I just don’t get it.
Maybe I’m not funny after all.
Apparently this Groupon video for unsubscribing is the cat’s meow, the bee’s knees, so funny you’ll puke. Just asked Wired, that’s what THEY think.
Me, I watch it and think “Wow, we’re just a sad, sad society.”
2,000 years ago, the Romans threw Christians to the lions. We got off on seeing people hurt and killed as entertainment.
You’d think, in the Information Age, that we would have progressed some, so that we’re not at that stage where we think it’s a blast to see people hurt or tormented. Sadly, you’re kinda wrong, it seems.
We’ve toned it down, but the gist of enjoying the humiliation and harm, that’s still there. Way to go, society. Stay classy.
Sure, all that happens in this video is a guy gets chewed out, pushed around, and a cup of presumably hot coffee (since most mostly-full cups of coffee tend to be recently acquired) thrown into his face.
I’m sure no Groupon Employees were harmed in this video, but the suggestion is that, DUDE, it’s HAH-LARRI-YUS to chuck scalding beverages into a peer’s face. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Chuckle! Giggle. “That’ll leave a mark, dude!”
Can’t we be a little better than this? Can’t the same message be achieved by dropping a bomb on a computer and saying, “Bad computer! BAD! No email for you!” or something?
Well, yes.
But this is what happens when you like to shock and sensationalize for notoriety and water-cooler cachet.
We can be better than this.
Unfortunately, some folk who write the newspapers and stuff (lookin’ at you, Wired) seem to think Groupon’s writing is awesome and their ads are terrific.
In the social media trenches, though, more people than not tell me they hate Groupon’s writing. A number of people have unsubscribed on that basis alone. I haven’t even mentioned the Groupon Superbowl debacle, or the recent controversial ad that poked fun at depression as being a great sleep aid.
Groupon’s lack of taste is ridiculous, and it’s disappointing that there isn’t a larger hue and cry about it.
Thankfully, it seems consciousness has been growing since the Superbowl ads, and I’d hope the prevalence of things like Deal By Day’s newsletter, which aggregates all your local deals into one daily 6:30am email, might increase the number of people who unsubscribe from Groupon’s daily letter, who start shopping a broader array of deals, and will send a message that it’s not okay to mock committing cruelty to people, as Groupon has done on a few occasions now.
But, hey, like I say. Maybe I’m just not funny anymore.
Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe this whole “I’m past treating people like shit for a gag” thing is some emotional midlife crisis.
Who knows.
I just know I ain’t impressed. I ain’t laughin’. And I know I ain’t alone.
Groupon’s market share is falling, for a lot of reasons. I think the media doesn’t realize how much a contingent of the public loathes Groupon’s marketing, definitely a reason many of us have walked away. With ads like these, I say it couldn’t happen to a better company. Groupon walking away from a $6 billion sale to Google? Probably the stupidest decision since putting all the marketing eggs into one Crocs-shoe basket.
Oh… and I haven’t bought a Groupon since last August. Hello, DealByDay newsletter, how YOU doin’?
Monthly Archives: March 2011
Of Bloggers And Trolls: Oh, My!
Sometimes all it takes to get back into writing is to sit down and do it.
Got a comment this morning that I promptly deleted, since I’m just getting too old for that shit.
If you want to call me out objectively on anything I’ve written, step right up, my friend. Let’s have a beer and chew that chat, all right? I’m down with dissent, constructive criticism, and I don’t shy away from debating anyone I know. I call it like I see it ‘cos I’m too lazy to keep up with lies.
Love dissent and debate, in the real world. Online, who wants to type that much? Still, I try to engage.
But when the extent of your entire comment is “you’re rambling lately,” the delete bin is for you. I used to be one of these “Hey, I’ll publish every comment!” types who purport to be encouraging dialogue, but then I realised that, um, no, it’s just encouraging stupidity.
The older I get, the more I think they might’ve been onto something with eugenics. I’m very aware that, while the internet is giving much-needed voices the airplay they deserve, it’s also broadcasting some real fuckin’ tools.
Here’s the deal. If you go around commenting on posts all the time, and you don’t have a blog, and you’re always antagonistic and IN YO FACE BEYOTCH about it, then just shut the hell up. Really. Do some self-medicating, find a mountaintop guru for advice — I don’t care what you do, but just find a purpose in life, ‘cos it’s just sad, sad, sad to see what some folk get reduced to in life… commenter.
Thank god for the nice people who comment to share stories and are awesome and open and rah-rah-rah, because they’re the reason we keep pushing “publish.”
Them’s the new house rules. No more troll comments published. Dissent? Okay. Be smart and respectful and tell me I’m wronger than than wrong, I’m down with that.
Otherwise, hey, don’t like the writing? Don’t read it. Don’t like my opinions? There’s the door. There’s only 100 million blogs in the world, I’m sure you can find some carbon-copy of you out there somewhere. Good luck lookin’, Skippy.
Life’s short, man. I’m living it as me, writing what I want to say, and that’s the way the blogging cookie crumbles. If I gave a fuck about pleasing anyone in specific, I’d be checking my Google Analytics more than once a month. And probably swearing a LOT less.
Instead, I write or I don’t.
Sometimes the writing blows monkey chunks. Welcome to the “I’m a real person” thingie. Creativity isn’t a tap you turn on and it rushes out. We’re lucky to tame the whirlwind once in a storm season. Now and then: Brilliance. The rest of the time? It’s why sailboats come with motors. Sometimes you’re gonna coast a while.
And that’s blogging. A less-than-selective writing process.
You want consistency? Read a book.
You want real-time accuracy? Snapshots of a person’s life in weekly digestible bits, largely a little less censored than they ought to be, flaws hanging out for the world to see? Read a blog.
You want to be the loser that just writes negative comments without anything of value, lacking useful critiques? Don’t.
As much as many bloggers are self-involved twats, there are a lot of bloggers are ripping off Band-aids most publishers wouldn’t pay to publish. They’re being brutally real about their lives, thoughts, and worldviews.
Bloggers started this whole firestorm of openness and communication that we haven’t figured out how to use for the betterment of mankind yet — Twitter, Facebook updates, blogs, video blogging. It was all born because some dude began journaling on the web a couple decades ago.
Maybe blogging hasn’t definitively changed the world yet, maybe there are lots of twats making it look ugly to others, but I still believe in the power of blogging, the quest for individual truths, the dynamism of millions of voices saying what needs to be said if only for a dozen other people.
And when people who might be timid otherwise finally have the courage to click “publish” and start their blogs, they don’t need spineless hacks pissing on their parade.
There’s a growing call to remove “ANONYMOUS” comment ability. Having one’s name on their vitriol doesn’t make it any more valid, just not as despicable. Maybe one day I’ll remove anonymity here, too.
In the meantime, I blog on the things I think are interesting, important, or that I’m just obsessing about.
Because that’s what blogging’s for. We now return you to your scheduled silence.
I thank those of you who’ve read me (inexplicably) for years, who’ve shared your experiences and opinions. You’re awesome.
The End is Nigh: What Journalism's Selling
I graduated with a journalism degree back in the mid-90s, when this little “internet” thing was just taking off.
I don’t think any of us then could have fathomed a world where news could travel instantaneously from not just professionals, but amateurs with fancy cellphones.
Today, I wish the ethics class I had taken then was mandatory for all users of social media, and a refresher course available for all working journos. In the heat of the moment, even I can be guilty of kneejerk retweeting, because I naively believe the news sources wouldn’t DARE misinform us about something as dire as, like, nuclear meltdown.
How wrong I am.
Journalism & social media today.
Times like these, I worry it’s the blind-leading-the-blind news scenario that’s most detrimental to us.
Out there, panic. Apparently we’re all going to be stricken with radiation, then cancer and certain death as a nuclear meltdown abso-fucking-lutely will be laying waste across the world. Potassium iodide sales are skyrocketing. IN THE USA AND CANADA. Hello, there’s 7,000 kilometres minimum between our coasts, let alone travelling inland.
Get yer tinfoil hats on and stock up on duct tape, kids — North America’s in JEOPARDY!
Um, no, no meltdown, no nuclear boom. Not yet, kiddos. And, the thing is, the news is so sensationalised by just about everyone right now that I can’t even watch it. I just can’t.
Being terrified isn’t helping. And it’s insulting to the Japanese who are living with this shit within their borders.
And, furthermore, these constant death totals — the media had no business reporting deaths on day 2, 3, 4, etc. We know they’re going to escalate rapidly, and the foolishly low numbers reported early in the tragedy are just irresponsible — as if the tragedy is WORSENING because the numbers are rising.
No. It was that bad to begin with. You just had to watch it unfolding live. I’ll never forget how that felt. “Hundreds” of deaths? So naive.
I remember the low numbers reported for the first few days of the Indonesian tsunami that resulted in 230,000 deaths. I fear the numbers in Japan. I loathe the endless watch as the number creeps up with increasing speed as recovery efforts escalate. From false hope of “oh, it looked worse” to the ever-rising gloom of knowing that’s so much more than “just a number” as it gets amped up by thousands.
And, then, elsewhere in the world, Gaddhafi is effecting a brutal crackdown on his protesters, as the western leaders twiddle their thumbs. Bahrain is killing its protesting citizens, too.
CNN? Barely even knows the Arab World exists this week. And people are dying while our heads are turned away.
That is the media’s job. To prevent us from being blind to these things.
They’re failing.
They’re scaring us.
They’re reporting inside an echo chamber, putting people who don’t understand the topic in charge of educating the masses, they’re ignoring blood being shed for democracy, and none of us are the better for it.
To the few journalists who are really trying to present information without sensationalising it: Thank you.
To the rest of ’em: Get a real job.
Darkest Before Dawn, In The Aftermath
It’s relentless, the imagery from Japan. Hard to watch.
Yet watch I do.
I may never be witness to such an event again. Lord knows I hope that’s true.
Here I am in my comfortable home, mint tea steeping on my table, rain pattering the streets below as a cool spring breeze whispers past, my chimes clattering to remind me of it, as if being cooler than comfortable wasn’t the first clue.
Comfortable as I am, I’m left feeling it’s hard to be ignorant of the events over there. I’m compelled to watch, hour after hour. I’m not desensitized, but it affects me differently than most others.
Deep down inside, part of me wishes I had been a foreign correspondent. I wanted to cover disaster relief, that was my thing. Or genocide.
Humans at our best and worst — and how we’re often at our best when the world’s at its worst.
Japan, wow.
The Mayans might’ve been off a year. It’s looking like end times on that little Pacific archipelago. Nuclear meltdowns, tsunami, 5th largest quake on record, volcano threatening to blow, and even snow falling.
I mean, seriously? It’s so fucking ludicrous that there’s no WAY a writer could’ve submitted this script to a Hollywood production company and had a movie greenlit.
“Come on, buddy. Nobody would ever believe in a 9.0 earthquake followed by the worst tsunami ever followed by nuclear meltdown at not just one but several reactors, while the snow falls, right before the volcano starts to rumble? Word to the wise, curb the drugs when you’re writing. It’s hard to swallow, dude.”
SERIOUSLY, that’s how Hollywood would react. Some C-movie maker would produce it and it’d be a latenight movie on channel 212.
I can’t fathom what the Japanese feel right now. The more we learn, the more jaw-dropping the realisation is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster of epic proportions on THREE levels.
And yet.
Somehow, some way, I see Japan as overcoming it all. If any country in this world is set to overcome this, it’s Japan.
They’re the only country who has ever been levelled to this extent in the past, and rebuilt. They survived a nuclear winter after an atomic bomb. They can do anything.
That experience clearly profoundly shaped the Japanese people today. When relief agents run out of water supplies, the Japanese aren’t yelling or pleading. There are no stories of looting. There is order and camaraderie wherever I hear reporters speaking.
This is a horrible, horrible moment in time.
Yes. It really is.
But I choose to think of how this can make us better. All of us. We can remember we are nothing in the face of nature. We can rededicate ourselves to each other. We can realise that, like millions in Japan, our lives can be torn apart in 10 minutes or less — so, knowing life’s impermanence, what’s really important, and why?
I watched Thursday at 9:30 pm, as the tsunami made landfall, inching over the land that it’d soon cover as much as 10 kilometres of, inland.
I saw the little cars stopping for stop lights, the tsunami roaring closer in their rearviewmirrors. I sat there with a blanket wrapped around me, wanting to scream at the TV, RUN RUN RUN, DRIVE, GO GO GO!
Today, I’m watching as most found in those cars I was likely watching, in Sendai, the same area I saw the tsunami spreading out over, are being extracted and put into body bags.
It’s hard to think anything amazing can come from that. It’s hard to fathom the technology that makes it possible for me to sit on my sofa watching, with a five-second-delay, as biblical destruction lays waste to a whole countryside. It’s hard to think we’ll be in a position to remember this event one day, celebrating those who survived as we honour the dead.
But that’s what we will do.
As a people, as a world, somehow, to make sense of all this tragedy, we will each find a way to be a little better. To be a little more aware.
Because, if we don’t, then it will indeed have been a horribly senseless tragedy and a low point in civilisation.
And I don’t want to live in that world.
But… if we become better, we love more actively, we live more strategically, we laugh more passionately… if we learn to be more aware of each other, of nature, of time’s passing, of the horrible-yet-beautiful temporal nature of everything…
I can live in that world. I can be a better human being, in that world.
And, Japan, honestly, there’s something about their society and their ethos that really does make them a model society for overcoming this adversity. I would hope, in the insanity unfolding elsewhere in the world, that Japanese ethos and air of resilience is something we all begin striving for.
We here in the West could use some lessons in humility, community, and lawfulness. Perhaps they are to teach us some.
Meanwhile, I’m praying for Japan in my non-secular, non-religious kind of way. I’m watching with a grasp of exactly the magnitude of disaster that is ahead, but also with a longterm vision of what Japan has overcome with incredible success in the past.
And, the thing that I’m sure they’re hanging onto is, this time, they’re not alone.
This time, we didn’t do it to them, it was nature, and we’re all horrified at the unfairness of her wrath.
But the world is showing support, people are reaching out to her. Japan will rise again.
Japan's Tsunami: A Few Personal Thoughts, and a Plea for Your Donation TODAY
As I write this, my morning is bleeding away. Afternoon is nigh and I still need to work.
Across the world, however, a series tsunami alerts are either slowing being lifted, or still cautiously being heeded, in the literal wake of Japan’s terrifying 8.9 quake, only 14 hours old now.
I worked late last evening, came home, was relaxing and enjoying my first hour to myself, then suddenly my mood plummeted. I describe it as a “disturbance in the Force” — the unsettling knowledge that something has just gone horribly awry somewhere. Then the news flowed: A tsunami had already begun to land in Japan. A big one.
Only twice before have I had that feeling of a shift in “the Force.” The first was at 4:15 AM on August 6th, 1999. I was already awake when my cousin came in 20 minutes later to say my mother had died at 4:13, that the hospital had just called.
The other was at 5:55 on September 11, 2001. Only, I didn’t have cable at the time and didn’t know what had happened. The world was freakishly quiet and unsettling. Later, I arrived at work to the news, and it made sense then.
I’m not new-agey, I don’t really believe in an afterlife. I shouldn’t say I don’t believe in it, either. I don’t know what I know, or believe, because of these “Force” experiences, and a couple other reasons.
But, last night, there it was again. Boom. Pit of the stomach, bang.
I couldn’t turn the television off. My reasoning is simple — it’s easy to turn it off, walk away, but when it’s something they’re living through, I’m not watching it to be sensationalist — I’m watching it because I feel I owe it to them to be as present as I can be in their moment. That’s the human condition we all need to share. We have the power to experience — if only peripherally — our fellow man’s struggles; it’s our humanitarian obligation to be aware of them.
Thus, I was up till nearly 3am.
A friend phoned me in a panic at midnight, she being without cable or computer — like I had been in 2001 — and she had seen my update status on Facebook. “I need you to tell me what’s going on in Japan,” she said, trying to quell the understandable fear in her voice. “My brother lives there, and I don’t know the name of his town.”
Her phone call shook me, because the ripple effects of a tragedy like this has to be measured on so many levels — human, structural, financial, global.
But then it comes down to the simplest things we know — that guy who’s a friend of that woman you went to school with, he was a teacher there, they’re looking for him. Still. Washed away, they say.
Because, soon, we’ll hear stories like that.
Not today. Not yet. The scope isn’t even apparent. In three or four hours, it’ll be dawn in the land of the Rising Sun. And then we will know. From massive catastrophe, human stories will emerge. Who was taken, who was not.
But, in the end, what we’ll remember most about the fateful Sendai quake of March 11th will be images and numbers.
Today I’m cognizant of one thing… however bad this quake is, it could have been so much more horrific.
Had the quake happened under Japan? The destruction would’ve been far greater. Had the epicentre been deeper, and not remarkably shallow? Ditto. Had the tsunami first landed with full force further south? Ditto. Had the engineering not been Japan’s great obsession for decades, always thinking proactively about the future, rather than penny-pinching? Ditto.
And that will unfold for weeks, months, even years. But if any country knows how to rebuild and survive, we’ve already seen that it is Japan.
Land of the Rising Sun, indeed.
***
Today, you have one thing you need to do.
You need to donate money.
If every North American donated only $5, we’d raise close to $2 billion for relief efforts. So, do that. Donate $5. If you’re American, texting REDCROSS to 90999 will automatically donate $10 to relief efforts via adding $10 to your cell bill. If you’re Canadian, the donation is $5, and you donate that specifically to Japan relief efforts by the Red Cross in texting ASIA to 30333.
Why should you donate to Red Cross? Because cholera, dysentery, search-and-rescue efforts, these all need IMMEDIATE on-the-ground resources — and the Red Cross is best positioned for First Response efforts.
Forget about clothes and belongings — it will take weeks to get that stuff to them, and it costs more to ship than giving donations and letting them locally source the needed supplies.
Today, donate money. Anything. Don’t wait. Every penny you donate TODAY is a penny the Red Cross knows it can allocate TODAY. More is more, and sooner is best.
Here in Vancouver, Canada, we feel especially empathetic to Japan. They’re a Pacific Rim sister nation, they’re a trading partner, they’re a cultural influence on the streets of Vancouver, and where many of our landed immigrants hail from. Today, we watch with bated breath and broken hearts as we see the destruction unfold.
Please, donate.
The New Aging Gracefully
I think it’s oddly intriguing I was inspired to write about aging gracefully on International Women’s Day, since there ain’t exactly a lot of women modelling how to age gracefully these days. Liposuction and tucks and Botox, oh my! But there you have it. Get over yourselves, girls.
I like getting older. I like it even better when I get told all the time that people think I’m 6-10 years younger than I am.
Probably from spending all those years protecting myself from the elements — sheltered on cushy sofas. No wind-battered face here, friends!
And now that I live much better than I did for a decade there, I guess that shows too.
Hallmark card character I LOVE.
But, aging? Yeah. I like it.
The big four-oh is still 2.4 years away, but I’m looking forward to aging and letting go of even more of the bullshit that mires one’s younger life.
I’m in a strange position in my life right now. Five years ago, I’d have been having a borderline nervous breakdown. Now I’m planning a dinner party for tomorrow, chilling, and erring on the side of faith.
There’s the old saying, “This too shall pass,” and I think around 40 is when we start really believing in what we can overcome and/or achieve. It varies, of course, depending on the crash-course life’s had each of us on.
Me, I got the lesson of “life’s tough, get a helmet” in the last decade, and now I feel like I’ve had the dress rehearsal, and I simply know at my core that every hard time I face is on a limited-life plan, and I’m more than likely to be the victor at the end of it.
“Face-palm and carry on,” as the new saying goes — the NEW Guide to Aging Gracefully.
It really comes down, I guess, to whether or not we’re willing to examine each lame-ass time for its growth lessons. I do. I can’t possibly imagine going through ALL that shit for NOTHING, man. If I’ve learned from it? Fucking A. I’ll take THAT for a dollar, Alex.
I still have more Zen Master schoolin’ to do. After all, I’m not even 40. I’m not nearly as chill as I’d like to be, but I’m surprising myself. Sure, I occasionally want to kill asshats on transit, but that’s not really indicative of me being high-stress, it’s more indicative of the erosion of intelligent life on Earth. I’m tryin’, man.
Honestly, I’m glad I was laid-off long-term. I’m glad I went through a lot of the shit in the last year that I have. I’m glad I had pneumonia. I’ve learned SO much about myself in the last year.
Was it hard? Yes. I even became depressed in the fall. (Not anymore.) I’m sort of back where I started, in a lot of ways, but as a completely different person. It grew a quiet confidence in me, and things I’m doing now will really amp that up. It’s confidence I had none of last spring, considering I was already in a depression and a financial hole before I even lost my job.
If the whole Malcolm Gladwell 10,000-hours-to-master thing is for real, then the 5 years since my last unemployment has been mind-bogglingly insightful. My god, the lessons we learn through our trials.
Staying employed and stable and never taking risks, well, that might make for a nice comfortable life, but I guarantee you, you’ll be learning a fraction of what it is you’re capable of in life.
Age. With it comes that experience you just can’t buy. And when you’re 20 and you think “OH! Why don’t they take me seriously? Why don’t they think I understand?” well, it’s because they feel exactly like I do — that you can’t possibly know all the things that’ll bloom in you over the next two decades.
I like to sit back sometimes and reflect on who I was at specific ages, how full of shit I was, compared to me now.
And then I like to think of how I’ll feel about the same question in another two decades. How I’ll chuckle dryly at the age of 57 — the same age my mother was at her death — and think how I couldn’t possibly have known all that would come my way, how much life could pack in an hour, a day, a week, never mind a decade, and how much I’d learn about myself and the world around me as I lived through all of that.
That’s the beauty of the unknown.
And the beauty of aging is, we better know the vastness of that unknown, but we also come to learn the vastness of human potential. We see more. We understand.
Or, some of us do.
The Evolution of a DeClutterer's Life
So, hi! I left you hanging with that whole letter-to-HR-folk thing last week, huh? Quel drama!
I was told three weeks ago I probably had three weeks of full-time work. Now it’s looking like I have work until closer to June, perhaps beyond.
Decluttering, by Paul Foreman
Since I started having steady work, I’ve been of the “things are going to get busy” mindset for a while, and it’s been pedal to the metal around the homestead, trying to get my place to what I wanted, losing more clutter, finding more clarity, all of that–in between job-hunting.
It’s been a lot of work. Since I’m getting a lot of things bought I’ve not had funds for, I’m opting out of the social life thing and prioritising my spending — which is giving me more time to focus on what my life needs on all levels.
I’m now doing the little things I never had time to sort — junk drawers, things like that. Everything is getting resolved, everything is being purged through. But all that’s left is my work desk and utility drawers. That’s pretty much it. I’ll probably have to stay on top of the purging thing and spend a day every couple of months, but I really like the downscaled life I’m starting to live.
With less unnecessary stuff around me, I have a clearer vision of what I need to do.
Also, the return of work — daily work that involves getting downtown and organizing my life around — has made exercise easier to do. I’ve slowly been getting more regular about workouts, and today was a return to my old rehab routine I used to do six days a week. Five days is the goal now.
I miss a working routine. I used to work out and write daily, as well as work. I lost weight easier on the job, and gained it while unemployed.
All the things I’ve been doing — tearing my house apart, organizing, planning, getting a routine in place — are things I did in the spring of 2008, before I lost 50 pounds.
And I know it SOUNDS insane to others who go “Well, geez, exactly what all are ya doin’ that it’s taking so long to get it all done?”
In short? Everything. Every damned thing I’m doing, I do to the best of my ability these days, whether it’s sorting a drawer or organizing books, because the better I do it now, the longer I can go without doing it again. I’m hoping this keeps me in order until October.
My goals are more multifaceted than just weight-loss, these days. I have a lot on my plate — a whole lot of things I’m working toward, and most of them I’m keeping to myself for the time being. What it takes is daily focus, total routine. What it takes is a Plan, Stan. I’m getting there.
I think the act of having done all this purging of late is indicative of the mindset I’ve got. It takes a long time, sometimes, to realize that knowing what you want is sometimes more about knowing what it is that you don’t want.
I know now what I don’t want. Piece by piece, item by item, line by line, I know exactly what I don’t want. I know who I don’t want. Where I don’t want to go.
So, that narrows it down. I know what I don’t want. Better yet, I’m getting it the fuck away from me.
Slowly, what I do want is coming into focus. And I know what I need to get done, obligation-wise, and what my limits are outside of that.
And that’s where it starts.
Where it goes, well, that’s the fun part. With continued focus and continuing to set new accomplishments (and getting ’em done) on a weekly basis, I suspect good things will come.
With that, it’s on with my week. And folding what’s in the dryer. Have a good one, minions.
After A Morning of Job-Surfing
Dear Human Resources* People:
I’d like to work for you, I would. But given that first impressions are everything, that first impression kinda cuts both ways — starting with your help-wanted ad.
If you’re not getting the really awesome people applying for you, maybe you might want to make sure you’re not writing ads that include the following, and here’s why:
1. You want a “rockstar.” Give that I’m not really a fan of doing cocaine off hookers’ bellies on bathroom counters, I’m not sure I have what you’re looking for. Keith Richards, maybe he’s your deal.
2. You’re looking for someone who can create “viral” content. If one KNEW how to make viral content, do you know what they wouldn’t be doing? Applying for your job. No offense. Anyone who consistently create “viral” content is the next producer of the year, okay, and not a $20-an-hour employee. If you want well-circulated web content, though, I can do that. That’s realistic, and it’s something you can ask for, and is what I’d deliver.
3. You want a “guru.” Sorry, but I’m still learning social media, and I guarantee you that anyone worth their salt is, too. Social media ain’t OVER, it’s still evolving, and we’re all on this ride together. Some of us are intent to be students and don’t think we’ll ever be masters — just highly consistent and always awesome. It’s not about where your “guru” is today, it’s what kind of an online community they’ve built for the long-term, because staying power is HARD on the web today. Some of us, though, epitomise it.
4. You’re using super-hip lingo buried in long paragraphs of uber-corporate jargon. You’re hip or you’re corporate, so decide which type of person you want on-board, because one isn’t the other, and you don’t seem to know which you are.
I can’t tell you how many jobs are written with the above styles, and they’re selling what they’re unlikely to deliver, because they’re overwriting and overselling.
This does you, and me as the job-seeker, a huge disservice.
Make sure your job posting reflects who you are and what you’re really looking for. Buzzwords might give you the impression you’re attracting those who are “a cut above,” but you might just be isolating more than those you’re attracting, because it doesn’t sound sincere.
I want to work for you. But, based on your advertisement, I can’t.
I’m a great communicator, a fun team-player, loyal as the day is long, and always thinking forward, not backward. I say exactly what I mean, and don’t need to oversell things, because quality sells itself.
When it comes to writing movies, books, stories, and songs — less is more. It’s true also of job advertisements.
Until we get to salaries.
Let’s be realistic — for most of us, the world revolves around money, and in Vancouver, there are a lot of folks who won’t apply if you don’t list a salary range. (I’m not necessarily one, but I certainly look for that information.)
We’re not expecting you to nail a number down, or to have you promise us the world, but we need to know if our financial responsibilities can be met with your position. If not, then let’s spare both of us some time.
We all know it’s not just about the paycheque. We all want to be valued, and find the right place. Know the job you offer, and who you want.
We don’t need to be oversold on our jobs. We just want to work someplace we fit into, and your job advertisement is where that relationship begins. Please think twice before posting.
Love Steff.
*Mostly PR, marketing, communications, writing, and editing jobs are what I’ve been surfing, obviously. Got solid part-time work? Maybe I’m your girl.