Below the Fold

Eons of Evolution and We are Still Dumb Animals

WE ARE DUMB ANIMALS.

Evolution is not the same as change, and eons of evolution didn’t change us. We are still wild, scared, nervous mammals. We scream at the dark because we can’t remember what happened to the light.

We are dumb. We Repeat ourselves despite ourselves. We say we will learn but we don’t have the will. We have the capacity but not the courage.

We say we won’t forget and then live in our amnesia. The cycle is always the same:

• Innocent people are killed and we are shocked

• We ask how this happened

• We try to understand why this happened

• Experts speculate and pontificate, politicians sympathize, communities struggle to find solace

• The media leaves, CNN goes back to regular coverage of celebrity rehab, and the cycle starts anew

Laws don’t change. Society doesn’t change. We build walls and make excuses and blame others and then, quietly, eerily, we forget.

We are dumb, empty, scared animals. We are a species of victims and pallbearers. We are what we deserve.

No, we are not without hope. We can do better – and sometimes we do, despite ourselves. We left the cave, we built towns and cities, we improved our health and welfare and have demonstrated flashes of growing beyond the bounds of our imaginations.

And this, perhaps, is what’s so sad – that we have the ability to advance but won’t take the steps.

If 20 more dead children, more funerals, more families shattered won’t convince us to change, then nothing will. We will repeat the cycle, over and over, expelling so many tears that, over time, I fear we will no longer call it crying.

We scream at the dark because we forgot that we, all of us, are the light.

Dumb, sad, shameful animals – pray for us, too.

Homeless for the Holidays

(The following post originally ran Nov. 21, 2007, and has become a Below the Fold holiday tradition of sorts. For those who have read it before, please pardon the repetition -- and for those who are reading it for the first time, I hope it serves as a reminder of what this holiday, and being human, is all about.)

LOS ANGELES IS A CITY of fragments, its people fragmented. It’s a place apart and in parts, a labyrinthine expanse so loosely bound as if against nature. LA is a place to live, not to be from.

Most people only see L.A. through a windshield – the observer protected behind glass, the observed seen in glimpses if at all. It is into this concrete dichotomy I drive several days a week. I’ve done this for nearly a year with no regret, save for the occasional Sigalert that slows traffic even more than the usual crawl. Once this happened by the Staples Center, forcing me to watch the video ad for “American Idols on Tour” more times than should be considered humane.

Almost every day, before joining my fellow commuters on Interstate 10 and 5 for the long slog to Orange County, I see a homeless man by the freeway entrance. Always smiling, always pleasant, and always with a hand out, as if he’s the operator of an imaginary toll booth. I give when I can, when the stoplight cooperates. This means lowering the window, a risky proposition in a place where people lock their car doors while they are still driving.

For months I saw this man – and then, a few weeks ago, he was gone. Maybe it was the weather, both turning slightly cooler and for a long while heavy with smoke and its unhealthy remnants.

He could be anywhere, doing just fine, but nevertheless I worry and wonder – whether he is safe, whether he found a better onramp, or whether he melted back into the jigsaw world of Greater L.A., another face in another windshield. This is the time of Thanksgiving after all, a time for holidays and families and desires for human connections. So I wonder, I worry, and wait.

The Day after Christmas
This man – and next time I see him, I promise to ask his name – reminds me of another man I met in Atlanta, exactly 17 years ago Friday. He, too, was (at least to me) homeless and nameless, a regular character at the CNN Center. I wrote about him in my book, and the following passage tells the story of our brief encounter:

“Where are you from?” The question came out of nowhere, as did the man. He looked 40ish, wearing a purple long-sleeved shirt, a green jacket-vest, a black hat, and a beard grown from neglect rather than purpose. As we talked, he would continuously sip from an empty Styrofoam cup. I wanted to tell him there was nothing in there, though I’m sure he knew. I just stared at the cup rising and falling from the man’s lips with mechanical precision.

I don’t know what was in the cup before, but based on our conversation, I got the feeling it was more likely vodka than coffee. We talked about life on the streets and how being homeless is a lot like being in prison – except that in prison you get three meals a day and a warm place to sleep. But that wasn’t the worst part.

“It’s the loneliness,’ he said, taking another imaginary sip. “All the time, loneliness. All of my friends are either dead or gone.”

I was going to tell him how lonely I felt that Thanksgiving, but decided against it. Here was a guy who has endured the same ugly feeling for six years, and I was depressed about one day spent in a warm hotel room with the people I love a phone call away. His cup was empty; mine runneth over.

“The day after Christmas,” he said. “A business is made or broken by how well it is the day after Christmas. Everything is defined by where you are the day after Christmas.”

We had been talking about Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t going to argue. This was his conversation. I was just along for the ride.

I gave him some money as I got up to take my tour, which he accepted but don’t think expected. When I came back downstairs an hour later, I spotted my friend talking to a couple of other street people. He waved to me as I passed.

He still had his cup and it was still empty. And I felt bad, really bad, because I knew that on the day after Christmas, he would still be there.

I never looked at people or a place the same after that. Everywhere is home for someone – every place has its own ecosystem that functions often despite itself. No matter where we live, we can connect.

Yes, Los Angeles is a city of fragments, its people fragmented. But while the pieces don’t always fit, we must, eventually, come together.

Moving On from Social Media

LET THIS BE THE YEAR.

Let 2013 be the time it ends.

I’m sick of social media and I’m sure most of you are, too. It’s done, it’s old and it’s out of touch with modern life.

Giving clients a social media strategy used to make agencies and clients look smart, now it just makes us look pathetic. Social media is nothing more than a buzzword, a security blanket, an emperor with no clothes.

I’m not saying social media isn’t important – of course it is. All I’m saying is the definition no longer makes sense. The public has moved on while we cling to a world of “10 Tips for Effective Content Marketing” listicle bullshit. Seriously, I just made that headline up yet look what I found.

When all media is social, there is no more social media. That’s not just some pithy quote for one of those stupid ribbons you get at social media conferences, like “Byte Me” or “Social Media Douchebag.” Recognizing that all media is social is the truth no one wants to face. But continuing to pretend that social media is something separate from “traditional” communications, internal or external, is just ignorance on a Google-like scale.

All media is social (it’s about people). All media is earned (it’s about attention.) All media is online (and it’s offline, too.)

The only reason there is still a line between “social” media and “traditional” media is because marketers like us insist on drawing the damn thing, despite the fact that nobody outside our insular industry cocoon cares.

People don’t see ads, press releases, Facebook updates, “brand journalism” or “branded entertainment” – they just see media. They talk about it and they share it. They see right through us and directly into whether a brand is saying something or just selling them something.

Yes, “social media” also refers to technology platforms like Facebook and YouTube, but that distinction is a bunch of crap too. A piece of technology isn’t any more social than a tree stump. People make technology social, period.

E-mail and Listserves were “social” media long before Twitter was in diapers. Tools like Facebook and Wordpress simply allowed people to record and save their conversations in a public setting vs. being relegated to local hard drives. If doing this makes blogs or Facebook more social, then yes, I agree, but that doesn’t make them the only social media in town.

We need to move forward and catch up with the public. We’re part of the public too, after all, try as we might to pretend we’re different or know any better.

Let’s get on with doing great work and stop worrying whether our media programs are social, traditional, earned, paid, owned or shared. Let’s focus on our clients’ business goals, not their Klout scores.

If we do our job, all of our media programs will be social – I mean, in 2013, how can they be anything else?

Promises to My Teenage Daughter

I PROMISE to believe in you even when you are filled with doubt.

I PROMISE to let you live up to your own expectations, not the expectations I had for you.

I PROMISE not to push you more than you push yourself.

I PROMISE to accept you for who you are, even if sometimes you don't know how.

I PROMISE to give you everything you need and as much time as I can -- even though it's never as much as I want.

I PROMISE to cheer, whether it's for acheivement on the court or in the classroom.

I PROMISE to give you the space you need to think and the time you need to make your own decisions.

I PROMISE to love you when you succeed and even more when you struggle.

I PROMISE to be the best dad I'm able to be, even though I'm not the dad you want me to be.

I PROMISE to let you go, when all I want to do is hold on.

If Technology is the Heart of Social Media, Then People are the Soul

I'M CONSISTENTLY AMAZED BY how many companies engage in social media and forget that the word “social” is right there. But I don’t entirely blame them – I blame us.

By “us” I mean the so-called professional communicators who are supposed to know better. Yet we too often stand idle while our clients treat Twitter as a one-way broadcast channel.

We created this monster largely because we allowed our clients to categorize digital, and social media in particular, as technology. We used words like “tools” and “content” and “apps” to sell in our services – and in doing so we reduced the greatest advancement in the history of communication to little more than a moribund pile of silicon chips.

"Digital" is not about technology – it’s about sociology and culture, it’s about people and emotion. Social media is the most human form of communication ever invented because humans are the platform.

There is no “digital” or social media without technology, of course. Technology is like the heart – it’s a muscle, a power source and an engine that is necessary to keep things moving.

But if technology is the heart of social media, then we are its soul.

This wasn’t necessarily the case in the First Web Era of the ‘90s. Then technology ruled the digital world – you could have Web sites, search engines and online advertising that didn’t need people to exist, just a lot of money and an IT department. It was all heart and no soul.

Now think about YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or even most Web sites today. None of these “social” channels would exist without people. YouTube would be empty, eBay would be a vacant lot, a Facebook page would have no one to “like” it (not that "liking" a Facebook page matters anyway, but that's for another post.)

Search would still be a collection of links, not real-time results based on what people are talking about. Advertising would be stuck in irrelevance, unable to find anyone interested in the ads because there wouldn’t be any people talking or sharing.

E-mail was the “killer app” of the ‘90s, but today people are the killer app.

So let’s stop casting digital in the light of technology. Instead of “social media,” which is a noun and easy to think of as a tool, think in terms of “media is social” – a verb that conjures images of action and emotion. See how this little change in perception will have a huge impact on how you approach the way you communicate.

Maybe the heart can beat without a soul, but a heart without a soul is an empty life – and an empty digital world.