Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually him. Maybe it was whoever operates his Twitter account. But his name is on it, so the blame starts there.
First, the backstory.
Last week, I noticed a Twitter trending topic that said “Justin Deserves Our Love.”
Never one to pass up a chance to make a sociological comment about an otherwise inane trending topic, I tweeted, “Justin Deserves Our Love, you say? So do all humans. Funny how we usually forget that.”
And funnier still was what happened next:
Uh oh.
Evidently, Mr. Bieber (or his handlers) saw my tweet and found it relevant (or else it just randomly showed up in their computerized matrix of Wishes to Grant and Lives to Destroy), and decided that I was a bloke worth following.
And that one single button click momentarily ruined my life.
Night of the Biebing Dead
Now, let’s be clear about something: I’m neither a Justin Bieber fan nor a detractor.
I really don’t have any opinion on him at all, because I’ve never heard his music, except for that one Christmas song he did last year, and I only heard that once. (Curse you, holiday radio…)
So, for all I know, Justin Bieber is the most talented performer of all time. Or, he’s a complete hack. I really have no idea, nor do I care, because — like the Jonas Brothers, or Selena Gomez, or Miley Cyrus, or any other musical artist who’s half my age, I haven’t paid any attention to them.
But boy, do Justin Bieber fans pay a LOT of attention to me.
See, shortly after being followed by the Biebs, I started getting followed by tweenage Bieber fans in a steady, rabid stream. People with Twitter descriptions like this:
This went on for days.
At first, I tried to ignore them, but their sycophantic clinginess unnerved me. I really didn’t want to be the guy with a sudden global entourage of rabid Bieber fans, whose bios included phrases like:
“[JUSTIN BIEBER] FOLLOWED ME 20/5/11 AT 5.10PM BEST DAY OF MY LIFE.”
and:
“my biggest wish is that justin start follow me, i love u justin and i know that u love me to ,so please follow me!”
(Emphasis mine, because WTF????)
The boundless enthusiasm of youth is supposed to be inspiring, not terrifying. But seeing the meaning and fulfillment of these kids’ lives reduced to whether or not Justin Bieber clicks a button on his iPhone is like volunteering to have your soul crushed.
So, I started blocking them.
I didn’t want to mark them as spam, because they weren’t exactly spamming me. What they were doing was indoctrinating me into their endless hell of which I wanted no part.
(ASIDE: Seriously, the cult-like devotion they have to their pursuit of an imagined utopia, as embodied by a glance of attention from a barely-legal stranger, is fascinatingly bleak. And realizing that they’re all self-perpetuating this dystopia willingly, and using it as a bond of commonality, makes me wonder what we’re doing wrong when it comes to helping kids set achievable and mutually beneficial goals. But I digress.)
It didn’t matter. Blocking them didn’t help; they just kept coming.
Evidently, the part of most of their profiles that says “follow me and I’ll follow you back!!!!!!” ignores the part where I didn’t actually follow them in the first place.
Nor did I ever follow Him. My only sin was that He had followed me.
So, I tried something different.
I blocked Bieber.
I figured that me not showing up in his list of people he’d followed would somehow protect me from the followonslaught of his devotees… but I was wrong. Because so many of them had already followed me, and because they all slavishly follow each other like a cult of lepers in search of a drop of ointment from above, I was doomed.
Doomed to drown in a sea of Beliebers.
I was starting to weigh the option of killing my Twitter account and starting all over again, from scratch, just to be rid of Biebergeddon when Burgh Baby suggested I might be looking at this all wrong. Maybe I could use this somehow. After all, as she herself has learned, there are benefits to Bieber bribery. Maybe I could put my own army of tireless idolators to work somehow, on my own behalf?
It was almost tempting… except for the fact that these kids don’t actually respond to prompts.
To test the waters of zombie control, I had asked them directly (via tweet) exactly WHY they’re all in the habit of following one another. I didn’t really even care about the answer; I just wanted to know if any of them would comprehend the question.
No answer.
Their virus-infected minds exist only to consume and regurgitate.
So, ultimately, I did the only other thing I could possibly do in this situation:
I waited it out.
I stopped blocking them and let the swarm reach its apex, knowing that eventually their attention span would die off and they’d shuffle away to plague some other poor bastard that Bieber had accidentally followed when he meant to favorite (or however this whole thing happened).
And it did.
Over the weekend, their activity crested and eroded.
They came, they saw, they followed. And then they moved on.
Now I can get back to my regularly scheduled life, without the gnawing fear that a 12 year-old Belgian girl thinks I’m closer to heaven than she is just because of my Twitter cachet. (There’s a lesson here for all of us, especially if you work in social marketing, but you’ll have to connect those dots yourself.)
In the end, I survived Justin Bieber, and I learned a secret that could save your digital life, too:
When the feeding begins, just play dead. (They can’t tell the difference.)
On a related note, new episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead return next month.
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Tags: Armchair Sociology, audience, bullshit, networking, perception, trending topics, Twitter
First, let me admit that I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Baltimore since I moved here in 2009. I also haven’t always been thrilled by the live events I’ve attended here, and maybe that’s led me to be a bit of a curmudgeonly misanthrope. (Or, maybe I was just born that way.) But I really do like the city, and I think it has incredible potential.
I just don’t always see evidence that the city of Baltimore loves itself, and that sometimes makes it harder to root for.
So when an event like Create Baltimore 2 comes along, I feel like I owe it to myself to see what the people who really do actively care about this city are trying to accomplish, and how they’re finding ways to work together.
175+ People Walk Into a Bar(Camp-Style Event)…
After a two-hour delay (due to Saturday morning’s burst of freezing rain), Create Baltimore 2 kicked off with a lot of energy and some grand intentions. The returning attendees from the event’s first year seemed genuinely excited about this long-awaited reunion of the minds, which gave the first-timers (like me) a good amount of energy to draw from (which helped, since the coffee donation from Zeke’s was delayed by the weather).
While I didn’t attend the original Create Baltimore event, my experience as a founder of the long-running PodCamp Pittsburgh gave me an idea of what I should expect here. It also gives me a firsthand appreciation of exactly what it takes to pull an event together — and how hard it is to factor in something as frustrating as a weather delay that’s beyond anyone’s control.
Now, a few days removed from the festivities (and the after-party at Mari Luna Bistro), here are my thoughts about Create Baltimore 2, and where we might go from here.
1. Neither Rain Nor Sleet Nor Snow Can Defeat an Efficient Organization.
In theory, Create Baltimore is an event that’s created by, shaped by, and ultimately succeeds or fails based on the efforts of its attendees. But, like any BarCamp-style, attendee-fueled event, Create Baltimore wouldn’t actually exist unless a few dedicated people were pulling the strings to make it happen. Create Baltimore’s four main organizers — Scott Burkholder, Andrew Hazlett, Buck Jabaily and Dave Troy — ran the event with the skill and foresight of a group that’s done this all before, and it showed. For example…
- They wisely warned everyone about a potential weather delay the night before, then announced the 2-hour delay by 6:30 AM on Saturday via Twitter and email.
- They used a public document to organize the day’s sessions — which were submitted by the attendees on notecards and organized into categories by Troy and Hazlett — and had the afternoon’s sessions printed out and posted outside the rooms by the end of the first session, so attendees without a web connection would still know what was available when.
- They took part in the sessions themselves, but did their best to not serve as moderators. Instead, they encouraged the attendees to moderate themselves and organize their own conversations, rather than disseminating information in a top-down fashion.
Create Baltimore is also the first event I’ve attended that makes use of the Lanyrd service, which collects and organizes any relevant information and documents so all attendees can access them during and after the event. Their EventBrite usage was streamlined and informative, their website keeps everything simple, and they’re on Twitter. (They’re also on Flickr, but they really should release their photos for use under a Creative Commons license — otherwise, I technically can’t legally post their photo, above, on this blog.)
So, yes, this event succeeded in part because the structure they’ve created works. Trust me, events like this don’t get done unless the core group of organizers can rely on each other to execute their individual responsibilities. And yet, Create Baltimore has now reached the point where we need to discuss…
2. The Elephant in the Room.
As one particular (white) guy sitting near me in the kickoff session commented, “It’s a little hollow to discuss the future of Baltimore with an audience of mostly white people.”
He has an excellent point. But before the audience for an event like this can become truly diverse, let’s first acknowledge how it came together in the first place:
This is an event organized by four white guys.
And since events like this tend to (initially) attract mostly people from the organizers’ own immediate social circles, we have an event called Create Baltimore that’s predominantly attended by white people. This isn’t the organizers’ fault, because this isn’t anyone’s fault. This isn’t a mistake; this is a beginning.
As Shervonne Cherry mentioned on Twitter (in response to the above comment), this year’s event is already a little “browner” than last year’s was. And when one African-American attendee noted aloud that the four oganizers are, in fact, white men, Burkholder thanked him for pointing it out and used it as an opportunity to remind everyone that they’re all welcome to get involved in creating this event from the ground up, and that includes joining the organizing team.
I know from experience that the core group of organizers for any time-intensive event like this usually only lasts about two or three iterations before it starts to change cosmology. Attendees who’ve enjoyed themselves will want to get more involved, just as the original organizers will feel compelled to move on and allow a new generation to fuel the event’s evolution.
3. Sessions Without Leaders Create Leaders by Accident.
When Dave Troy was smashing suggestions together to form the sessions that would populate the day, he was taking risks. If ideas seemed similar enough to have overlapping elements, he’d group them together, knowing fully well that proposed topics like “entrepreneurship” and “funding for the arts” don’t necessarily have the same goals in mind.
Then it was up to the attendees in these rudderless sessions to decide what their session was really about.
I doubt that anyone in the three sessions I attended got all the answers they were hoping for. That’s the nature of an open dialogue: everyone adds his or her own comment, and then the conversation gradually becomes dominated by the handful of people who are organized enough (or loud enough) to keep the conversation moving forward.
And in a city whose demographics are overwhelmingly not white, it’s impossible to discuss anything from technology to politics to the arts without simultaneously acknowledging that what we’re really talking about are sub-communities who may operate under those banners but whose work doesn’t necessarily overlap. Part of creating Baltimore’s future necessitates finding ways for diverse groups to work together, so there’s less internal division of “the other” and more awareness of “we.” I’d say that was a recurring element in every room I was in, and it was a challenge we all seem at least subconsciously aware of.
But a funny thing happened after these sessions…
4. Like-Minded People Know How to Find Each Other.
Maybe you came to the “marketing and storytelling” session hoping to discuss social media. If so, you may have been disappointed when the conversation was dominated by debates over how to tell the story of Baltimore itself, both internally and to the rest of the country.
But that doesn’t mean you had to leave the session empty-handed. In fact, in every session I attended, the people who were more interested in the “marginalized” talking points than in the dominant narrative would make efforts to find each other afterward — in the room, in the halls, at lunch, at the after-party — and continue the discussion they wanted to have there, on their own time.
In this sense, the “sessions” at Create Baltimore are really more like icebreakers and litmus tests: you attend the sessions to see who thinks what about whatever; then, you chat up the people you think you can help, or who may be able to help you. It’s in these hallway conversations that the real connections happen, but they’re triggered by the sound bites everyone drops during the sessions themselves.
But even those conversations have to end eventually. So, what happens now, with the event over and the hashtag falling into disuse?
5. The Onus Is on the Attendees to Continue Conversations and Build Solutions.
During the wrap-up discussion, a representative from every session stood up and gave a quick overview of what that session talked about, and any conclusions or “next actions” that seemed relevant to the larger goal of improving Baltimore. A lot of the actions centered on communication, and the difficulties even for people who live here to know what’s happening in the arts, tech and events communities without having to track down a dozen different news sources. So, some central info hubs are now being built.
The session on urban planning spun off into a separate discussion for bicycle activists, who are now intending to form a lobbying body to work with local politicians on expanding bike rights and bike access within the city.
The artists in the “future of Baltimore arts” session were urged to tell their own stories and promote each others’ work to their own audiences, but also to find ways to package the city’s emerging arts scene as something “the county folks” will want to come to the city to see — a challenge that includes better marketing, transportation and self-organization.
In short, Create Baltimore 2 did a great job of raising the awareness of the city’s potential, its problems, and its possible solutions. It also connected citizens from various careers and skill sets, all of whom have a vested interest in improving our quality of life in the city and its identity within the national consciousness.
What we have to do now is the hard part: we have to keep in touch, and keep building, when there’s no one telling us to meet in the same room at the same time and put our heads together. So far, the signs are very encouraging.
I, for one, am very interested in seeing what we all do next.
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Tags: Armchair Sociology, baltimore, events, networking, perception
I currently freelance, which means I’m my own boss. I finish as much work in a day as I tell myself to get done, and I earn as much money as I choose to earn.
I also have a long-term goal of becoming a professional writer and media producer with my own profitable production company, which means I’m my own tour guide. I visit all the places between here and there that I choose to visit, and I take as much time in getting from here to there as I choose to spend.
Left to my own devices, I’d never accomplish anything or go anywhere. I’d just sit on the couch playing video games or taking naps. That’s because, without structure and goals, I naturally gravitate toward the activities that pay in pleasure without requiring much effort. You probably do, too.
That’s a bad habit for a self-employed person, who doesn’t have someone else imposing a winning structure on his day.
So here’s how I started doing it all by myself.
1. Prove to Yourself That You Actually Have Willpower.
In my case, I started small: I deleted two links from my browser’s toolbar. By consciously reminding myself that those links led to places where I waste too much time every day, I gave myself a choice: either type in that URL by hand and consciously choose to waste time, or realize that I have something better to do with my day.
Over time, all the minutes and hours I saved from not dawdling around on those websites accrued toward work I needed — or wanted — to get done but never would have accomplished otherwise. And a slow build of accomplishment is far preferable to a slow leak of productivity.
2. Surf in Places That Remind Me of Where I Want to Be.
Wasting time online is inevitable, but if I’m going to do it, I should do it by:
- learning about the things I’m passionate about, or
- reminding myself what my long-term goals are.
That’s why I now “waste time” more often on sites like Getting Rich Slowly, which reinforces positive financial habits, and by reading interviews and articles about writers and the media — the fields I aspire to join — rather than reading up on sports, politics, or other sources that grant me escapism or frustration, but no tangible benefit toward my actual goals.
3. Use Rewards as Rewards.
If I feel like playing a video game, fine… but I need to write tomorrow’s blog post first.
If I feel like taking a nap, fine… but I need to cross three things off my to-do list first.
Denying myself joy isn’t going to make me want to “come to work” in the morning — especially when “work” takes place in the office across from my bedroom. But allowing myself to enjoy life as a reward for doing the practical things I need to be doing anyway? Egad; that sounds like some kind of work-life balance, doesn’t it?
4. Make the Choices the Ideal Me Would Make.
In the idealized version of me, I get up early every morning. I have a dense but manageable to-do list every day, which is heavy on interactions with other interesting people. I’m always on time, always on (or ahead) of schedule, and I always make time to read, write, and spend quality time with family or friends, every day.
The actual me is bit more disheveled, and a late riser, because he was up until 3 AM under the pretense of writing or working, but mostly he was just dicking around or playing catch-up on last week’s to-do list, which went uncompleted because he got distracted by a rabbit hole of articles in The Atlantic. The actual me has mountainous to-do lists consisting of wildly optimistic and deluded expectations of himself, punctuated by the repetition of important tasks that he blew off or failed to get done in a timely fashion, which then accumulate into a depressing and frustrating mental porridge that drives him away from his laptop in shame. The actual me is almost always late, rarely finishes a book, has a long list of movies he should have seen by now, and spends more time on Facebook than he does with other human beings.
But when the actual me does make the time to read for half an hour?
Or does get up on the first alarm, instead of the fourth?
Or does cross off all his to-dos for the day?
Then, the actual me starts to look a little more like the idealized me. And he realizes he could probably do it all again tomorrow, too, since he just did it today, didn’t he?
And if he does it two days in a row, then maybe it becomes a habit.
Improving isn’t permanent; it’s perpetual. Day after day.
Tinker, tinker…
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Tags: Armchair Sociology, common sense, honesty, inspiration, perception, personal
No, I’m not talking about getting more “likes” or raising your Klout score, because that doesn’t matter. What matters is what people use.
For example:
When I’m looking for a new place for dinner, I read restaurant reviews.
When I’m booking a trip, I read hotel reviews.
When I need a new book about a certain subject, I read book reviews.
And yet, how often do I leave reviews for the restaurants, hotels, books, films, music and other products and services I’ve loved? Not often enough.
So here’s an easy way to fix that.
Want to make the world — and the web — a better place? Start by giving back. It’s as easy as rating and reviewing…
- the last good book you read, on Amazon
- the last good hotel you visited, on TripAdvisor
- your favorite movies of 2011, on the IMDb
- your favorite local restaurants, on Yelp
- the album you listen to the most, on iTunes
- a local business you couldn’t live without, on Google Maps
Online, we all rely on the advice of strangers.
Take a moment to help someone you’ll never meet make a better choice.
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Tags: Armchair Sociology, audience, common sense, ethics, networking
This year, I’m trying an experiment: Every weekday, I tweet a new arbitrary question at 10:04 AM EST. The answers I receive may (or may not) be used in — or as inspiration for — a future blog post.
My goal is to get people thinking, sharing, and maybe even sparking some interesting conversations or connections. Feel free to join in, even after 10:04 AM has passed.
The questions are tagged with the #1004question hashtag. (If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, this is how a hashtag works.) Including the #1004question hashtag in your response lets everyone taking part in the conversation see your response, and may generate even further conversation.
NOTE: You don’t need to follow me on Twitter to reply to a question, but you can certainly follow me for the heck of it. I am occasionally witty or vaguely relevant. And I’m certainly on there often enough…
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Tags: Armchair Sociology, audience, Blogging, inspiration, networking, Twitter
