How They Reach You

The authors of media messages know that to reach the ultimate consumers--us--they need to sway the circle of influences that surround us. They target the significant people in our lives—spouses, bosses, friends, and indirectly pressure them to pressure us toward buying their products by promising to draw us closer. They dangle the promise of personal fulfillment and fuller relationships.

Their techniques vary, depending on the portion of our world they are aiming at.
For example, to influence the spouse, the makers of messages employ psychological research and focus groups, seeking to tap the hidden desire of e.g. the wife to have a more romantic husband. The age group of women who would buy Old Spice for their men trends toward Boomers and the next wave after them, so a model is chosen—Fabio—who appeals to the middle-aged woman's fantasy:

“If I buy this for my husband, he will become my dream hunk and we will be closer.”

The advertisers also try to appeal to the wife’s desire to be seen as irresistible, so someone like Elizabeth Taylor sells “White Shoulders” to the mature woman, appearing in soft-focus and gauzy, muted-tone fabrics.

To reach the white-collar worker, and load him up with various cybernetic products, the advertisers first sell his employer on the desirability of developing in-house cottage industry. They sell the Boss on the promised lower overhead of the “work anywhere” office model. Then they sell the general public on the “freedom” and the "connectivity" of being able to do business anywhere, anytime, from a laptop or Smartphone via Skype, the Cloud, or whatever conferencing scheme or service is their client. Employer then pressures peon to “get with the program” (and thereby remove another cost center from Company books), and Voila! The new Company man is sold as an entrepreneur (i.e. you're the one who will be taking all the risks while enriching the corporation that bought into the model).The Company gets more from the worker, and the worker thinks he is getting more from the company.

Meanwhile, the savvy advertisers sell us an idealized image of all-inclusiveness by using attractive multi-racial, multi-ethnic models in an ideal interactive environment absent glitches and dropouts of service due to sunspots, electric outages and electromagnetic noise from power lines or dead spots. Also, this is an imaginary environment because it ignores the necessity of getting along with real people. Whatever sense of connection you can draw through the ethernet is unsatisfying to your real need for human contact.

To build a false sense of social connection, and to continue to sell their services, therefore, the purveyors of Cyberworld offer addictive activities like online poker, Farmville, YouTube and other “virtual” relationships—all mediated through their paid channels. Either they collect subscriptions, or they sell you--the user--to advertisers; or they do both! If you really love your distant relatives,you are told, you need to do your social intimacy via virtual conferencing on satellite or VoIP hookups.

Meanwhile, actual physical relationships are being outmoded. Society pays a price: people--who are texting while driving or running trains off tracks, who are checking online while flying planes,or while crossing streets--are being killed or maimed in increasing numbers. Many an anesthetized i-pod or Nano wearer is obliviously involved in the electronic toys while ignoring people at the same table. Flash mobs, who have no context or commonality except boredom and the cyber links they share, are congregating in mindless mobs to do mindless things, oblivious of the real hurt or inconvenience they are causing to real people. They seem strangely disconnected from reality, as if it all is just a more vivid version of some video game.

The pitch is: "If your friends and Family would just join your Plan, everyone would love you." You can download cool music and be cool, hip and connected. “Hooking up” is so easy to do! Nirvana is just a click away! Like a drug.

The problem is, that people who seek validation through a "virtual" relationship miss the virtues of "reality" relationships. Perhaps those who play on our vulnerabilities and our sense of low self-esteem in an increasingly complex world are only exacerbating the alienation that drew us to their product in the first place. Seeking a panacea for our loneliness, we are tempted into buying nostrums that only increase our alienation. Truly, the cure may also too often prove to be the disease.

Biggest Voice Wins

"Rhetor" from the Greek for "loud speaker"

Every village has its loudmouth. In the course of human society, that post had developed into the office of town crier--our erstwhile source of the latest news in the village and the hinterland. The Greeks recognized it was wiser to harness that vocal energy than to attempt to stifle it.

So the art of being the town loudmouth was polished under a set of instructions we know as "Rhetoric"--a set of organizing principles for those who wish to make their voice heard on any issue that may be relevant or at least interesting to the general public. The Greeks, being abundantly supplied with men who had learned to express their opinions skillfully, became the tutors of the Romans, who desired to more effectively impose their opinions on everyone around. Professional Roman loudmouths, such as Cicero, were called "Orators" (a phonological rebranding of the Greek term). Roman eloquence, taught as primarily a verbal set of principles for debate and justification, was taught as Oratory.

Presently, as Europe supplanted Rome, the techniques of rhetoric and oratory were expanded upon and expounded upon by the Church in the pursuit of homiletics, apologetics, syllogistic logic, forensics and further verbal and textual arts. One overarching rubric for these various disciplines was entitled "Propaganda"--that is, the yoking of one's highest verbal persuasion to the propagation of the Faith.


In the humanistic revolution that began with the Renaissance(sparked by the recovery of the original Greek and Latin authors out of obscurity through the efforts of Ramon Lull and others), the development of persuasive argumentation was unyoked from serving to spread the doctrines of the Church. Now those techniques were employed to serve Naturalistic Philosophies and to convince or at least cow opposing views into submission or suppression. A long list of -isms ensued: Monism, Fauvism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Nationalism, etc. Each adopted a series of developed doctrines in "the name of" its adopted dogmas.

As the means of propagation also increased, so did the spread of these schools also increase. With printing and widespread literacy, books--and the messages they embodied--became the common heritage of all. The printing press accelerated that movement. The telegraph electrified the promulgation of our messages across the world. Radio and telecommunications have sent our messages into interstellar space. And that original loudmouth art, rhetoric, is the unsung manager of most of what is shouted to the stars these days.

But who are today's loudest loudmouths? And what is being propagated by today's propaganda? Sadly, it seems, today the airwaves belong to the criers of snake oil, and the messages relate less to our salvation as a race than to the salving of "the heartbreak of Psoriasis," and to promising us respite from the dangers of bad breath.

I wonder sometimes what the inhabitants of that distant Andromedan galaxy are thinking about most of the messages our planet's loudest mouths are yelling at them from our little yellow star.

Cool Persona

Marshall McLuhan--Remember him?

"The Media is (sic) the Message" was the wave of the future back then. Including the failure of the verb to agree with its subject. And fragments. And subliteracy on so many levels.

People don't compose messages. Spell-check composes them--or decomposes them. I saw a sign (recently posted) that probably passed by the electronic editor somewhere: "Herring Check--free!" I am curious how that is accomplished.

Our uncritical dependence on the magic servant that lives in our computer or in "the Cloud" somewhere puts me in mind of the fable of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, whose enthusiasm for the tricks he could do with his magic wand nearly got him drowned.

Our uncritical thinking and our increasing reliance on a machine to do everything for us, it seems to me, spell probable trouble for our society. When kids don't learn to count in their heads, but rely on their hand-held for all their math answers, they end up at McD's unable to calculate the finer points of making proper change.

When canned media analysis does our critical political thinking for us, we end up voting in the person who puts the slickest media image out there.

That's where McLuhan comes in. He predicted that with the electronic media--in his day, Television--the viewer relates most effectively with a message that allows him to project onto the screen of his own mind whatever--for him--fills that blank space on the television screen. As the screen lures and entices his attention into itself, a process the psychologists call cathexis takes place. That means that the viewer projects whatever fulfills his own wishes onto a medium that leaves a lot of blank space to be filled in.

Remember the Infiniti ads? When they first came out, you never saw the car. Instead, you only saw wish fulfillment--sweeping vistas, grand travel, style and panache. The Medium was the massage, targeting the pleasure centers and by-passing the critical brain cells that would have warned you, "This is a Sell Job!" By the time the car itself arrived, it was already placed in the minds of the potential buying public as the fulfillment of those emotional yearnings which the previous ads had evoked.

There are similar factors at work in the political arena. Savvy politicos sell atmospherics--cloud-cuckoo dreams--and avoid mentioning the messy, nitty-gritty details; real-life stuff that would spark the critical brain functions and alert the electorate to the existence of reality.

Sweeping vistas, broad generalities, and a "cool" image serve to present the nicely-packaged pol as the trendy purchase of the Century. The "Infiniti" candidate would never commit to any particular solution, but would continue to posture as the "Dream-fulfiller" and the Poster boy for{Insert Your Message Here}.

The ultimate "cool candidate" wouldn't be a Manchurian candidate (obscure reference warning!) because he wouldn't have to come from anywhere in particular. Instead, he would be a blank canvas on which every voter, no matter how diverse his or her personal opinion or preference may be from those views of every other voter, can entertain himself with fond, projected hopes for great things to come; things which were never actually promised.

Maybe it would be wise of us all to relearn how to think with our own brains--instead of relying on the machine?

Who Are You Being?

My last blog mentioned boorish behavior in the cyberworld. The inference was that we'd never misbehave in real life. However, that isn't quite so.

The environment our children live in is a sea of messages bombarding them from all sides. There are cumulative effects on society so crucial that many stakeholders have devoted much effort and invested many resources to study.

Universities, for example, exist by generating the products of such research for governments and private sectors. They support psychology departments, political science departments, forensic and rhetorical studies--the list goes on. How humans influence other humans is a keystone of the curriculum at all levels.

Advertisers, of course, sell their media outlets on how impactful they can be to influence behavior in the buying public. They conduct studies with focus groups, polls, statistical analyses ad nauseum. They even experiment with laboratory subjects--one study, it is rumored, shows sexy ads to monkeys to see how much more sex they participate in as a result. (Personally, I am not excited by lady monkeys--such is my prejudice).Then they testify to Congress how insignificant is the effect of violent media on impressionable children. Different audience--different spin.

Newsmedia strive to grab the viewership/readership/bloggership with every possible device that thrusts their product frontmost in the face of the potential audience. Interestingly, the paparazzi display the most aggressive behaviors, justified in the pursuit of "the story."

Celebrity idols become role models and grasp media dominance by out-outraging the others. They model crazy behaviors as a viable lifestyle; by defying taste and public flouting of the law, they grasp the antihero role and exploit vulnerable adolescents who, seeking to assert their own worth, are conned into into copying them (and buying their DVD/CD/T-shirt, etc).

TV hosts keep upping the ante to draw audience loyalty and foster the illusion of connectedness with the schlubs in front of the set. They create fake Kaffe Klatsch discussion programs where the topics are ever more intimate and ever more informal. They make blatant ploys to buy the viewer, like giving Cadillacs to the studio audience. They hit the special event circuit and become celebrities themselves, touting their books/websites/events.

Even newsmen become stars, and symbolize success as power icons. Their wardrobe, their makeup--every aspect of their presentation is nuanced for effect. Even when they are unshaven, it is for the cinema verite effect--to draw the viewer into the created reality of their story. Small wonder if the public begins to question the reality of anything they show us. Small wonder if symptoms of cynicism and anxiety are more widespread among our youth.

Magazines, radio, internet sources--all of these add to the pool. They reinforce values that in reality are counter values. You only have to sell something when it is something people would not naturally choose to do otherwise. But the bandwagon effect of the constant dinning has its effect on the society as a whole, and there are perceptible effects. Rappa style is a counterculture value, one that has been presented to our young people as if it is courageous, strong, "representative" of pride in oneself and one's own "hood." But when Anglo teens in suburbia pose as gang-bangers in the inner city, you have to ask, how tenuous is their understanding of reality?

Educationists, whose job description used to be the preservation and transmittal of existing culture information and values, now try to compete with the cultural messages promulgated in media by conforming with the values they represent.So they add computers and websites; they teach with videos,movies, events, activities; they hire consultants; present through new routines, new bells and whistles.

Now there are new relationships being defined between teacher and student. The ideal of e.g. diversity prevailing in the media forces schools into a non-committal relativism. Facts aren't important: attitudes are. What you learn is irrelevant except if it fosters teamwork and getting along with everybody. The goal of being lifelong learners fosters the notion that there is no settled truth--all is subjective, all is dependent on staying in motion, on keeping up with today's "truth". Exercises in school are valuable only if they encourage self-esteem, and mastery of a subject or skill is meaningful only if it helps the student to express herself.

And how the student chooses to express herself is modeled by the standard of what she experiences on all sides in the media environment that cocoons her. In fact, kids cocoon themselves in the media of choice--from the available list of packages--so as to drown out the excess of what they can absorb and to reduce the stress. Yes, the blank silhouette dancing with the earphones is in total control of her world--but it is an alienated self-absorbed world, uncluttered with the actual demands of physical existence, whose challenges to survival they have to learn to deal with in real time. And many fail to acquire the means to survive, and their escape too often ends in tragedy.

They adopt behaviors and attitudes as demonstrated to them in the media as a means of shaping who they are. They believe that their worth and success as people is not based on what they actually have to work with; they are disappointed in the comparison of their "sucky" personal shortcomings with the "perfect" and successful examples they see in the media. They are lacking the perspective of experience to disentangle their image of themselves as unique figures against the ground of the projected images they are surrounded with. They try to emulate those icons and thus to place themselves in the center of the picture.

"If I am Lady Gaga, I am powerful and sexy, and that is me surrounded by adoring men." "If I am Justin Bieber, I am sooo hot, and the girls will desire me."

Of course, the reality is, everyone knows that kind of thinking is unreal. Also, of course, the fantasy is, saying it is so will make it so. There is no "there" there, as the lady says.

***

There's a story about the fish that drowned.

It goes like this: a man found a fish flopping on the riverbank, took it home and taught it to breathe air. He was so proud of his feat, he'd take it on a leash to the park for walks. One day, they were crossing a little stream. The leash slipped, the fish fell into the stream and it drowned because it had forgot how to breathe underwater.

There is an ocean of media messages. It overlays our real lives and it seems as if it is the real world because it is so all-pervasive. People begin to think it is the real world and begin to behave as they see people in that world behaving.

Unfortunately, it is an imaginary kind of existence. People forget how the real world operates and how to swim in it. Everybody is swimming somewhere in the same ocean of media messages, but these days, too many of the fish are drowning.

Missed Manners

Cosmo Kramer just barged in on Jerry again. Where does he think he is? That tweet was ALL IN CAPS. Please don’t shout! Some joker hacked my site and inserted “funny pictures” (“Oops, sorry: my mistake”—Rep. Weiner).

Why do otherwise normal people act like savages in cyberspaces? Where do they think they are? Anyway?

The old saying,”When in Rome, do as the Romans do” doesn’t seem to apply when everyone else seems to be roamin’ aimlessly in a nowhere land.

In the early days of programming—say, when someone was Beta testing in Basic--a novice user could drive his curser out of the program and land in a dead space on the screen where no rule seemed to apply, and the only escape was a hard reboot. Some savvy mentor gently had to lead that person back to the land of legitimate keystrokes and commands—help to put his mouse back into the running.

People who travel to foreign lands act like that lost cursor, too. Not knowing the local customs, when they intrude into some fabled exotic civilization, they adopt clothing styles they never would be seen in at home, and act abominably—shouting at the locals who don’t seem to understand plain English.

Now, of course, we have Rosetta Stone.

People who flame others online exhibit poor “Netiquette.” The need for a Miss Manners became extreme when everybody swarmed into the Internet and clogged the information superhighways, letting it all hang out: Whoopee! Express yourself anonymously! Spill whatever is on your chest and get it off!

The problem is, what belongs to everyone ends up belonging to no one. And people assume that there are no rules that apply there in Nowhere Land. But “Nature abhors a vacuum.” There are those who are ready to step up and try to apply remedies.

Now, for example, the big providers all make us sign contracts agreeing to behave ourselves on line. However, not all of us have honored our promises to behave. Some Cosmos still have the habit of snooping in other people’s mail, running up charges on other people’s credit, sending anonymous threats and fake promises, or short-sheeting other people’s Net sites as a form of recreation. So now should we worry if Big Brother is also Big Nosy-Parker, tracking our every misstep?

Where’s the fun in that?

Of course, if you live in glass (or silicon) houses, rock-tossing is an ill-advised recreation. It behooves us to learn to govern ourselves, lest someone else decides to step in and do it for us.

K.I.S.

Formats R getting shorter.

People are swamped. Messages must grab them, or they won’t read the rest.

Say one thing, or two; in 144 characters.

In short: be brief.

K?

Saul's Armor

A friend--who is a professional musician--commented to me, “You can’t just be a musician anymore—you need to know how to market yourself on the Internet.”

He went on to explain how much effort it takes to write a website—and how cumbersome it is to make any modifications in your existing one. You also need to create a presence on the social media such as Youtube, LinkdIn, etc. and create a lot of cross-links to bring your site higher on the search engines’ queue, so when people Google or Bing for music, your sites are near the first page of hits.

And not just music. You need multiple sites, offering focused services, like:
your consulting service, your instrument sales, your albums, etc. that cross-link with your Facebook, your Twitter, Your SMS, your QR, your Blogspot. Your site citations also, which you have embedded in your text so random queries for certain strings will pull up your page and create awareness—all of these are new tricks that a content provider must learn in order to have a decent competitive chance.

There is also a huge learning curve involved. Not everyone can climb that curve. Skill sets needed for production of content are multiplying like rabbits. Can you do animation or do you need to add more plug-ins that can spice up your sites to get you noticed among the maddering crowds that clog the information superhighways?

And don’t get me started on managing your sites. You need to keep abreast of search engine reconfigurations and how they will impact the number of hits your site generates. You may have to rebuild periodically to keep up with innovations in software, new viruses, new hacker attacks, zombies, malware, sabotage. Even popularity has its perils—when your site gets so many hits, does it crash and leave you non-functional? Are you a target of a competitor's dirty tricks?

Whole industries are blooming that provide a dizzying array of services-–many offered by other working stiffs like yourself in the new cottage industry of innovation. Can you position yourself as a provider of a niche product?

Everybody, it seems, is getting to be a content provider--provided they can bear to assume the panoply of paraphernalia needed to wage the good campaign in the moil and clamor of the electronic marketplace.

Can you even keep current? Media are being created daily. Old utilities are constantly being redesigned. E-mail is already dinosaur-like, even as it supplanted snail mail and telephones. (BTW there’s always new lingo: you are constantly learning new acronyms, new codes with meaningless strings of characters that can sink you if one keystroke is out of place.)

And the demand is like a vast black hole: you keep producing in order to keep in the mix. You have to keep running--like the Red Queen--to keep in place.

Cumbersome? It's the price of doing business. The question is--how much energy do you invest before the point of diminishing returns is passed? There is a steep attrition curve. Those with the resources to meet these challenges have a competitive advantage--until the field evolves in some new, unforeseen modality.

Anyone who contemplates entering the fray should weigh the cost carefully. Consider whether you can carry through.