Reflecting on events this week that I attended; a dinner in Chinatown Monday night where I met Jeremy Wright of B5 Media and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit fame.
Spoke to Jeremy Wright last night about the penalty Google imposed on most Know More Media blogs, including Webmetricsguru.com, before I bought it off the defunct KMM Network.
The traffic today isn’t terrible, between 200 to 300 visits a day, about the same as when I bought the domain with Sebastian Wenzel for our BlogSpeedWay.com network.
But I haven’t been able to get back to the 1000-20,000 visits a day I used to get, before last January, when the penalty was applied.
Jeremy mentioned he had success with a few KMM blogs he bought, using Google Webmaster Console, which turns out to be another name for Google Webmaster tools.
3 inclusion requests after cleaning up the blog, and no real response from Google, via the tool.
But here’s the thing … A conversation is usually 2 ways, and fully Duplex, meaning you make a request, you get a direct reply.
That’s also Web 2.0 and how this last Presidential Election was won by Barack Obama with a brilliant Social Media Strategy that acknowledged his followers and made them (us) feel heard and acknowledged.
Why doesn’t Google not hear and acknowledge me, not by sending me more automated bots via Webmaster Central, but answering my reconsideration requests with a human voice and face, so that I know I was heard.
Lately I’ve been on rants with companies that sell you on ideas they enable, but don’t actually embody, themselves.
Last month I mentioned ComScore, who sells expensive intelligence to corporations who want to spy on each other (competitive intelligence) running metering software that none of those same corporations will allow to run on their own networks due to privacy policies - pathetic, but true. No wonder the numbers are so far off from the same webstats, when available.
Then last week, Radian6, did, more or less, the same thing, and I wrote about it. It was cleared up when Radian6 talked back, had a conversation with me.
And now, Google,the most successful Web 2.0 Company if them all.
Wha!
Google doesn’t want 2 way conversations, they just tell the rules, something happens and your in the Gulog, they throw the key away.
Here’s my point, and I haven’t even gotten to gotten to Gary’s rant with Howard Stern, today - why can’t Google start having 2 way conversations?
Why won’t Google acknowledge me or my reconsideration request, so that I know my concerns were addressed?
Just a thought, but you’d think, by now, Google would be acting Web 2.0 by just talking to me.
And it’s not like Matt Cutts is easy to reach, these days.
I don’t know, the wholething is frustrating, and, as usual, people who talk the talk, often don’t walk the walk.
Note: I wrote this post on the subway while heading towards DUMBO, Brooklyn, for an Art Opening. I am finding, I can compose and post my work while commuting, and even, while walking, and my last post was done entirely while walking to work this morning.
Of course, I don’t recommend doing that kind of writing all the time, but feel good that it’s there for me, when I want it.
Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson) Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain
Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain
Community Platforms/Branded Social Networks
MyBarackObama: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)
McCain Space: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)
I mean, overall, Obama had 4 times more presense in Social Media than John McCain.
It seems to me Social Media and Web 2.0 are becoming more vital, perhaps even the centerpiece of campaigns, going forward:
“…..drawing on Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer, his campaign decided early on to build a social network that would flank, and in some cases outflank, traditional news media.“
“.. Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.
When viewers settle in Tuesday night to watch the election returns, they will also check text messages for alerts, browse the Web for exit poll results and watch videos distributed by the campaigns. And many folks will let go of the mouse only to pick up the remote and sample an array of cable channels with election coverage — from Comedy Central to BBC America.”
Could it be, that besides having more to day than McCain, Obama had a lot more avenues to say it?
Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama — Welcome to The Daily Beast: A Q&A with Tina Brown — The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat. — Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon.
Motivations in getting involved in search and politics are varied but unlike other business it never shuts off and your in it to win.
There is no budget and there is a lag in knowledge in running campaigns for search and current spending is only 40-60 million in this election, and that is a drop in the bucket of all spend.
Also, the lady from Yahoo said there hasn’t been many or any studies on campaign effectiveness and paid search. But you need to communicate directly with the campaign manager and to a lesser effect, the canditates, need to understand the utility of paid search marketing and political campaigns.
Duh! Candidates don’t seem to understand geo-targeting and micro-targeting! They understand TV and Radio and media markets, but seldom do they yet understand the precision avaiable.
McCain’s campaign is very active in gel-targeting and Eric Frenchman, who runs McCain’s online search advertising, said so.
What I don’t hear is micro targeting on the actual DISTRICT level, or anything with RSS feeds.
Interestingly, just as I wrote this, a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.
And nothing about RSS feeds and Twitter integration on the local district level. It’s amazing to me how much of modern technology is not being utilized.
Amazing how campaigns use speeches of Biden (in the case of McCain) to a negative landing page on the candidate.
Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.
For some candidates, easing fund online is easier than others, and some times they can’t spend it all, so managing expectations is necessary.
Online Persuasion.
Do you need to be a true believer in the candidate and party ideology to work for a campaign as a search strategist for them.
However, now, there are many online digital strategists are on both sides.
Social Media and Search with political campaigns. Blog or not? Tracy Russo says no, not enough worth while content. I disagree. And Obama had people who were hired to write to the blogs, etc.
However, the community forming around a blog often continues after a campaign is over, win or lose, and, honestly, not fostering and nuturing that is foolish, I believe.
The idea that there is not much worthwhile to say is lunacy.
Twitter? Again, not as used as much as you’d think, by candidates. Amazing how much is being left, on the table, so to speak.
But, then again, I’m more of a visionary than anyone on the panel, or, for that matter, in the room, judging from the questions from the audience.
Facebook, what works? Buying admin rights for a group, Dan Steele, from Comedy Central.
Interestingly, the question of what kind of participation exists on November 5th, after the election, came up. It seems to me a new “channel” is being created via online media, Paid Search, FaceBook, Twitter, and targeted Blogs, along.
Justine Lam, worked for Ron Paul, and talked about all if that, and how it took a life of it’s own.
What tools used for monitoring Online Buzz?
Google Trends, Google Alerts, but many of the online tools are not useful, yet, to campaign strategists, yet.
Yahoo, Diane Rinalado, says Yahoo Buzz was sited as being better than Google Trends, and HotTrends, but not as highly used.
I brought up a few observations that I voiced including:
1. Increase links shown for embedded videos in Yahoo to include the long tail.
2. Data collected for Buzz Tools need to be refreshed hourly, not days or months later, as Goigle Trends and Yahoo Buzz often are.
Media Buys, as Eric Frenchman said, need to be decided in a few hours. You can see the gap.
Which campaign is doing better online?
Don Steele, Comedy Central, says he’s surprised media companies aren’t better at this yet.
Posted by Marshall on September 30, 2008 | Link It
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An interesting post from Jeff Jarvis today about The rise of the third estate and the need for Social Media participation and, by extension, Social Media Measurment- though what we have now, is still poor and ill suited for what’s required, moving forward. According to Jeff Jarvis:
“…. No one’s in charge. I didn’t think that’d be worse than having the bozos we had in charge. But it is.
You’d think the one thing our politicians would be competent at is politics. But they couldn’t even count votes.
We knew the White House was a vacuum. Congress is a vacuum. Wall Street is lie. Detroit and the era it represents is dust. Journalism is sinking like a wet witch.
Who’s in charge? It’s falling to us, the people. We’re in charge. Problem is, we’re not ready. We’ve used the internet so far to organize some knowledge and yell at each other. We are just beginning to create the tools to organize ourselves. If only the meltdown of every authority structure could have waited a few years. Then again, necessity is the mother of organization. New structures don’t replace old structures while they’re still in place. New structures fill voids. And, boy, do we have some voids to fill.
We’re not ready, but then again, sometimes circumstances makes the person - maybe it’s time. Now, I’m not really for or against the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout (see Bush Urges Congress to Pass Bailout in today’s New York Times) but I noticed how many people on Facebook mobalized to send the Congress representatives mesages against the bailout.
Just worth pointing out: Henry Paulson’s decision to let Lehman fail, on Sept. 14, may have delivered the White House to Obama.
Not entirely clear how the chart above shows that Henry Paulson’s decision about Lehman Brother’s points the way to an Obama Victory, and the chart above does not deal with Social Media, it’s more like a stock chart - but it has “attribution”, the kind that Social Media needs- along with participation in Social Media, the precise measurement of it is needed.
And that’s where Web Analysts come in; where this blog comes in, why I’m interested in Social Media along with Web Analytics.
If The rise of the third estate is truly immanent - as Jeff Jarvis suggests, then we need precise measurements of participation and effectiveness along with the mechanisms for contribution (to whatever process, in this case, Political).
We don’t have that today - and most companies aren’t investing in it either.
I believe they should invest, now - and Web Analytics is the right place to start - more than making that investment, when it does happen, by placing Social Media in marketing, public relations or communications - it also needs to be funded in Web Analytics groups - liberally.
Or else, we’ll be in a situation, situations like we have now in the public sector, but in the private sector, as - where the “Third Estate” arrived (it’s already happened, Brands just haven’t accepted it yet), but the tools and methodology haven’t evolved and the measurement is not yet precise enough to be useful.
Posted by Marshall on September 22, 2008 | Link It
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Again, I digress from Web Analytics, to talk about current events outside Analytics - but which Analytics could be applied to.
I am happy to see that Conseratives and Liberals, Right and Left, Republicans and Democrats, - no one likes the $700 Billion Bailout Plan proposed by the Bush Administration - even though everyone agrees on some type of radical action needs to be taken now.
Paul Krugman’s Cash for Trash OPED in today’s New York Times displays an understanding of the current financial situation and his ability to simplify it into 4 steps (almost like the 4 stomachs of Cows); by being able to conceptualize this Wall Street Meltdown into a series of steps with sequences he’s displaying the best skills of a Web Analyst - the ability to take complex information and synthesize it into a working model.
I believe, making sense of the data, what Paul Krugman does, is the one fundamental skill all Web Analysts need - the ability to use synthesis to take a complex situation and derive insight into it.
Even if you don’t agree with Paul Krugman the $700 Billion Bailout Plan if too flawed to pass in anywhere near it’s current form, at least you can get a sense of understanding, of empowerment even, by reading his OPED on Cash for Trash.
Here’s Paul Krugman’s 4 step analytics summary of current dire economic predicament the United States is in; Krugman thinks instead of bailing out Wall Street firms at step 4, with no accountability, we should be giving them more liquidity at step 2, in return for part ownership.
I just want to point out, again, the importance of forming a “working model” of a situation from which you can then preform analysis - if you can not conceptualize a problem, then any solution (ie: Secretary of the Treasury Paulson’s solutions, for example) are little better than throwing darts at the dart board (problem), and in the dark.
” … So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:
1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.
2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.
3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.
4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”
“…..The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2:the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.”
“… I’ve been shocked by the number of (mostly conservative) experts I’ve spoken with who aren’t at all confident that the Bush administration has even the basics right — or who think that the plan, though it looks simple on paper, will prove to be a nightmare in practice.”
Of course, Kristol wonder’s if Barack Obama or John McCain have the courage and exhibit the political will to oppose the $700 Billion Bailout Plan with the upcoming Presidential Election around the corner - what if, by opposing the $700 Billion Financial Bailout Plan the economy gets even worse, perhaps going into a deep recession, or even … a depression, then the electorate will blame what ever candidate voted against it.
On the other hand, were Barack or McCain back the current $700 Billion Bailout Plan and it fails quickly, blood would be on their hands, as well - and it could change the outcome of the election.
Using the Analytics approach I mentioned earlier in this post, the synthesis of information into a working model, so that you can then come up with insight and wisdom - the $700 Billion Bailout Plan looks too much like Authorization plan the Bush Administration floated just before it went to War with Iraq - the pressure to quickly “act” and vote - seems to be a familiar tactic that is used by this administration, to force people to act, often out of fear, against their own best interests - because they don’t realize, with the rush to act, what interests are actually being compromised.
We do need to do something quickly - but not that quickly - perhaps not even before the upcoming election .
We should, I think, work towards a solution and try to contain the damage on Wall Street and in the Global Financial Markets, but without giving the Treasury Secretary a blank check to do whatever he wants.
I also enjoyed reading Roger Cohen’s Fleecing America in the New York Times OPED section tonight - Cohen brings another perspective - that United States is no longer the predominant Economic Super Power and that, primarily, under the Bush Administration, the bulk of what was once our Wealth, has moved off shore, to China, Russia and India. .. and the joke is on us - though Krugman was warning about this day for the last 5 years, last I counted - and the joke is on us - all of us - now that reality is setting in.
Not only that, but he somehow brings in sales for the disgusting artwork of Damien Hirst - the guy who puts dead large Sharks in formaldehyde, just like this one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; here’s part of a story about this artwork in Time Magazine in a story tiled “A Shark’s Tale”
Damien Hirst’s pickled shark, formally known as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, has been presented as a three year loan by its owner, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, to no less a grand lady than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
And to think, this is the same Met whose trustees used to be touchy —granted, it was long ago — about admitting Picassos into the collection.”
In case you missed it, the age of America as the dominant financial power - gone. Read this (you can agree with it, or not, but even if you don’t agree - then come up with something better to explain what’s going on):
“…. It’s that the Hirst bull market in the midst of the most convulsive week for financial markets since 1929 says something important about the global economy and America’s declining place in it. In case you missed it, Hirst sold 223 works last week for just over $200 million, well above Sotheby’s pre-auction estimate.
Oliver Barker, the auctioneer, identified the Russians as major buyers. Sotheby’s took a preview of the sale to New Delhi, where it received a number of pre-auction bids. Jose Mugrabi, a New York dealer, told my colleague Carol Vogel that Hirst is a “global artist” who can defy “local economies.”
For local, read American.
Anyway, a post script. In his piece for Bloomberg News that I’ve linked to above, Martin Gayford notes that the same Damien Hirst is asking 50 million pounds — $100 million — for his new diamond encrusted skull.
Sounds like the “diamond encrusted skull” of Damien Hirst won’t be sold to anyone around here - unless Treasury Secretary Paulson has his way and gets his and G.W. Bush’s $700 Billion Bailout Plan approved by Congress - then maybe, maybe, some Wall Street Bank or Financial Instituion will have the money to throw at Damien Hirst and buy the diamond encrusted skull - and put it next to “The Bull” on Wall Street (Nah, maybe Goldman Sach’s will buy it with TaxPayer’s money and display the skull in their lobby.
But seriously, just about everyone thinks the $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout Plan is too flawed to pass in it’s current form. Hopefully, the pressure to “do something now” will not be successfully exploited, as it has in the past, to stick us all with a bill we don’t want or, for a fact, need.
And while I’m at it - I said the other day I would provide an “influencer” list from Radian6 surrounding the the $700 Billion Bailout Plan - here it is.
And here’s a link to the entire file - knock yourself out - but note the Huffington Post seems to be on top of almost any political story, including this one. Could it be the Huffington Post is “more influential” for this discussion on $700 Billion Dollar Bailout than the New York Times? Beats me.
Finally, here’s a series of Topic Clouds from Radian6 on the $700 Billion Dollar Financial Bailout and how it varies by media:
Blogs only:
Blogs tend to focus on discussing the government “plan” to buy the distressed securities while letting the Financial Institutions that got us into this mess, off the hook.
Online Videos Only -
Online Videos focus more on the size of the Bailout - based on the Topic Cloud Meta-data:
Main Stream Media -
Twitter - Micro Media
Interestingly, the Topic Cloud for Twitter is much more useful than the others, from my point of view as it contains some of the TinyURL’s that are being shared online over the last day. I think, and maybe Radian6 needs to figure out a way to do this - a way to work URLs into the Topic Clouds are needed, in general.
At least, here they happen, with Twitter, due to the nature of the content and the size of a micro post.
For example, the stories that are being talked about in Twitter are “Bush administration wants $700 billion for Wall St. bailout” with the “size” of the bailout being most notable - also the use of slang missing from the other Topic Clouds shown.
Forums
Well, that’s about it for this long, long post.
I expect Monday and Tuesday to be filled with a lot more turmoil as Congress and Online News Media take a closer look at the the $700 Billion Bailout Plan - but I hope we just don’t find ourselves back in 2003, when Bush called the shots and we ended up going into Iraq due to faulty information.
Posted by Marshall on September 14, 2008 | Link It
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Was trying to write a post last night (in between a FeedBurner problem which I fixed on this blog) and a software update, and I lost the post. However, what I was seeking to prove was, using Radian6 , that much of the “noise” that’s dominating the conversation on the Presidential Election is coming from the Right.
The problem I found with Radian6 is that it can’t easily segment the voices and tie it back to intent - in Web Analytics, we can set up custom segments and follow the pathing though a site, in Radian6, the closest thing one can do is set up a “source filter” but it’s too cumbersome to do it for several sources of media -it’s almost as if the data from Raidan6 ought to be able to be Mashed Up, like stuff you can do in sites such as Many Eyes, etc. But you can’t do that today. Still, what I found was interesting - and got me thinking about how conversations are dominated.
When I thought about it, using Radian6, I found the Influentials for Sarah Palin, mostly on the Left and Center (see below); you would have thought the reverse, based on the news. Could it be that whomever figures out how to dominate the conversations, shout the loudest, wins?
Yes, I wish Radian6 could tell me the “Who” behind what stories are going out - sure, it can give you the “influentials” (see below)
But it will still take additional work to find out (for example) how much of what is in Huffington Post is muddying up the waters or not.
With so much coming from the Huffington Post - I wonder if the real issues of “message” are the Conservatives and Neoconservatives are simply more focused, two dimensional stereotypes that are able to succeed with noise pollution, perhaps even using other liberal blogs in a viral way.
It’s almost as if what the Barack Obama really needs now is to focus the message - use the resources he has, just like the Republicans have learnt to do - to create message, just as they do. For all the talk, I don’t see Democrats good at that - everyone is so busy wanting their own point of view, that’s my sense of it, that they don’t come together enough to decide what the message it - and how to create their own “white noise“, maybe.
It’s not about slinging more mud, it’s using the resources you have - it’s focusing the message and using all the blogs and Social Media to push it out, into Google, into other search engines and social networks - into Mainstream Media.
The Left is really, really good at that, dominating the conversation - they have gotten really good at making a few people look like 10,000 people when they want to - I believe that’s how they won in 2000 and 2004, and partly how they think they will win today, as I wrote in Real News vs. Perception - Paul Krugman’s Blizzard of Lies post (along with an expected October Surprise - how could there not be one or two of those? - they seem to happen, almost as if on cue, just before the election, usually to the incumbent’s party advantage).
Actually, there’s nothing really wrong with having orchestrated news as long as you can get the real news from somewhere else, and as a political party, you have a way to have more input into how news is orchestrated, so at least, people get a fair, balanced point of view; but they don’t, the Right knows how to manipulate the news much better than the left - that’s how they win, I’m convinced of it now, having thought about it a bit over the last 8 years - they find a way to control and dominate the conversations, and then, they win.
So would it be fair to say, who ever defines and controls the conversations, politically, wins? What do you think?
Posted by Marshall on September 01, 2008 | Link It
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Online reputation and identity are getting harder to define - to say what they really are at any one moment. Just as in quantum physics, when particles display both a Wave-Particle duality at the same moment , an online identity or biography, in some notable cases, such as with Sarah Palin, becomes much more “fluid”.
But here’s the thing - after reading the NYT article and hearing others around me discuss this situation - I wondered if what I was looking at here is really really something else than “online reputation management” on steroids (according to the NYT article, Henrik Abelsson, who tracks the traffic of Wikipedia pages, said that on Friday (August 29th) there were 2.4 million page views for Gov. Palin’s Wikipedia article while for the entire month of June 2008 the John McCain article had 645,000 page views while the Barack Obama page had 1.35 million page views).
Actually, a few days ago, I wrote two posts about this phenomena at The Analytics Guru - Being Uncritically your own best friend and More on our own nariation where I described a process which I called “self narration“. In “self narration” the story we tell about ourselves (to our selves) defines what we end up displaying to the world. To take my two posts a little further - I’d say the process of is really more like “metadata” that surrounds events that are, in themselves, unmeasurable (similar to “Rich Media” files, Flash and AJAX parts of websites).
What if we could take self narration to a point where critical events of online identity are subtlety changed by editing the “metadata” around them? Is that really just online reputation management or a “fluid definition” of identity akin to Wave-Particle duality?
It’s not even clear if “YoungTrigg” did anything wrong - yet, the traceable fact (30 edits that happend on the night before the announcement, by YoungTrigg) - suggests a need to morph Sarah Palin’s online identity to fit a sudden political need (I won’t say, by who, since it’s obvious).
In other words, and according to my definition of self narration, someone decided to describe Sarah Palin differently (than how she was described before) - as if the story of one’s life can be molded like silly puddy. According to the New York Times article:
“… In total, YoungTrigg — whose user name is a reference to Ms. Palin’s infant son, Trig — made 30 “edits” to the article, all positive and largely unnoticed, since they came at a time when few were discussing her as a possible running mate of Senator John McCain’s.
The coincidence of the user’s name, and the sudden spurt of activity just before news broke of Mr. McCain’s choice, has raised suspicions that YoungTrigg was a campaign operative tasked to make sure that her Wikipedia article was ready for prime time, much as handlers have been assigned to do the same for the candidate.”
“…. Also, YoungTrigg reached out to an anonymous editor who had changed the Palin article on Thursday night, without any evidence, to say that she was Mr. McCain’s choice. In a public note to the anonymous editor, YoungTrigg wrote: “Where did you hear that Palin was the VP nominee? I can’t find anything online.”
Whether this pokes a hole in the idea that YoungTrigg had inside information, or rather confirms that the user had an unusually acute interest in whether the news had leaked out, is hard to tell.”
The NYT article goes on to explain how taking charge of the self narration process has become a necessary part of politics:
“…In modern politics, where the struggle is to “define” yourself before your opponent “defines” you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click through to; it is where first impressions are made.”
But I’d like to suggest this whole process, which I call “self narration”, has much wider applications beyond the political sphere (unless you want to call everything, politics - which some people do).
I like to think the way we describe ourselves, becomes our reality - as much as the way others describe us - or an event - also becomes, to a large extent, our reality of it.
For example, the famous Hindenburg disaster, according to Wikipedia, displays some of the same qualities as
“… the Hindenburg caught fire and quickly became engulfed in flames. Where the fire started is controversial; witnesses on the port side saw yellow, red flames first just forward of the top fin, around the vent of cell 4. One, with views of the starboard side, saw flames beginning lower and farther aft, near cell 1. No. 2 Helmsman Helmut Lau also testified seeing the flames spreading from cell 4 into starboard. (Although there were four newsreel cameramen and at least one spectator known to be filming the landing, they were all recording the actions of the ground crew when the fire started and therefore there is no motion picture record of where it first broke out at the instant of ignition.)
Wherever it started, the flames quickly spread forward. Almost instantly, a water tank and a fuel tank burst out of the hull. At the same time, a crack appeared behind the passenger decks. The airship’s back broke, and the section from the nose to the aft engine cars lurched upwards, while the stern stayed in trim.”
No one really knows for sure what the caused the Hindenburg to explode, weather it was sabotage, electric sparks, lightening, engine exhaust, incendiary paint, hydrogen fuel exploding for some unknown reason, or any other reasons - because it’s not really important what the real reason was - because we’ll never know for sure. What is clear to me, however, that our understanding of an event like the Hindenburg disaster or the Sarah Palin (…disaster - if so, for who?) is more than just manipulating facts for online reputation management - it’s more like Wave-Particle duality applied to self indentity.
I suppose you can say 9/11 is the same thing - the facts are somewhat “fluid” and leading to multiple interpretations of what actually happened;for example, 9/11 conspiracy theories abound, and some of them are quite plausible.
What I tried to say in my original The Analytics Guru post More on our own narration - is that as we have evolved our means of communications to be much more complex and widespread, we’ve become more self aware - to the extent that, up to a point, we are what we describe ourselves to be - and what other people describe us to be - and that becomes reality - our reality.
If that’s the case, as I believe it is, “self narration” might actually be a positive thing - it may give us all a way out of some very difficult circumstances (but with everything - there are limits to how much one can “shape shift” events .
Lately, I have known several people in my life that are having difficult times - and honestly, some of it is almost beyond an ability for me to see a way out for them - but I’ve also noticed, as I listen to one my friends, as I did today, that they harp back on their story of why life is so difficult for them.
And then I go back and think about “self narration”, or as someone else said once - “you are what you think you are” (or did they say, “as a man thinkith, so be he” or something like that).
While self narration, as I called it, might not be such a great thing for politicians to do, especially those running for Presidential office, suddenly, it very well may be a good thing for people, in general, to do when they’re stuck in a part of their lives where they can’t see a solution.
Perhaps, in difficult life situations, how we describe our stories, to ourselves, primarily, leads to the perception of reality by ourselves and others.
And as far as the Sarah Palin thing - well, it was obvious that YoungTrigg probably knew an announcement would be made shortly - and edited, or prettied up, aspects of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s life, so that we, the readers of Wikipedia, would see her in a more favorable light.
But the whole thing that got me started into “self narration” was painting - because in nature, there really is not light and shadow - these sensations are interpreted by the mind, by our brains.
I think I’ve said enough here - my point was that we can alter our lives by how we describe ourselves - and are somewhat circumscribed by how others describe us (but we can influence how others describe us by how we describe ourselves).
Will it help my friends? I don’t know - but you have to start somewhere.
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