Needle, Meet Haystack

Do you remember when you first got the Internet in your home?  If you were like millions of Americans, you had snagged one of the quintillions of AOL discs*, installed the software, connected your computer to your phone line, and jacked in to the Information Superhighway.  Well, after several minutes of the most horrific screeches ever belched forth from a 56k/v90 fax modem.

You would be logged in to see a plethora of options, from news and chat rooms to email and Instant Messaging to weather reports, sports scores, and searches.  Oh, the searches.  The Internet was a new place, and as you would venture forth for your first sojourn into the World Wide Web, you might use Altavista, Yahoo!, AOL keywords, or even that newfangled Google thing.  All this information to explore with the click of a mouse or the tap of a keyboard!  It was truly a marvel of modern technology.

But what happens now?  You turn on your laptop, it grabs a wireless connection, and you’re online as soon as your OS has booted up.  You might head over to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or some similar social contact site, then head to a news site, tech blog, webcomic or whatever.  If you need to look something up, you can always hit up Wikipedia or Google.  And that’s pretty much it.

And while that might not seem like a big difference, here’s the thing: it’s a huge difference, and a big part of the evolution of the Internet.

The online world used to be search-based; you would look up whatever you needed, testing the boundaries of what was available online.  It was still a static medium in that there was less user interactivity.  You would usually only have a web page if you were a developer, or (later on) if you created a Geocities page.

But as the Internet grew, and people figured out its possibilities and boundaries, it became much more dynamic.  Social networking brought with it an ease of personalized webpage creation.  New resources for sharing like YouTube, IMDB and Wikipedia made finding large quantities of information in one spot easier than ever before.  Social interactions have been forever changed.  The dynamic evolution created a shift, though: the Internet became destination-based.

Rather than consistently exploring, people now have a set group of websites that they visit, a group only expanded through referrals or links by trusted sites that are already used, or by friends.  Even as the scope of information has grown, the scope of attention has narrowed to the degree of selective ignorance.  We move around in niche packs, with fewer and fewer people expanding their views outward.

One of the largest destination sites is Facebook, which has tens of millions of users.  In fact, almost everyone I know is on the site.  Lately, there have been many criticisms of the site’s new privacy policies, causing a large uproar in the online community.  However, most people say that they won’t leave Facebook, as all of their friends are already on the site.  In essence, it’s an Internet-based catch-22.  You want to leave the site, but all your friends are on it, and they don’t want to leave because all of their friends are on it, and so on and so on.  As long as there are no alternatives, people will stay.

This problem presents a number of issues, the biggest of which is not privacy at all: should everyone on the Internet all be using the same website to connect to each other?  After all, we make thousands of connections in our lifetimes, and it might be prudent to have one place to find people to stay in touch with them.  The solution of niche social networks would require some users to become members of dozens, or even hundreds of sites to keep up with their social and professional contacts (not to mention that the main social network building site recently announced that it will be switching to a pay model), which would get too confusing and convoluted.  But when the utility of a site (connecting to everyone) is compromised by privacy issues, where do people go?

The way I see it, there are three choices:

1. Regression: You can always go back to the older methods of communication: email, IM, phones, evites, in-person meetings, maybe even (gasp!) write a letter.  All of these are still solid forms of communication, and chances are that they won’t be passing your info along to marketers.
2. Lateral transition: Twitter is pretty up-front about its stance on privacy, MySpace is still around, and there’s been a video floating about on the net about how good ol’ AOL can make a comeback.  Facebook isn’t the only game in town, after all.
3. Search: Remember what I said earlier about the old pioneer spirit of adventure in the early dial-up days?  Go out and find new communities and services – there might be something better just waiting to be discovered.

The Internet is a wonderful, expansive, open world of communities, communication, and information.  So go out an play once in a while.

*I’m not gonna lie, you guys.  My parents had dial-up AOL service up until last year.  But don’t worry, they got better.

First off, I want to allay any suspicion or concern that this is turning into a fashion blog.  While I like suiting up as much as the next fella, I don’t think that I’m particularly inclined to start doling out advice on clothes.

No, this is about personal definitions.

For generations, jobs have been separated into that either-or category: either you’re a blue collar (manual/physical labor) or a white collar (office/mental labor).  Much like the white hats and the black hats of the Old West, there was no cause or reason for further delineation.  Either you worked with your head or you worked with your hands.  But then, a funny thing happened.  Industries started getting in on the act.

There were soon green collar jobs for alternative energy/agricultural/conservation positions.  I’ve heard of medical, volunteer and disaster relief work referred to as red collar positions.  And there might be some morticians or morgue operators who fancy their collars to be referred to as black.  The career wardrobe has begun to expand.  In fact, some people may have several different colors and types in their job closets.

Whereas careers might have been once defined by whether someone was working inside or outside (the simplest way of separating white and blue collars), now it’s a matter of specialization.  How are you using information?  Where are your skills applied?  In what way do your tasks fit in with the organizational hierarchy and operations?

It can all get so terribly confusing.

Pretty soon, we’ll have people defining their work with paisley collars, tartan collars, polka dot collars, popped collars and no collars.  Companies will make every effort to differentiate their work by giving their employees new collars.  But really, it’s indicative of a new trend in the working world.

The competencies and skills needed for many jobs continue to grow and expand to such a degree that they become overly specific.  Instead of becoming well-lopsided, people are becoming trained in specializations that ensure that finding a different career will become increasingly difficult for them.  In an age of high employee turnover, companies are fighting back by making their workers proficient in such small niches that they may not be employable anywhere else, even for competitors.

This specialized knowledge comes at a price, though.  If an employee does leave, they create a knowledge vacuum that can be difficult, if not impossible, to fill.  Or, to stretch back to the original metaphor, it’s like taking essential clothes out of one’s wardrobe.  Like socks.  Or underpants.

As much as we may strive for better definitions and comprehensions of our careers, there comes to be a point when things get too specialized and categorized.  Sometimes, it’s better to stick with the basics, for both employees and employers.  After all, it’s just a collar – not the whole shirt.

No one has ever asked me to speak at a graduation ceremony.  I have friends who did, but I can’t tell you much beyond a basic outline of what they talked about.  In fact, I never really liked the concept of the smart kids talking at the end; I always felt it would be far more interesting to find out what the dumb kids at the bottom of the class who barely squeaked by had to say.

That being said, when I started this blog, I was upset that I hadn’t done it a few weeks before, when it could coincide with graduation ceremonies (or at least those that I was aware of – I know people graduate in June but shut up I’m used to early May graduations).  So I’ve been holding on to this thought for the past year, waiting until now to try to put it into written form.  Graduating class of 2010, this is for you:

To the graduating class of 2010, I have only two things to say to you.  The first is a congratulations on your accomplishments.  The second is that after today, you probably won’t remember a single thing I’ve said.

Not that I blame you.  I only remember vague things about some of the speeches I’ve heard at graduations over the years; someone read The Giving Tree, someone else talked about Legos, and I think one dude bastardized the Gettysburg Address so it was about school and dreams and future accomplishments.

A lot of people would tell you that you should follow your dreams, that you’re going to change the world.  And while there’s a statistically tiny chance that this might be true for one of you, the rest of you graduates probably won’t do much.  In fact, some of you will fail at life.  Hard.

And now here’s the part of the speech where I talk about resilience.  But if you’ve seen any movie in pretty much ever, you know that you have to fail in order to get back up.  Sometimes, you need a montage.  A wisecracking sidekick can help.  Also, explosions.

Where were we?

Oh yeah, so most of you right now are brimming with potential.  And most of you are talking to the people seated around you, or texting, or surfing the web on your iPhones, or tossing around beach balls because hey, you just want your name to be called so you can walk onstage, get your diploma, and move on.

And move on you will.  In three years, hell, in three MONTHS, you might find yourself drifting away from some people who, for the last four years, have been closer to you than your own family.  And sure, there’s Facebook, Twitter and all those sites to keep you connected, but you will drift apart.  You’ll lose friends without noticing.  And one day, when you’re in the bathroom reading the classifieds section because you find the personals hilarious, you’ll suddenly wonder, “Whatever happened to…”

I’m aware this is all terribly depressing.

Then again, if you’re one of the millions of people looking for a job right now (and you probably are), or if you’re one of the millions of people terrified of the coming onslaught of student loans (and you probably are), or even if you’re just now realizing that a specialization in ancient Sumerian pottery wasn’t the best choice (okay, only a few of you might), you’re used to bad news.

For the past few years, people have been talking about how shitty the economy is, how bad the employment rate is, and how difficult things are going to be for each year of graduates.  And you’re probably sick of it.  You will break the mold.  You will be different.  You will not find yourself back living with your parents as you struggle to find any sort of work that actually has relevance to what you want to do with your life.

But like I said before, most of you will find the opposite to be true.

So enjoy the little things.  Don’t be afraid to try new things.  The great thing about a lousy economy and a bad employment rate is that you can do a whole mess of stuff with a lot less riding on your success.  Take that trip you always wanted to go on.  Learn a new skill.  Go back to school so you can avoid the real world for a little while longer.

What I’m saying to you is this: you don’t have to fix everything.  Sure, you can try to help, but don’t lose sight of yourself.  You’re young, fresh, wide-eyed and ready to change the world.  And if it doesn’t turn out so great, you have years ahead of you to recover from it.  And even if you don’t change the world, you might be able to help a few people along the way.

I don’t expect any of you to remember any of this.  I don’t plan on being stopped on the street 15 years from now by one of you who says, “I really appreciate what you said at my graduation.”  I do expect you to go out into the world and try to do something.

But right now, I expect you to all pat yourselves on the back for making it this far.  So welcome to that “real world” you’ve been hearing so much about, graduates.  And good luck.

My father, for the past 3/4 of his life, has not been completely clean-shaven.  And not only that, but his facial hair has remained in the same style, outliving fashions of the hippie, disco, yuppie and day-glo eras (his sideburns, sadly, cannot say the same – mutton chops, Dad?  Really?!).  His van dyke has, besides going from black to gray to white, remained unchanged throughout the years.  No matter what else changes in his life, there is one immutable law: my dad will have his beard and mustache.

In fact, my mom has never seen him without it.  For the past 30+ years, she has never seen him without his facial hair.  His sister doesn’t remember what he looked like without it (not counting in childhood, before his beard could grow to its permanent resting place).  In fact, much like Jesus Christ between ages 13 and 30, there is a gap of time in which there were no photographs of my dad at all.  It’s as if he left the land of pictorial remembrance, and when he returned, his beard and mustache came with him.

I don’t think that my father will ever, for the rest of his life, put razor or clippers to the hairs above, below and to the sides of his lips.  He will forever be a bearded man.

Dad’s facial hair decision echoes a trend that has existed in cultures and workplaces since the dawn of mankind: if you find something that works, stick with it.  And while there is wisdom in this concept, there’s also a great deal of foolishness.

Once a method or practice has been shown to work consistently, it becomes ingrained in a culture.  Personally, we call them “habits.”  Professionally, they’re “operating procedures.”  Sure, they might not work all the time, but if they work for the majority of cases with little or no incident, there’s no real cause for concern.

And this can be fine – innovation is not essential to success.  But then, how do we know we’ve chosen the best methods?  How do we know that what we’ve become accustomed to is the best choice?

I’ve asked Dad at various times to shave off his beard.  He won’t do it.  After what I can presume to be much trial and error in his wilderness years, he found something that works for him.

So the only real way to establish a habit or operating procedure is through trial and error.  It can take a long time to determine the best method, but once it’s done, it at least seems like the best way to do things at the time.  But if it starts losing effectiveness, that’s a clear indication that one must innovate.

My dad’s facial hair hasn’t reached that point – it hasn’t lost its luster, even after decades of sameness.  Still, I can’t help but wonder how he would look without the beard and moustache.  But as long as it works for him, it’s not a mystery that really needs to be solved.

Each generation defines itself not only by its politics, pop culture, fashions, slang and innovation.  From the white picket fences of the mid-50s to the McMansions of the early 2000s, the striving and successful created the ideal aspirations that served as the benchmarks of achievement for their eras.  So what is the American Dream for the Gen-Y/Millennial crowd?

The recession seems to have shifted the focus away from material possessions to personal fulfillment.  Where once a loft decked out in the latest desirables from the IKEA catalog (circa the beginning of Fight Club at the turn of the century) would have been a noble goal, Millennials have warmed to the idea of boomeranging back to Mom and Dad.  A new car may have been the symbol that one had arrived during the Dot Com Boom, but now it’s based around Facebook and Twitter friends.

The collapse of the housing market has made many wary of obtaining their own homes.  Soaring unemployment rates have made job whoring to pay the bills socially acceptable.  Digital communication has forever changed the way that people interact.  And the American Dream, once a tangible obsession with material things, has undergone a metamorphosis.

Millennials aren’t looking for solace in the same things that their parents, grandparents, and even older siblings had.  Instead of focusing on the external, the dream for Generation Y is internal.  Though it’s still developing, their American Dream, their hopes and aspirations, are more personal.  Concerns about keeping up with the Joneses are mitigated – it’s all about personal definitions.

And those definitions might lead this generation into a dream that no one has ever had before.

Sometimes, you come across people who are looking for utilitarian relationships.  Whether by design or subconscious proclivities, they choose not to be friends, contacts, acquaintances or relations of any sort for a reason other than getting something out of the transaction.

While this is a natural and common occurrence, there’s a subset of this group who only associate with people because they want experiences.  They’re called Tourists.

This clip from Parks and Recreation explains the concept perfectly*.  Basically, a Tourist is a person who enters someone’s life for three reasons: stories, vicarious living, and social leverage.  And once they have what they wanted, they move on.

Tourists may still have real social contacts and deep interpersonal relationships with people, but they cultivate these particular relationships out of a desire to raise social proof.  Social proof, if you’re not aware, is a demonstration of higher value through example.  So a picture with a celebrity would be social proof, as would a story about doing something out of the ordinary (to most people, anyway) like para-sailing over the Grand Canyon or giving a presentation to the Google Board of Directors.  We use social proof as a way of evaluating someone’s worth, and Tourists attempt to exploit this tendency.

Much like social media collectors, Tourists collect stories and experiences to increase their concept of self-value.  However, it can be more difficult to spot one.  Here are a few common traits of those suffering from Tourist Syndrome:

• Name-dropping
• Conversation monopolization
• Taking a barely tangential conversation topic and turning it into a personal story
• A high degree of interest in one particular story that you are telling them (it seems almost like an interview)
• A lack of conversation topics beyond personal adventures
• One-upmanship

The worst thing about Tourists is that they become highly contagious.  One conversation is all it takes to pick up Tourist Syndrome and go off creating (and seeking out) adventures and stories.  While this is good in small doses, it belies a lower concentration of self-esteem and personal depth.

The best way to cure Tourist Syndrome is to relax and just enjoy yourself; one can feel forced or compelled to act in a certain way to achieve maximum quantities of social proof.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of becoming a storyteller.  And in many cases, it’s a good thing.  But obsession with having good, if not the best, stories can lead to awkward situations and a degradation of one’s personality.  Just remember: the book of your life doesn’t have to be an action story.

* I also stole the term from this clip.

“What’s Big Love about?” my dad yelled from the den, scanning through the channels on the DirecTV menu.

“Some show about polygamists,” I yelled back.  “I hear it’s pretty good.”

“Maybe I’ll check it out.  Oh, wait – it’s on HBO.  We don’t subscribe to them anymore.”

So Dad didn’t watch the show about one man and his three sister-wives.

I really wish I had a better opening for you, something profound about the lessons of love and life, some grand, sweeping poetic gesture that would bring grown men to tears like the speech at the end of Brian’s Song and would make romance novelists cringe in jealousy.  But all I’ve got is a story about me and my dad and premium cable.  But there’s no easy way to segue into the topic of romantic love among more than two people.

The argument for polygamy is something along the lines of “If you can hate more than one person, why can’t you be in love with more than one person?”  And sure enough, there are fully functional relationships between multiple partners in the world today.  And I’m not about to debate the merits of one lifestyle over another, decry the “sanctity of marriage” or anything like that.  Instead, I’d like to ask a simple question: is the multiple-partner relationship a direction that society is headed in?

The divorce rate, as the news tells me every week or so, is around 50%.  That means that at least half of all couples who wind up tying the knot thinking that they’re in love with each other are not.  There’s an abysmally high record of failed second marriages too – it’s even higher than the divorce rate.  And in this case, we can again assume that these people had found romantic love and it failed.  Presumably, some of them went on to third, fourth or fifth marriages; Larry King alone probably raises the national rate of remarriage up a percent or two.

So here we have all of these people who are able to find romantic love with multiple partners.  It might not run concurrently with the love they have for another partner, but it exists.  Now, compound that with the decrease in overall marriages, the average number of married people who carry on an affair (20 to 30 percent) and the increase in the number of children born out of wedlock, and it seems that people are already looking for love in different ways.  It’s no longer about just settling down with one person.

This isn’t to suggest that we will become a society of hedonistic ne’er-do-wells that corrupt the very institution of marriage, but rather that the concept of a single partner and a monogamous long-term relationship may change.  As our society continues to develop and grow, people are looking past the evolutionary imperative of procreation towards more personalized goals.  It may come to pass that the stigma of polygamy is lifted.

And that, at the very least, sounds like it could make for some entertaining television.

Let’s say that you’ve decided to launch a new website or business.  How many people from your social circle can you count on to support your new endeavor?  Using a bit of math, here’s what I came up with:

Not too long ago, I mentioned Dunbar’s Number, a theoretical proposition that states that one cannot maintain close, stable relationships with more than 150 people.  Any friends over that number will be assumed to be part of a collection or spam.  Dunbar’s Number will be the basis for this experiment.

So let’s say that you have 150 close friends, family members, and co-workers.  It doesn’t matter if you have more or less, but let’s use that number for the sake of this experiment.  Let’s say that you have twice as many friends as family members or co-workers (who get the extra person, since you can’t have half a person):

• Friends: 75
• Family: 37
• Co-workers: 38

Of your 150 contacts, there is a bell-curve (“normal”) distribution related to how interested they are in your life which in this case equates will help you out or promote something for you.  We will be using an eight-point scale on propensity to help, ranging from “no way in hell” to “without a doubt.”  So the percentages look like this (rounded to whole people):

• no way in hell 0.1% = 1 person
• probably not 2.1% = 3 people
• unlikely 13.6% = 20 people
• maybe (negative) 34.1% = 51 people
• maybe (positive) 34.1% = 51 people
• possibly 13.6% = 20 people
• probably 2.1%  = 3 people
• without a doubt 0.1% = 1 person

Distribution remains constant across all groups.

The proclivities for the groups will be based on an equal percentage distribution for all categories (higher percentages means that they are more likely to help, with numbers rounded to the nearest whole person):

• no way in hell 0% = 0 people
• probably not 14.3% = 0 people
• unlikely 28.6% = 6 people
• maybe (negative) 42.9% = 22 people
• maybe (positive) 57.2% = 29 people
• possibly 71.5% = 14 people
• probably 85.7%  = 3 people
• without a question 100% = 1 person

So this means that you should have the interest of 75 out of 150 people, or 50% of the people you ask.  So half of the people you ask won’t even click on the link to join your Facebook fan page or follow you on Twitter.  Using the same metrics, we can determine that 37 out of those 75 people will follow through to join the group or follow you, which equates to 25% of your social circle.

We will use the metrics* again to determine involvement (ie: people who check in on or interact with your product), and we find the following:

• 19 people (13% of your social group) will interact with your brand
• Of those 19 people, only 12 will do so at a frequency of weekly to monthly

And finally, if you subdivide the math again and assume that this time you are reducing the number to find the amount of people who will tell others about the product, promote it, and so on…

You’re left with 8 people.  10 at most.  That’s around 6% of your original 150 people.  Or, to put it another way, 4 friends, 2 family members and 2 co-workers (or, at most, 5, 2 and 3, respectively).

So what does this mean?

Whenever you plan to start a new business, publicize yourself, or try to find something to do within your own social group, you won’t have as many positive responses as you might expect.  Instead, look to groups or communities outside of your own who might be interested in what you have to offer – you should find greater returns than if you simply throw it out there for people to see and hope that they like it.

There are many marketing metrics and for cost resources that one can use to find these targeted groups.  But doing one’s own research into competing or similar fields, even on Google, should yield greater returns.  Anticipate who your target is, and you can find them and draw them in.

And who knows?  You might make some new friends.

*Truncated from this point on for brevity’s sake.

I spent a good part of my day yesterday making chocolates.  Now before you judge, it just happens to be something that I do that relaxes me.  I don’t eat all (or even that many) of them, and I don’t have a girlfriend who I’m trying to fatten up.  I just make candy to make it and give to people.  And yes, you can see a picture of the peanut butter truffle bars, piña colada macadamia mounds and blueberry jellies that I assembled with my own two hands by clicking here (I’m really bad at making food porn; sorry).

The reason that I tell you this is because it is one of several hobbies and character traits that put me in a relatively new category of men: the domesticated bachelor.

Born out of the ashes of the (regrettable) Metrosexual movement, a domesticated bachelor is a dude who seems like he’s in a relationship even though he isn’t – he cooks, cleans, can dress and groom himself in a socially presentable way, and  is interested in activities usually reserved for couples (farmer’s markets, museums, brunch, etc).  This sounds like it goes in direct opposition to the definition put forth on The Domesticated Bachelor, but the number of guys in this group are on the rise.

Sure, we occasionally like lounging around in sweatpants, but who doesn’t?  Watching the game with friends is not mutually exclusive to having a beer gut or slopping around in old and ragged clothes.  We know how to cook more than just barbeque.  We can sort-of distinguish between wines.  Heck, you might see us unironically attending cooking classes.

The Domesticated Bachelor seems to be the male response to the hookup culture – a man developing the self-sufficient techniques and capabilities that used to be obtained through being in a relationship.  A domesticated bachelor has adapted all of the necessary skills and traits of a man who is in a relationship, only without having a girlfriend.  As a result, there can be a bit of a perception versus reality gap that occurs when we actually DO get ourselves involved romantically.

As gender roles continue to redefine themselves and the very structure of relationships begins to change, men and women find themselves becoming parts of new groups.  The Domesticated Bachelor is but one of the first.

How many of you use Craigslist?  Hold on a second – I’m not talking about the, ‘Oh, I’m looking for an apartment’ Crsigslist.  I’m talking about ‘Gimme a h*** j** and I’ll give you a coffee table.  Like that kind of Craigslist.  THAT’s Crisglist.  -Aziz Ansari

Oh my gosh you guys, Craigslist is the most amazing thing ever.  If you’re talking about the pinnacle of human achievement, the alpha and omega of culture and society as a whole, than you’ve GOTTA be talking about the ol’ CL (as the kids say).

I’ve bought a stereo on Craigslist.  I’ve sold furniture on Craigslist.  And when I’m feeling down, I turn to Craigslist fur the pure, unbridled joy that can only come from the schadenfreude found on the Personals page.

The best thing about the personals page on Craigslist is that unlike the classifieds pages of days gone by that Craigslist itself is modeled after, they permit longer messages.  This allows people to elaborate about themselves more, include pictures, misspell more words, create unintentionally funny messages and, perhaps most tellingly, shows an interesting phenomena in gender relations.

I call it the Assumption of Predisposed Intent.

Men write what they imagine a woman wants to hear, but from the perspective of a man.  Women do the inverse.  And the result is that most everyone sounds silly, creepy or desperate.  Because instead, the men and women should be writing as themselves.  This ties in with the lack of physical contact, which also explains some of the problems that can arise in online dating profiles.  But this is really a problem with the male and female brains.

For years, we’ve heard the cliches that all seem to boil down to the conceit that “men are stupid and women are crazy,” but that’s really overstating it on both sides.  They just have different opinions about what love and a relationship should be.  So what should happen is that the men should think like women, and the women should think like men.  So the guys need to change their writing to show more personality and less sex talk (preferably without shots of their junk), while the women need to be a bit more succinct in their word choice (and not write twenty paragraph essays on the guy they want to be with).  We need to re-wire our own brains in order to really connect with others on their own levels.  But this problem goes beyond singles posting on CL.

Whether it’s a job application, a memo, a presentation or even a conversation with a new friend, people don’t give enough consideration to their audience.  Sometimes, we say things that make others uncomfortable without knowing it, or are oblivious to nonverbal cues from others that could help us understand them better.  Whenever we talk or write to others, we have a tendency to choose our words and craft our sentences in a way that is pleasing to ourselves, not the audience.

So take the time to consider who you’ll be talking to.  Focus on them.  And then, if you’re really feeling up to it, send that post to “Missed Connections” so we can all see it.  Or sell your couch.  You know, whichever one you’re on the site for in the first place.