Pushing The Envelope
So, this morning I noticed a little storm brewing on Instagram. I commented pretty early, but now that it’s been a whole day there are over 50 comments on a photo. There was no text other than a hashtag but it apparently got some folks heated.
Now, most of you folks will know who posted the image, and it’s fine if you do. He’s a big boy and can take the heat from the folks on his comments and here too. Also, this is not throwing this guy under the bus by any means, but more of pointing out something that I thought was interesting.
Here’s the image:
I made the little black box over the “U”, but I’m pretty sure you guys are smart people and can figure out what that spells.
So here’s the thing. This guy tries to push the envelope. He tries to poke at the Conservative Christian and that’s why this image was posted. If there wasn’t an F-Bomb in there, it wouldn’t have been funny or worth posting. Simple as that.
Well, one of the first comments was an unhappy follower saying that he was going to unfollow because this was the last straw. Fair enough. That guy has his opinions the same as I do. But this post isn’t about the guy that posted the picture… or the guy that decided to unfollow.
This post is about the 45 commenters that are saying that the guy who posted this is so “honest and real” and the offended should just move on.
Honest and Real? Seriously? A screen shot of wireless networks? Honest and real? How’s that again? See I get being called honest and real when you’re admitting to a struggle in your life and you open up to the public about it. I don’t think it’s always appropriate, but I see it. I get opening up online about a part of your life you aren’t happy with, or something you are deeply hurt about. I get being open about your love for your family, or hate for injustice.
What I don’t get is being called “honest and real” for posting a photo of wireless networks. What about that is honest and real other than him being honest about looking at wireless networks?
See, our culture likes to throw around these words like “brilliant” and “epic” and I think sometimes the words “honest” and “real” get lumped into that. News flash. 99.9% of music coming out these days is NOT brilliant. The shirt hanging on the rack at Urban Outfitters is NOT epic. And sometimes things just aren’t “real”.
So, that’s my thought for the day.
All you commenters that want to attack someone for having an opinion by saying, “he’s just being real and honest and if you can’t handle that you can leave”, that’s ridiculous. There’s nothing honest and real about a photo of wireless networks and the guy that posted this was not opening himself up as a broken human being or anything like that. It was a photo intended to push the envelope and nothing more.
Oh hey, welcome to 2012.
We Are Not Guru’s
I’ve written about this before, but I feel like it’s getting worse. What is the deal with everyone on Twitter claiming to be a “Guru” or “Expert” at something? What happened to being willing to learn? And also, with the speed that technology is moving, how on Earth can anyone claim to be a “Guru” at anything?
I read something the other day uncovering five “social networking myths” and shedding a little light on this weird thing that everyone is trying to figure out. After all, this person that wrote this is a “guru” and then the person that linked to it is a “guru” and since I’m a “guru” I must need to read it and then blog about it so that I can prove my “guru-ness” to you all. See how that works?
Anyway, this article claims that one of the myths on the internet is that you shouldn’t call yourself a Guru. Meaning, you should call yourself one? Am I reading this right?
“Your social media presence needs more assertiveness. Don’t shy away from authoritative words when crafting your Twitter bio.”, it says. For instance, the words “official,” “founder,” “speaker,” “expert,” “guru,” and “author” are a common characteristic of highly followed Twitter users. They become a reputation mechanism that can earn you more attention.
Interesting. That’s all I need to do? Tell people how awesome I am, and boom, I can get more attention?
See, I’ve started un-following some of these folks because if that’s the “creative” advise I’m getting from “guru’s” I think I’m good. I’d rather really focus on the task at hand and ignore what’s going to become a reputation mechanism to earn me more attention.
Now, before everyone thinks I’m just bucking the system to buck the system, I will say that there is legitimate advise out there from folks like Seth Godin, who I consider to be an actual marketing “guru”, though I don’t think it says it on his Twitter bio. In fact I think Seth is more about killing it at your job and becoming something worth talking about, instead of talking about yourself.
In a world where everyone is writing the book, I’d rather live the life worth writing about.
So, no, you’ll never hear me call myself a “guru”, “expert”, “founder” or anything like that…. but then again… I’m not. Someday I’d like to be a magician though.
One Of THOSE Posts
You know what’s funny about constantly working on other people’s “social media”? You start to not really care about your own. Kinda like the landscapers yard that looks like crap, or the painter’s house that could use a fresh coat. Well, here I am. The guy who hasn’t blogged in forever. So, yeah. Sorry about that. I did think I’d drop in here and give you a quick recap on our summer since I have neglected to do so. I’ll try to do bullet-points because that’s cool I’ve heard.
- Started the summer at Rosemary Beach with Mike, Bart and Mark’s families. Had a blast.
- Kristin’s 30th birthday partaay on July 1st.
- U2 concert.
- Nephew came to visit for 10 days.
- 4th of July festivities. Only caught on fire once. Only lit nephew on fire once.
- California visiting family for 3 weeks.
- 11 year Anniversary with Kristin.
- Death Cab For Cutie concert.
- Blue’s birthday.
Yep, most likely there was a lot more fun stuff, but I also want to mention some of the artists that we started working with (or are going to start working with soon) this summer. It’s crazy how things continue to grow and the amazing opportunities we have had over the past few months. Aaron Keyes, Aaron Gillespie, Tooth & Nail, Matt Papa, Gungor, and several others that are in the works. I’ve also had the chance to tackle MercyMe’s packaging/photography for their new record “The Worship Sessions”. Something new every day.
There’s still some pretty crazy things in the works, but I’ll keep that for another update. Now that school has started I hope to get more consistent on here, but then again… don’t we all say that?
How was your summer?
Thoughts On Books
Seth Godin announced today that he’s not publishing any more books. Not in the traditional way at least. The way I read it, he’s a little unclear as to what he’s going to do, but it’s for sure not going to be the ‘hard cover – sold in a bookstore’ type of way. Pretty interesting huh? He’s living out what he wrote in Linchpin.
Sure, I’ve got some mixed thoughts on the whole thing, but here’s what I like about it. 1: I like that he’s stepping out and doing something different. I like that he’s taking what he talks about and putting it to practice. To me he’s going against what’s easy and testing out what could quite literally change things. 2: This might be the thing that pushes me over the edge and I’ll go get that iPad I’ve been on the fence about for so long.
Seriously though. This post originally had nothing to do with Seth Godin, but it seems to fall in line perfectly with what I was going to talk about. You ready for that?
I’m not what you’d call an ‘avid reader’ but I enjoy a good book now and then. You all know about our SkörInc Reading List and I’m doing pretty well on that. So here’s my question. Once you’re done with a book, what do you do with it? Pass it on to a friend? Take it to a Used Book Store? Shelve it? Kindling for the fire place? I guess the reason I’m wondering is because I’d like to hear your opinions on how passing books around among friends. Come on. Be honest. Who does this? Is there a difference between doing this and passing on a CD? Do you think that this is attributing to Seth Godin changing his format?
Now obviously passing books around has been the same forever. It’s not like digital music and how it became easy to duplicate, but what’s the consensus here? Is passing a book to a friend for them to read the same as burning them a CD? Thoughts?
Ready? Go.
World Cup 2010
So, I’ve never been really interested in soccer. Not because I don’t like it or anything like that, but mostly because I don’t really care. Even to this day I don’t care, but stick with me on this really long story as to why I think I’m going to be interested this year in the World Cup.
We don’t have local television. You know the ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC. We don’t have them. We just don’t really watch all that much TV as it is, and anything on those networks are played on HULU the next day anyway. The one problem with this? NBA Finals time. Sure all the Playoffs are on TNT or some other cable channel, but when it comes to the Finals, it’s straight to ABC. So if I want to watch Kobe lose, I’ve got to somehow find the game online. This usually means some weird channel out of someone’s basement or something and last night was no different.
Last night there were no ‘real’ commercials on the channel I found online. There were only World Cup commercials. Now, I’m not usually a sucker for advertisements, but after two hours of watching intense basketball and then seeing these amazing soccer commercials, with dancing people and bright colors, and excitement and cool sounding African stuff, I’m sold. When’s this thing kick off?
I mean seriously. Can this many people around the world be wrong? People riot over this junk. It’s got to hold my attention some right?
So here’s the deal. I’m going to give this soccer thing a shot this year. I’m going to try to pay attention to it, and if I have questions, I’ll ask William. He’ll set me straight.
And while I’m getting into soccer, here’s the song that seems like it’s the current ‘Theme Song’ for the World Cup. I’m not sure what’s up with the awkward white guy in the video, but he’s funny to watch.
Who’s with me? Anyone else into this soccer thing? Anyone else going to try it with me?
Rain, Rain On My Face
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a sucker for extreme weather. When we had that weird ice storm thing Blue and I were out most of the day walking around and then we took a drive sliding all over the place. This crazy rain, flooding thing is no exception either. After two days of hearing about the craziness I had to get out and see for myself just how bad it was. Turns out, the news and weather reports were right. Floods everywhere.
It took us about an hour to figure out a way to the store that wasn’t completely flooded. And we only had to go through one pretty serious deep part. I was waiting for the car to shut off, but it never did. At one point I went back and picked up Kristin and the boys so they could come with me and we could make it a ‘family adventure’. We actually ended up passing two or three other grocery stores to get to the one I wanted to go to. We win this one.
Seriously though. My heart goes out to the tons of people affected by this mess. We happen to be some of the fortunate ones that have a house on a slight hill. There are several houses that we even drove past today that aren’t as fortunate.
I’ve heard all sorts of “statistics” today, but I don’t know if any of them are true. Most rain in a hundred years, National Guard is posted, buildings are falling over, official ‘State of Emergency’, dusk to dawn curfew, ect. All pretty believable after taking a little drive around, but we don’t have local TV so we’re basically going off of Twitter and the interweb.
So what’s up Nashville, everyone okay?
Happy New Year
Yesterday, driving home from the movie, Kristin and I were talking about things we’d like to accomplish in the coming year. I mentioned that I wanted to become more focussed and stop bouncing from thing to thing in my brain. We were talking about all of this as I pulled into the garage, stopped the car, got out and started getting Cooper from the back seat. Once Cooper was unbuckled and walking inside I realized I had left the car running and Kristin was standing there watching me continue on and on about how I was going to focus more this year.
I’m not a huge ‘resolutions’ guy, but I do feel like it’s important to lay goals out for yourself, and what better time to do that then the beginning of a calendar year? I mean, we should all be trying to better ourselves in one way or another right?
So this year, while I don’t view it as a “resolution” I think the main thing that sticks out to me is that I’d like to be less distracted in 2010. While 2009 was busy and great, I’ve spent most of it going 2,000 different directions and as a result am never fully ‘present’ in these moments. And just like I can be talking about it while I’m leaving the car running in the garage, I will forget that I’ve laid this “goal” in front of myself and will need to work to keep it going.
So, I’ve got a couple questions for you. Are you a resolution maker? Do you keep them? What’s yours this year?
2009′s “Top” Five
Today’s the day all us bloggers go back through all our stats and find out what people liked most about us right? By that I mean, what people responded to most that we wrote… or presented to them…. In other words our ‘Top’ posts… except looking back mine are pretty lame ‘Top Posts’.
Well, right now I’m sitting in a studio somewhere on Music Row in downtown Nashville listening to MercyMe record the final song for their record due out in May of 2010…. and it’s pretty good.
Anyway, back to my ‘Top’ posts of 2009. You ready?
5. By Our Love
4. 18 Kids And Counting Kind Of Weirds Me Out
2. Three Reason Why I Hate Buckle
1. Noah Gundersen – Jesus Jesus
I mean, it’s an okay list I guess. And here’s the funny thing. I think the only reason ‘Obama’s New Car’ even made the list was because of some page that’s written in all Arabic that dissects every aspect of the President’s travel options. Other than that it’s been some fun conversations.
So what do we think? Anything stand out from here over the past year? Anything you’d like to see more of? Less of?
Ready? Go.
Michael Jackson
I can’t sit here and say that I was the biggest Michael Jackson fan in the world and how devastated I was to hear of his passing. Truth is, I like his music enough to know most of the hits, but I didn’t know much about him. I grew up hearing about him and seeing him on TV or whatever. I had his Greatest Hits CD in high school, and I have the ‘Bad’ and ‘Thriller’ records on vinyl, but that’s mostly because they are cool. What I do know is that his influence on music and pop culture can only be compared to what The Beatles’ was. There’s no denying that Michael Jackson’s influence on music has shaped every form of pop music today. And I think that’s worth remembering.
And here’s what I think is cool. Whether you believe all the weird media child molesting stuff that went on with him, and yes I agree it was weird and creepy, or whether you think that his parenting tactics were weird or his plastic surgery decisions or whatever, the man was an amazing talent.
Now I know that everyone and their brother is blogging about this today, and I think that’s fine. I think yesterday was a day that will be remembered for a long time, as someone who greatly influenced our culture has died.
So let’s hear it. What’s your favorite Michael Jackson song?
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