The Story of Stuff

In thinking about the sixth level of empowerment that social media enables discussed by Mainwaring, I began to relate it to a video I once watched called The Story of Stuff. One of the main points that the video maker makes is that our current brand of consumerism seeks to become embedded in every single aspect of our lives. We need to exploit every opportunity to generate revenue.

When I first watched the clip, I thought about passion parties or "sex parties." In some ways I think that these are great because they empower women as sexual beings--doubt the parties would've been as accepted 20 years ago. The parties are also good places to buy cool stuff without the awkward interaction with the creepy guy at the adult fantasy shop. They can be fun social events too, or so I'm sold. At the same time though, do we really need to turn every damn thing into an opportunity to buy and sell stuff? What's with the growing trend to commoditize every last thing? In the future, will it be odd to have people over to your house without offering them something to buy? Eek!

Me First Societies Make Me First Corporations

As I am working my way through We First, I’ve noticed that while Mainwaring does a great job blowing the whistle on corporations and illustrating why they need to change their ways, he has forgotten to mention the bigger point:  That our Me First corporations are really a reflection of a Me First society.

Take Black Friday for example.  Every year we hear stories of shoppers trampled to death, or people being tazered all in the name of a good deal.  An article by the Huffington Post about shoppers stepping over the top of a man collapsed on the floor illustrates this perfectly.

And we all remember the controversy last year where many stores were opening their doors Thanksgiving night, robbing employees of precious time spent with their families all for the sake of customers who wanted to shop after gorging themselves on turkey.

Both of these scenarios reflect our Me First, the-customer-is -aways-right values of a door-mat service industry.  How can we expect CEO’s to practice We First values when we as individuals do not?

Sustainability

According to Mainwaring, corporations are increasingly becoming more familiar with terms like climate change and minimizing one’s carbon footprint. Social responsibility also apears to be a popular term in the corporate world in recent years. And of course, let’s not forget the controvesial and widely defined sustainable business practices that many organizations claim to be implementing. Sustainable, as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary,  is “a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.”But are they really using resources in such a way? Are these socially responsible corporate partners abstaining from wasting resources that should be left to future generations?

Mainwaring cites Walmart as an example of a company in transition and one that is also  attempting to become a global leader regarding enviromental sustainability. He explains how Walmart has partnered with universities, suppliers, and non-govermental organizations to create a sustainability index that helps consumers evaluate the products’history as well as compliance and sustainability standards of those products.  At first glance, one would think that this is very noble and socially responsible behavioror is it just a way to divert consumers’ attention from the larger issues? At a rate of 300 store openings per year, Wal-Mart is leaving one massive footprint behind. Furthermore, the inmeasurable amount of greengases generated by it’s 8747 stores only compounds to the climate change complications that already exist. And while it claims to provide millions of jobs to the Amrican people, Wal-Mart does not  talk about the thousands of small business it has destroyed, crushing with them the American dream or how only 47% of it’s employees can actually afford medical insurance.

Finally, it is painfully obvious to me that some corporations, which claim to be socially responsible, are doing so as an extra curriculum activity. What I mean by this is that those activities only happen after their bottom line has been ascertained. While the result of these actions do benefit some, it reinforces the point that Mainwaring is trying to make, which is a Me First mindset. Taking care of the shareholders appears to be their first priority and it is only after this happens that they are willing to help others.

Do we have time to know what to eat?

The role of social media may end up being one that supports more transparency. I am still amazed, however, that we have been unable to represent the will of people before the will of agribusiness. According to polls Michael Pollan sites in this article, the vast majority of Americans would prefer to know what they are eating. Unfortunately, Washington doesn't believe in our ability to decide what we ought to put into our bodies or what we want to use our dollars to support.

But then again, maybe we ought to just let things lie as they may. Perhaps we need others to think these issues through and then make the decision for us--the politicians making these decisions are the reps we voted for. After all, even if you and I have the intelligence to understand these issues, do we have the time? Do we have time to know what to eat? This is where the problem that Noam Chomsky points out regarding concision comes into play. We can only understand and advocate for so much. Social media may give us some opportunities to solve the problem of concision though.  

At the end of the day, when all of this starts to become overwhelming this video helps preserve sanity while also opening up to the confusion. Some may find it annoying or uncomfortable, so viewers be warned. 

 

 

 

Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

This was the article topic proposed in the May issue of The Atlantic. This article by Stephen Marche addresses that social media sites, such as Facebook have made us more densely networked than ever, but also, that we have never been more lonely.

Our class books, We First, and The New Rules of Marketing & PR teach us that social media is good for networking and promoting organizations and companies, but do not touch on the issue that it may also be making individuals more lonely and that it takes away from our physical social interactions.

Reading Marche's article, one idea stuck in my head more than any other, and that idea was that a "connection is not the same as a bond." We may have hundreds of connections with our online "friends," but of all our online "friends" how many can we say that we have a bond with?

So for all the good Facebook does for the world, does it also have a dark side? A side that is making us more lonely than we have ever been, but that we do not notice because we feel so connected?

Twitter-Client Privilege

Do you own your tweets or does Twitter? This is the question at the center of a controversy being played out in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. The Huffington Post reported that prosecutors want access to the deleted tweets of Malcolm Harris, who is being charged with disorderly conduct for his role in an Occupy Wall Street protest. Harris and Twitter are engaged in a hot potato battle-royale regarding who actually owns the rights to the tweets with a subpoena going to the loser. The prosecution maintains that Harris' tweets are the property of Twitter. Twitter's stance is that it's terms of service "unequivocally state that it's user's 'retain [their] rights to any content."

If Twitter's stance is held up, then this is a nonissue. Only you own the rights to your tweets and once you delete them, they're gone. If the terms of service argument is ignored and requests for Twitter to hand over the tweets persist, then it will become a much scarier debate.  Is in naive to believe that what you tweet and delete is really gone? 

The ultimate question is - should you be able to erase the past by keeping deleted tweets as confidential as the information that passes between you and your attorney?     

  

  

I'm So Much Cooler Online

As I was reading John Coate’s article “Cyberspace Innkeeping” for our weekend class discussion, I kept thinking about online anonymity.  For good or bad, being online is like a secret alias that gives us the power to become anything we want, even if it’s only in our imaginations.  Brad Paisley’s song, “Online” sums it up perfectly, “I’m a Sci-Fi fanatic, mild asthmatic, never been to 2nd base.  But there's a whole nother me that you need to see.  Go check out MySpace.”  The really neat implications of this are that it potentially offers us a freedom from being judged based on our appearance, how much money we make, ect.  It offers the painfully shy and socially awkward a less risky way of connecting with others.  It’s easier to be brave and stick your neck out, because you have invested less of yourself if faced with rejection.    It also offers a margin of safety not found in face to face encounters.  If some creep starts harassing you, you can sign off, thereby quickly ending the conversation. 

But this bravery connected with the feeling of being anonymous and invincible also provides a harbor for bad intentions.  An article published in 2010 in the New York Times discusses online harrassment, also called trolling.  Author Julie Zhou states, “Psychological research has proven again and again that anonymity increases unethical behavior. Road rage bubbles up in the relative anonymity of one’s car. And in the online world, which can offer total anonymity, the effect is even more pronounced. People — even ordinary, good people — often change their behavior in radical ways”.  Sadly, as we have witnessed many times over the past few years, cyber-bullying can still have tragic results.  John Coate’s article suggests that eliminating some of our ability to remain entirely anonymous will remedy this, but I’m skeptical since bullying is most definitely not only limited to online encounters, and indeed can be found in pretty much every social circle in some way shape or form.