In January, I started bookmarking articles and videos I thought were exceptionally insightful, entertaining or relevant.  Reviewing them all at the end of the year would be too daunting, so here are some of the highlights I stumbled across in the first 3 months of 2010.*

(NOTE: I expected to summarize January through June here, but even that’s too much to plow through all at once.  Thus, I’ll be doing this in 3-month chunks.)

The Articles

Kurt Warner, The Great Unknowable Freak of the NFL

Will Leitch’s pitch-perfect assessment of Kurt Warner, the NFL quarterback who never should have existed:

I’ve seen Kurt Warner get angry on the field, I’ve seen him frustrated, I’ve seen him in pain … but I’ve never seen him nervous.  Warner plays like he knows how this story ends. Kurt Warner makes me want to be a better person. He makes me want to try to figure it all out. And he makes me want him to win, win, win, before it’s over, before the mystery vanishes, in a wisp, gone.

Ira Glass on the Creative Gap

Pete Michaud interviews This American Life host Ira Glass, who shares a great anecdote about how long it takes any creative person to stop being “good” and start being interesting.

A Short Collection of Unconventional Ideas

At The Art of Nonconformity, Chris Guillebeau posts a stark, inspirational, (admittedly pro-capitalist) real-world rundown of common sense observations designed to help you rethink who you are, what you’re doing and where you’re going.

A year after you leave college, no one will care what your GPA was.

Once you fully understand what you want, it’s not usually that difficult to get it.

Potential is good when you’re 15 years old. After that, you need to start doing something.

Less Talk, More Rock

Boing Boing urges a return to action instead of text.  And while they’re talking about video games, they could just as easily be talking about your life.

Go right from the inspiration — the vision — to actually making it. Don’t think it through. Don’t talk about it. Don’t plan it. Dive in and start making it happen. If you do that — if you can start rocking — you’ll get some momentum, and when you have some momentum then the project has a chance, because now you’re into it. It’s going somewhere, it’s tangible. Sure, you’ll still run up against problems to solve and decisions to make, but you’ll approach these in the moment and solve them in the moment. You’ll solve them so you can keep moving.

The Collapse of Complex Business Models

Clay Shirky on why the simplest solution to overcomplication isn’t “fixing it” but “blowing it up and starting over” — and what that means for businesses, governments and lives.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Vintage Posters for Modern Movies

Brain Pickings highlights some modernist-retro movie posters that don’t actually exist… but should.

Everywhere You Look, There You Are

One guy, a cigarette, and a story he just had to tell.

Last night Tyler and I met this odd guy at the eastbound MAX stop outside my apartment who I find strangely lingering in my mind today. Or maybe it’s not so strange…

Hard-Wiring Happiness

Brain Pickings features a video and quotes from Srikumar Rao’s talk about happiness at Columbia University.

You have spent your entire life learning to be unhappy. And the way we learn to be unhappy is by buying into a particular mental models. [...] The problem isn’t that we have mental models, the problem is that we don’t know we have mental models, we think that’s the way the world works.

Drive-By Culture and the Endless Search for New

Seth Godin makes a case for “deep experiences,” and explains why they’re so hard to find.

Mass marketing used to be able to have it both ways. Money bought you audience. Now, all that buys you a mass market is wow and speed. Wow keeps getting harder and dives for the lowest common denominator at the same time.

How I Retired at Age 25

Pete Michaud explains how a leap of faith and a surprise realization helped him quit his day job and never look back.

If I could offer only one piece of advice, this would be it: it doesn’t need to be perfect. Save perfection for your aimless hobbies. What you need to succeed is “barely passable“.

At First, I Was Like…

*NOTE: Not all of this media was created in 2010, but I first encountered it in 2010, so it was “current” to me in that moment.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

Screenwriter John August recently blogged about the Bechdel test, a (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek way to determine a film’s level of feminism.  It consists of three questions you can ask about any film:

1. Are there two or more female characters with names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. If they talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

Obviously, the test itself isn’t the point.  It’s intended to start a conversation about our media, our culture and, ultimately, why certain POVs (namely, that of straight white males) are so dominant compared to everyone else’s.

Nonetheless, as this video illustrates, you’d be surprised how many hit films fail the test.

As one of August’s commenters noted, it’s not just films that fail the Bechdel test, but novels and plays as well:

The same oversight exists in our nation’s public and independent high school English classes. Last year the most taught books in America were: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Huckleberry Finn, Julius Caeser, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and The Odyssey… All of these texts fail the Bechdel test, too. Except for The Odyssey. Go figure.

So, it seems male-focused media has dominated our culture for centuries, and film is just the latest example of a classical bias reasserting itself.

(Un)fair enough.

What’s interesting to me is that film might also be the hardest medium to equalize.

Dudes in Motion

In Robert McKee’s screenwriting guide Story, he explains the differences in our popular media formats:

• Novels are tales of internal conflict, expressed through monologues
• Plays are tales of interpersonal conflict, expressed through dialogue
• Films are tales of external conflict, expressed through action

Again, as with the Bechdel test, there are exclusions, exceptions and overlaps.  But generally (and financially) speaking, McKee’s right: history’s most profitable films have been blockbusters built on spectacle.

Film is motion.  Film is action.  Films must be dynamic in order to justify paying $12 to sit in a dark room filled with strangers, all sharing the same communal experience of being driven to emotion by a series moving images.

Which is why I’m not so sure the Bechdel test, which hinges on two female characters talking, is an appropriate litmus test for film.

For a film to “work,” the action must solve the problem.  Thus, a better question might be whether a film’s female characters are able to solve their own problems without relying on the aid of the male characters.

(Of course, that still doesn’t excuse the Bechdelian failures of Shakespeare, but it’s worth mentioning that his plays were written in an era when all female roles would have been played by male actors anyway, so it’s something of a moot point.)

All of which also leads me to think, inevitably about the Internet.

Blog a Mile in My Shoes

If novels are the story of “s/he,” plays are the story of “them,” and film is the story of “it” (aka “the event”), then blogs, podcasts and videoblogs are the story of “I.”  And since the world is basically divided down the middle between males and females, that should mean that the web would be the most diverse pool of stories on the planet, right?

So why can I personally name so many more straight white male bloggers than I can any other social media demographic?

Simple: I’m a straight white male.  As such, I seek out the stories I can most easily identify with.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t also read blogs written by writers of different genders, ethnicities, ages and sexual orientations.  In fact, that’s why I believe the Internet can equalize the arguments created by the Bechdel test.

It’s Easier to Feel You When You’re Cheap

Films are expensive to make, which means they must appeal to the widest possible demographic in order to earn their money back.  And because they’re primarily made by white males, they’re primarily made for white males by default.  That’s the residual self-identification of the film industry, which was founded by white males and is only now evolving into a truly multicultural talent pool.

And yet, when’s the last time you watched a film about a culture other than your own, or a character you couldn’t immediately identify with?  (I know, I know: Slumdog Millionaire, the “Hey, we elected a black guy so we can stop talking about racism now” equivalent of the Academy Awards.)

Meanwhile, when’s the last time you read a blog (or a tweet) by someone who didn’t resemble you in a lineup?  Probably five minutes ago.

Now that it’s so easy for individuals to express themselves online, the inner thoughts of “others” are more accessible today than they’ve ever been before.  We don’t need bloated Hollywood productions, marketing armadas and bankable stars to convince us that someone else’s POV is worth our time and money to explore; we just need two minutes and YouTube.

Will this proximity to (and seeming acceptance of) “the other” online eventually lead us to be more tolerant of “other” POVs in more traditional media?  I think that’s inevitable, though it won’t happen completely until diversity is proven to be reliably profitable.

Until then, we’ll be stuck with more recreations of the same stories we’ve all seen for decades:

The ones that sell.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

I don’t know anybody who loves pop radio.

I know people who listen to it ironically, as though they’re not comfortable admitting they don’t entirely hate Lady Gaga.  And I know people who admit to liking just Lady Gaga, or just Usher, but still insist they “hate the radio.”

But why do we (claim to) hate pop music / pop media?

Why are we so eager to distance ourselves from “the norm?”

Let’s All Be Different Together (Because Being the Same Together Sucks)

We self-identify with people who dislike the same things (and in the same ways) as we do.

That means deriding the musical merit of Ke$ha is as much a prerequisite to being “taken seriously” by our peers as actually liking Spoon or My Morning Jacket; maybe even moreso, since individual opinions are more easily accepted by the fringe than popular appreciations are.  (In other words, you can spend the entire $1 draft night railing against MGMT as “sell-outs,” but you’re only allowed to play “Tik Tok” on the jukebox if you agree to sing and dance like a self-aware parody of someone who’s actually happy.)

Happiness also plays a huge part in this shell game.

As I’ve mentioned before, the ’80s were the last time pop culture was allowed to be happy without angering the intellectuals.  In the ’90s, grunge made joy obsolete.  In the ’00s, the left’s perception of the Bush administration was akin to a country being held hostage by its leaders; to enjoy life would be to give up and blindly accept all the shit Bush was shoveling.

Misery is serious business; only intellectual plebians with no understanding of the long term impact of their actions could possibly find anything to be happy about.

Especially “popular” music.

So we all hate it.  Together.

You Suck Just Like I Do! Let’s Be BFFs!

It doesn’t help that Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and most other modern multi-platinum musical phenomena benefit from:

• criminally simplistic lyrics
• monotonously propulsive rhythms, and
• a studied amateurishness that teases the public into believing that we, too, are just one Auto-Tune squiggle away from becoming international superstars.

In the ’80s, Madonna and Janet Jackson were personae that women aspired to be like; in the ’10s, Ke$ha and Gaga are women you probably already are like — or, if you’re a guy, they’re women you think you actually stand a chance of sleeping with.  No one had those illusions about Madonna, but reality culture means our stars seem touchable, so supporting them is a lot like supporting our friends.

We don’t think of Gaga and Ke$ha as being part of the system; they make us feel like they rely on us to help them reinvent the system.

Gaga earned her audience on YouTube.  Ke$ha made her name on MySpace.  They didn’t need labels to convince us they were worth paying attention to; now their fans are patting themselves on the back because they told the labels who they wanted to support and the labels listened.  (Never mind that this just makes us complicit in the system, only from the inside-out.)

The Last Overnight Sensation I Felt Required a Tissue

50 years ago, pop music took weeks or months to sweep the nation, much less the globe.

50 years ago, a popular film might stay in first-run theaters for more than a year.

Today, all media is hyper-compressed into a mash-up driven culture where identifying, judging, assimilating and reinventing a piece of media happens in the blink of an eye.  Today, Lady Gaga has to perpetually shock us, because the impact of each shock wears off much more quickly than the last one did.

Perhaps those of us who maintain a love-hate relationship with pop culture feel this way because we doubt the long-term survivability of memes and media that sweep the globe overnight.  History will be history when we get there; for now, we’re just waiting for the next Black Eyed Peas album.

But something has to be pretty damn good — or at least pretty damn effective — to become popular… doesn’t it?

Maybe not.

Bludgeon Me Until I Care

On a recent weekday, I was subjected to just over 2 hours of pop radio in Baltimore.  (Disclosure: this was in a cafe where I was working remotely, so I had no control over their radio choices.)  In that timeframe, I heard:

4 x Lady Gaga songs (though never the same one twice)
3 x Ke$ha songs (one repeated)
2 x Usher “OMG”
2 x La Roux “Bulletproof”
2 x Jay-Z “Young Forever”
2 x Justin Timberlake “Carry Out”

… and so on.

Are these songs worth hearing once an hour?  Are they the best songs the record labels can provide us with right now?

Probably not.  But they are the ones the record labels have decided to promote.  And if they’re promoted enough, they become popular by sheer force of marketing will.

So perhaps what people hate isn’t the pop media, but the subconscious realization that the media conglomerates can afford to bludgeon us repeatedly with the same songs, movies and messages until we recognize them, which breeds, if not appreciation, then at least familiarity.  Safety.  Comfort.  Approval by association.

We don’t hate pop culture.  We hate being programmed.  And we hate ourselves for submitting to it, or for not having the knowledge or the means to avoid it.

Although…

… the more I hear it, I do have to admit that one Lady Gaga song is pretty good…

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

I just finished the first book I’ve devoured in more than a decade.

Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution details the making of the 5 Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Academy Awards, from their initial concepts through their critical and public reception.  Two of those films, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, centered on race relations during the year when Sidney Poitier became the country’s most bankable star and Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.  Another of those films, Doctor Dolittle, was a money pit that bought its Oscar nominations through old-fashioned studio graft and bribery.  And then there were Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the two films no one in Hollywood wanted to make and the ones that wound up redefining Hollywood, filmmaking and America itself.

Not since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls in 1999 have I inhaled a book so quickly.  Not coincidentally, both books detail the seismic shift between the vintage Hollywood studio system and the “new Hollywood” influenced by New York, television and theater.

The films made during this era — Chinatown, Shampoo, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, etc. — relied on unconventional actors, complex narratives, location shoots, sexual freedom and moral ambiguity.  They reshaped the way films are made, judged, consumed and remembered.  And perhaps more than anything else, they expanded the world’s expectations of what an American film could be.

In short, an entire generation got excited about movies.

All of which makes me wonder…

What Could Web Content Be?

Whenever I think about our evolving media forms, I’m reminded of something John Herman told me (and everyone else in the room) in 2006.

At the very first PodCamp in 2006, John — who is a many of many titles, including “video instructor” and “Pac-Man” — intended to lead a session about the do’s and don’ts of web video.  But after sitting through numerous sessions prior to his own, and hearing how everyone else does what they do, John scrapped his original idea and spoke instead about something even more useful:

Not following the rules.

John had recently bought a DVD set of vintage films made during the early days of cinema, and he’d been amazed at how many of the “rules” we take for granted in modern cinema — shooting establishing shots, filming two people in conversation at opposing angles, etc. — were completely absent from these films.

John realized he’d stumbled across media that had been created before we all agreed on how that media should be created, and he was worried that web media was about to enter a period of “rule-making” that might rob us of our creativity.

That Was Four Years Ago.

Since then, we’ve had precious few “breakout” web creations, and what does succeed online remains mostly confined to the web itself.  Those of us who can’t understand why web content hasn’t been embraced by the mainstream should first admit a harsh truth:

In our rush to monetize social media, we forgot to create experiences people want.

If you want to see a movie or a stage play, you buy a ticket.  If you want to read a story, you buy a book.  And if you want to listen to the radio or watch TV, you need to buy the device in question.

But the Internet just comes with your computer.

Yes, you have to subscribe to the web.  And yes, the web costs money to access.  But you’d do that whether people were creating original web content or not.  You’d do it just for email, news, peer communication and streaming media.

You pay for the Internet because you need it, not because you want what’s on it.

Blogs? Podcasts? YouTube?

Those Are Supposed to Be Free, Right?

People don’t pay for what they don’t need or want.  And no one needs or wants web media that’s a cheap approximation of the same stories and experiences they can obtain better elsewhere.

The reason The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde shocked Hollywood is because they spoke to America’s youth.  Sure, these films were groundbreaking on a technical and narrative basis, but that’s film buff talk; what these films did was connect with, represent and empower an entire generation’s point of view.

And people are always willing to pay (repeatedly) for the opportunity to see, share and absorb an experience that excites them.  (Fun fact: By the end of 1968, The Graduate was the third-highest grossing film ever.)

Unless we start creating web-based content that electrifies audiences — content, I should note, that’s specifically designed for the experience of the web, rather than shoehorning old media forms into new media tubes — we’re squandering a golden opportunity to define ourselves through the stories we tell.  It means we’re really just waiting around for someone else to make the rules, because we don’t think we have anything to say.

And maybe we don’t.  Which could explain the whole conundrum.

But there is a bright side.

See, the studio collapse of the 1960s led to the Hollywood upheaval of the 1970s, which in turn spawned the era of blockbusters like The Godfather and Jaws.

So, by that rationale, we’ll all be swimming in money any day now.

We just have to change the world first.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

Last year, Barrett Garese wrote a thought-provoking essay about the future of film, TV and the web.  When I realized my response to his post was longer than a single comment ever should be, I blogged my response on my old blog.  One week later, I relocated from Blogger to WordPress and most of my old thoughts were left behind.

Now, this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about media forms.  And as I started to write today’s post, I realized Barrett’s essay and my response are still as relevant as they were a year ago.  So I’ve republished my old post below, with a new afterword.

********

As a former agent at UTA, Barrett Garese has better insight into the future of media than most of us do, and he’s blogged a fascinating essay about where he thinks film, TV and web content is headed. (In a nutshell, he believes the key is to capitalize on the inherent differences of each platform, rather than insisting on convergence.)

While reading his essay, I realized my own response would be longer than appropriate for his comment column, so I’ve posted it here. My thoughts will make more sense if you’ve read Barrett’s essay as a primer, but I think these points stand on their own as well.

I’ll Stop the World and Converge With You…

The convergence of film, TV and web is happening, but that doesn’t dilute the power of each individual experience.  Film is still film, TV is still TV, web is still web, etc.  But what this does create is a NEW possibility: the convergent format, in which content is specifically designed to either:

A) feel different across all platforms (i.e., the viewing experience is engineered to suit each specific screen size or format.  For example, producers could edit different versions of the same show by using different shots or angles — such as including more motion on TV or film, but more closeups and static shots for web and mobile.)

… or:

B) be different across all platforms (i.e., the web version of a show is completely different, while still complementary in theme, to the film or TV version.  For example, a TV series could unfold in real time, but the show’s website could post weekly 3-minute flashbacks that add context to last week’s conflicts).

Your Home Theater Is Not Actually a Theater.

Audiences anticipate different experiences based on the distribution method.

We expect to immerse ourselves in a film experience (minus the live distractions), while we expect to be distracted from the TV experience (because we’re at home). Thus, we’re already anticipating a different kind of content to be shared across those varied platforms — and when the end result doesn’t match our expectations, our engagement with that content may suffer. (Or, it may surprise us.)

We also expect a difference in on-screen quality relative to the effort it takes to obtain the image.  For example, driving to a theater at 7 PM should reward me with a higher quality experience than watching something on my phone at 3 AM.

And, we expect the content to connect with us on levels that equal our applied (and uninterrupted) attention.  Mindblowing films can’t be processed in 5 minute increments via stolen wi-fi during your lunch break, yet 3 hours in a theater had better provide you with a deeper and more profound experience than 30 consecutive episodes of Tiki Bar TV (which, it should be said, I love).

LOOK AT ME.

The biggest expense for online content should be promotions. You can create an amazing show for $5, but you’re still releasing it into a medium that A) not enough people are paying attention to, yet which is B) paradoxically flooded with crap (which may explain A).

If I were to produce a new web series (after concluding Something to Be Desired), I’d be sure that the promotional plan was in place before the first episode ever hit the web.  The days of “throwing it out there and seeing what happens” are best left to people experimenting in their own free time, not people who expect to gain the traction that validates (both artistically AND financially) their investment of time, money and effort.

Whither the Studios?

Eventually, existing corporate studio behemoths will become distribution companies that happen to have (exclusive?) contracts with production houses. Instead of producing AND distributing their own in-house content, they’ll profit from their primary assets (reach and volume) and leave the creative aspects to contracted producers — who will in turn be grateful to not have to worry about being both creative and ubiquitous at the same time.

That said, there will always be exceptions. In the long run, it’s still cheaper for Verizon to produce its own web shows than it is for them to subcontract with a production company, and it’s still more profitable for an indie prodco to bootstrap their way into self-distribution than it is for them to produce their own content but only keep a percentage of eventual revenues.

A Soap Opera Without the Soap Had Better Be a Damn Good Opera

Content producers need to rely less on advertising and more on the inherent value of the content itself. Gone are the days when content is produced as a lure to hook viewers into sitting through commercials — nor can content *be* produced under a presumed business model that eyeballs = advertising opportunities = profit.

If you cut out the middleman of advertising, what are you left with?

You’re left with an audience who’ll pay you directly for what you create — or for the experience it creates in them — rather than a vessel with holes waiting to be plugged by commercials.

This also impacts media that’s produced for traditional, large-scale distribution. Just because a show isn’t pulling in the millions of eyeballs it needs to validate its TV time slot, it doesn’t mean that show couldn’t be profitable at a lower operating cost with web-based distribution.

If I were the producers of a canceled darling like Pushing Daisies (and if I still owned the rights to that property), I would shrink the budget, post 15-20 minute episodes (or segments) online, and invite the fans to pre-pay for next season’s DVD in advance.  That initial influx of cash could be used to fund part of the upcoming season, which means the prodco isn’t scrambling to line up sponsors now and then waiting for a year-end DVD windfall to break even.

Afterword

Since Barrett and I forecast the future of web media one year ago, services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have come to my attention.

As “crowdfunding” sources, these sites enable aspiring artists, authors, filmmakers and designers to obtain the funds necessary to launch their ideas without begging for traditional sponsorship, investors or distribution deals.  For example, filmmaker Gregory Bayne raised more than $25,000 to fuel one documentary, while author Robin Sloan nearly quadrupled his initial funding request of $3,500.

So… if we can free ourselves from the need for advertising, and if crowdfunding now makes it easier to get more complicated projects off the ground… what might the future of easily-funded, “owe-nothing” media-driven business models look like?

And, how will the media created by these new artrepreneurs change our future predictions?

Image by perreira.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

One of the web’s primary flaws is that it’s actually too easy to use.

And as content becomes ever easier to create, finding quality content becomes even more difficult.

That’s the general premise of Andrew Keen‘s Cult of the Amateur, which lobbies for the return of cultural gatekeepers.  It’s when those gatekeepers are reinstated, Keen argues, that the cream [at least according to the gatekeeper's opinion] of YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, etc., will rise to the top more easily, while the trash will sink to the bottom.

But even if that idyllic (if patriarchal) picture did occur, we’d still have one big problem:

Who’d actually bother to watch quality content?

“Quality” implies an investment of time and effort from both the creator and the audience.

And that’s problematic because, at its root, the web operates as a series of willful disruptions.

Is the vast majority of the content on YouTube actually good?  No.  But that doesn’t stop swarms of people from creating (and watching) millions of videos every day.  For them, a lack of quality is not a deterrent.

In fact, it may even be the point.

Short Attention Span Theater

The very act of “surfing the web” implies a constant state of motion.  Ideas collide.  Interests expand.  The citizens of the web spend their entire online lives as willing nomads in search of ever-newer stimuli.

In such a milieu, breadth trumps depth and skimming supersedes absorbing.  Our eyes are drawn to bullet points, pull quotes and captions — any shortcuts that help us grok the gist of something without actually needing to process it completely.

And it’s not (entirely) our fault.

The media we create — and our ability to process it — is constantly evolving.  Our post-MTV generation can now intuit the complete meaning of a film from a 30 second preview, thus rendering the viewing of the film itself unnecessary.

We’ve become so familiar with the formula of information, it’s increasingly difficult for media creators to reward our attention by providing us with actual revelations.

So we skim.  Chronically.

And who can blame us?

Why read a book when you can read the CliffsNotes for five books in the same amount of time?  (Or, more likely, when you can skim a few pages of the CliffsNotes and then do well enough on the subsequent test to pass it, which invalidates the need to read the book in the first place.)

Why surrender our attention to one-way media like novels and films when video games and social networks provide us with the illusion of control, choice and unpredictability?

Why invest ourselves in one piece of media when so many others might be worth our time?

Being Unfulfilled Is My Default State of Mind

I’m no stranger to the paradox of quality.  One of my own complaints about the web is its lack of content that blows my mind and inspires me to action.

And yet, whenever I find a piece of media that has the potential to do such a thing, I immediately become desperate to click away from it at the earliest possible convenience.

Why?

Because no matter what I’m doing online, I always feel like I should be doing something else.

I used to think this was my reaction to the generally poor quality of the web overall.  But now I’m not so sure.

Because even as Google, social networks and other disruptors work night and day to disprove Andrew Keen’s premise simply by making it easier to find good content, I don’t find that I’m actually spending any more time with the good content I do find.

I just spend my time finding more of it.

It’s as though the web’s old problem — a lack of quality — has been replaced by a new problem — too much quality, or at least, quality that’s too easy to find.

Sooner or later, we all find the information, entertainment or enlightenment we’ve been searching for.  And it’s getting sooner and sooner all the time, until we no longer have the time to make use of what we did need because we’ve already discovered something new that we’d rather have.

In order to actually stop and absorb the information and insights at our disposal, we’d need to switch off the parts of our brains that feel compelled to find more of the same and just be content with what’s in front of us at the moment.

And I’m not sure we’re wired that way anymore.

In fact, maybe Andrew Keen was on to something.  But his premise is still flawed.  It’s not that we need gatekeepers to help us find the good stuff; we just need them to stop us from finding too much.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

There’s a gentleman’s agreement in social media that needs to be debunked.

We’re always supposed to judge ourselves by the quality of the conversations we have, rather than the sheer volume of our reach.

Even Gary Vee, who has more Twitter followers than anyone else who’s not “mainstream famous,” preached quality over quantity at #140conf last month.  He believes the number of Direct Messages a person sends on Twitter — thereby implying a true 1-to-1 connection — is a more accurate arbiter of a person’s influence and power than how many generic followers that person blasts with her impersonal messaging.

What Gary wants to know is, how many people are you making time for?

But it’s easy for Gary Vee to say that numbers don’t matter; he already has them.

You don’t.  (Not like Gary does.)

But you want them.

And that’s okay.

Here’s why.

In Our Minds, We’re All Lady Gaga with a Slightly Smaller Wardrobe

First, let’s establish one truth: everybody wants to be heard.*

If we didn’t want to be heard, we’d never open our mouths.  The act of engaging in social media — whether you’re a pro, an amateur or someone who simply tweets to your five actual flesh-and-blood friends — is the act of declaring that what you have to say is worth being heard by someone.

From there, the only place to go is up.

And while it’s true that numbers alone are meaningless, numbers are never alone.  Numbers are indicators.  And in terms of audience, numbers are indicators of your potential.

Dan Zarrella created a graph he calls Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness, which says that in order for a message to be successful, it must be:

1. Noticed
2. Considered interesting, and
3. Acted upon

Obviously, far more messages are noticed than acted upon.  To improve your chances of success, you want to maximize each contact point on Zarrella’s graph — and that starts with maximizing the number of people exposed to your message.

Take iJustine.  She’s followed by over 1 million people on Twitter.  That doesn’t mean everything she tweets is noticed by all 1 million people, but it does mean that what she tweets is, by definition, noticed by more people than what you tweet.

Does that mean iJustine is more important than you are?  No.  It just means she has the potential to be more influential than you do.

But that has more to do with who’s following her, or following you — and why.

It’s Not How Big Your Audience Is, It’s How You Use… er, Inspire It

Let’s say you have a message you believe is worth sharing.  So you broadcast it.

If no one notices your message, you lose.

On the other hand, if everyone notices your message but no one cares… you still lose.

The question is: how likely are people to be interested in what you’re saying and act on it?

That likelihood depends on numerous variables, including:

• What are you saying?
• How are you saying it?
• How reputable are you?
• How difficult is the action you’ve requested?
• What’s the payoff for the person taking the action?
• What’s the payoff for you?

The world would be far more profoundly impacted by three scientists listening to your advice and solving a disease than it would be by all one million of iJustine’s followers donating a dollar to the cause of her choice.

But you probably don’t know three scientists, nor are you likely to provide them with actionable data and convince them to make use of it.

On the other hand, iJustine can direct her thousands of followers to take any number of mundane actions.  And if the composite effect of those mundane actions amounts to something noteworthy, it simultaneously elevates her own public perception as an influencer — which, in turn, extends her reach via expanded awareness.

Thus, although the volume of your reach actually is less important than the quality of your reach, the quality of your reach is dependent on the nature of circumstances.  Yes, your three scientist friends may be able to cure cancer, but they might not be able to help you land a job.  Your million connections, on the other hand, just might.

In which case… why are we all so quick to denounce our desire to amass a large audience?

Everybody’s Jealous of a Size Queen

The bigger a person’s audience becomes, the more likely they are to become demonized.  Not because of what they actually say (or don’t say), but simply because they get noticed.

Getting noticed is the first step toward getting what you want.  And when someone else is getting noticed, it usually means you’re not.

The truth is, you don’t actually envy Chris Brogan, Gary Vee or iJustine because they’re popular; you envy them because the size of the audience they’ve amassed provides them with better odds of achieving their goals than yours does.

And while I’m sure Gary would be every bit as helpful, engaging and invested if he “only” had 10,000 (or even 100) passionate fans of his work, I’m also quite sure that if he “only” had 100 fans, he would want more.

Badly.

Because it’s who we are.

We talk because we want to be talked about.

But why?

That’s your own question to answer.

Maybe you want to make a living doing what you love.

Maybe you want to help others.

Maybe you want to meet interesting people, or go interesting places.

Maybe you just want to know that someone thinks you’re interesting.

With larger audiences comes more potential for interaction.  By default, Chris Brogan knows more interesting people than you do, simply because he knows more people than you do.

Ultimately, the size of your audience is important, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is what you want to do.

And the more people you have paying attention to you, the greater your chances of accomplishing your goal.

So: you want to be successful?  Meet more people.

(And then spend at least some of your time listening to them; you might learn something.)

*NOTE:  Maybe “heard” is the wrong word for you.  Maybe it’s “listened to.”  Maybe it’s “influential.”  Maybe it’s “admired,” “respected” or “appreciated.”  Regardless of your specific motive, any action that can be taken by the masses is an action most of us would like to evoke in as many people as possible, until we grow tired of the response.

And if having too much exposure is a problem… let’s cross that bridge when you get there.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

A few nights ago, The Streamy Awards happened.  The results — and the ceremony — pleased almost no one.

If awards can’t even please the people creating them, there’s a problem, and it starts with the basic goal:

Who are you doing this for?

Are the Streamys meant to be an award for web creators?  A validation of the web industry itself?  Or an appeal to the mainstream, intended to direct people’s attention to media they wouldn’t otherwise notice?

If you don’t know why you’re doing something — and who you’re doing it for — you’ll never know if you’ve succeeded… but you’ll definitely know when you don’t.

“It’s No Asimov.”

Let’s say you’re a mystery writer.

You’ve just spent the past year writing your latest detective novel.  But before you send the manuscript off to your editor, you’d like to get a second opinion.

So you ask your friend, who only ever reads science fiction.

This could be a problem.

On one hand, your friend’s feedback might be crucial.  Elements like plot, character, dialogue and pace are universally appreciated, regardless of genre.

On the other hand, if your friend has no exposure to mystery novels, she may not know which elements of your story are predictable, overdone or outdated.  She won’t know if what you’ve written is groundbreaking or simply serviceable.

And, because she’s your friend, she may not tell you what you need to hear the most:

What if it’s bad?

Know Who — and What — You’re Working For

If you create an ad campaign for a client, who judges whether or not it’s successful?

You might think it’s wonderful… but the client may not understand it.

You may both think it’s perfect… but the audience may not respond.

Everyone might hate it, but it might be the most effective campaign you’ve ever launched.

Does that also make it your best?

Are you focused on numbers, sales, reach or authority?  Are you more interested in the process or the results?  Would you rather cause a large, brief impact or a series of small, ever-widening ripples?

Most importantly: who decides when you’ve succeeded?

Are you trying to please your boss?

Your client?

Your audience?

Yourself?

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

If you’re good at what you do, (some) people will like it.

If you’re really good at what you do, (some) people will hate it.

This is good.  It means you’re conveying ideas in a visceral way that makes people react.

But if your end goal is to be loved by everyone, it’ll never happen.  And this means you’re in for a life of misery.

Don’t believe me?  Take it from Shakespeare.

“A Nashville Audience Is Not a Toronto Audience.”

A few months ago, Nashville was drubbed by art lovers for requesting that Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project “tone down” the sexuality in their performance of Romeo & Juliet so as to not offend the sensibilities of a Nashville audience.

Ultimately, the performers rejected the request, which left some parents quite displeased.

[A] woman who identified herself as Val, a home-school teacher from Hermitage, “struggled being here with my son. The sexuality was too much. Our children need to be more pure.”

As expected, the comments from the newspaper report of the incident ranged from blind support of the actors to enraged support of the parents, including denouncements of Shakespeare himself as being “too lewd” for any tasteful audience.

So, if we can all agree that even Shakespeare can’t please everyone, the question you need to ask yourself is:

What kind of audience are you trying to please?

Approach #1: “I’m in It for the Money”

If you do what you do because you want to get paid, then you probably want to get paid by as many people as possible.

Suggestion?  Offend as few people as possible.

The less objectionable you are, the easier you are to hire.  The fewer excuses your boss has to make for your behavior, the longer you’ll remain employed.

Safe?  Yes.  Interesting?  No.  Fulfilling?  That depends.  Would you rather be admired or pay your rent?

Approach #2: “I’m in It for the Experience”

If you’re not worried about starving to death, you can afford to take chances.

You can afford to piss people off.  You can afford to define yourself, rather than allowing yourself to be defined by others.

Suggestion?  Be extreme.

Anybody can push the envelope, because it’s easy to push the envelope right back.

So set that envelope on fire.

Sure, you might get burned, but flames attract an audience.  And you’ll immediately know who’s on your side.

Once you know who your friends are, you can decide whether or not you want to bridge the troll gap and form a consensus, or if you’d rather keep forging ahead on your very own path.  One can be lucrative, the other can be memorable, but if you go big, you’ll never go home alone.

Approach #3: “I’m in It for Myself.”

This is the hardest path to advise because, really, you’re entirely on your own.

Nothing anybody else says at this point will convince you that you’re wrong, and no amount of ass-kissing will make you feel any more right.  When you reach this point, it’s all you.

And by then you won’t care if you’re surrounded by trolls because nothing they can say or do would distract you from pursuing your own goal, whatever that goal might be.

(NOTE: It bears noting that “trolls” and “cops” are not the same thing.  If your personal path leads you to be surrounded by the cops, you may have pushed that envelope farther than anybody else appreciates.  Sanity is a treasure; guard yours.)

A Word About Being Needed vs. Being Needy

Audiences are tricky things.  Without them, you’re no one (other than who you already were yesterday).  But with them, you may become someone unrecognizable.

You want to be wanted, but you hate being reliant on someone else.

You want to be loved, but you never want to get hurt.

But having an audience is not a one-way street.  (Even Julia Allison knows that.)

If what you do becomes popular or profitable, you’ll want it to remain so.

Thus, if you become needed by others, you’ll become needy by association.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does limit your ability to experiment.  It does mean your choices will be judged.  And it does mean you may someday have to make a choice about what you really believe, and who you really are.

Are you Toronto or Nashville?

When the time comes, you’ll know.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride.  And when in doubt, remember: trolls like fire.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.

A few years back, I read a story that’s stuck with with me ever since.

It was in one of the many “how to write better” resources (possibly The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, although that one’s still worth recommending regardless).  In it, the author reminisced about something one of her university professors asked the class, which was:

“Are you waiting until your grandparents die before you write what you really want to say?”

It’s the kernel of truth in that statement that’s stayed with me — mainly because I can identify with it.

If you’re like me, your grandparents (and other family) have always taken a keen but passing interest in what you do for a living.  And as much as you enjoy their support, you’d also be mortified if they knew what you really thought about anything.

So you auto-censor yourself.

Not just in terms of language or sentiment, but even your choices of topics and your stated beliefs.

You’d rather be interesting than honest.

The thought of your dear sweet grandmother suddenly discovering that you’re really a left-wing atheist who digs bondage (or whatever your personality may actually happen to be) is so debilitating, you’d prefer to table your truest beliefs and most darkly-held secrets until everyone who could possibly be embarrassed about your choices is safely dead.

Social media is a lot like that.  Except here, everybody’s your grandmother, and you only feel comfortable offending them when you’re popular.

“If I were Seth Godin, I could say that…”

“If I were Chris Brogan, I could get away with that…”

“If I were iJustine, I could act like that…”

But you’ll never be any of them, because you’re you.

Bummer.

And so you type out your life of quiet desperation, waiting for all of your grandmothers to die — or to suddenly become exceedingly popular and, therefore, insulated from the arrows of ridicule and disagreement.

But here’s the funny part: Seth, Chris, Justine, etc., are still who they’ve always been.

What they know may have changed over time.  Who they have access to has obviously expanded.  And what they believe about the world may have evolved in conjunction with their own experiences.

But Seth didn’t become a marketing genius after he was popular; he’s always known what he’s talking about (unless you disagree with him, in which case, he’s always been a liar).

Chris didn’t become a nice guy who enjoys connecting people after he met a bunch of people; he met a bunch of people because he likes connecting them.

And Justine was a quirky exhibitionist long before the whole Internet was watching.*

The problem is not that you don’t yet have the clout to say what you really mean, or that you’re afraid of offending those who think better of you.

It’s that you have no idea what you really believe, or what you have to say.

Because if you did, you’d be speaking, acting and living the same way the idealized version of you would be doing.

So what’s stopping you?

At the risk of sounding self help-ish, here’s a fact: popularity — and grandmothers — come and go, but there’s only one you.  Matter to someone, and you’ll end up mattering to everyone.

* Disclosure: I’ve known Chris and Justine since before they became who you think they are now, so I can vouch for their public evolution.  I have yet to meet Seth in person, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.  However, if I’m wrong and he really did get smart after he became more popular, I owe somebody a Coke.

Dig this blog? Subscribe and you’ll never miss a witty insight again.