. We communicate in strings of condensed but expandable snippets, drawing on the ever-growing Me-Zone vocabulary and increasing our reliance on our  “snip-it” repositories. We don’t need to say it all ourselves anymore… We have community.

The Me-Zone continues to build “me” online with or without me, digital “me” is added to, modified, enmeshed, embellished and assimilated  into the Me-Zone cloud; “I” am part of the growing cloud-vocabulary of meaning. There is no reserved space for “me” in the Me-Zone stream of consciousness; if I am silent in the Me-Zone my iota contribution to the expansive ocean of meaning will not be missed. Why?  “I” have become “meaning” and “me”, my proxy, is always there waiting to dish it out.  “I” am ready for my Me-Zone contextual redefinition; “me” is melded into other people’s “me”; “I” am meta-synchronised, tagged and regurgitated into the communal snip-it pot. My  automatic “Me” version update has been successfully installed.

“I” have now become “Me” in the Me-Zone.

dmojo-

©Dmojo, 2008-2009.