I hope I don’t hurt your feelings this morning

Another great post by The Prick with a Fork who ponders Why Do Feminists Hate Cooking?.

The PWAF is discussing respected rocket scientist Yvonne Brill’s recent passing and the The New York Times “controversial” obituary that sought to immortalise not only her ground breaking scientific achievements but also her apparently rather more mundane skills as a loving and caring mother, as recounted by her grieving son.

PandoDaily also reports that after copping a torrent of abuse, scorn and incredulity about using the old bait and switch method of story telling, The NYT changed the lede in its obituary to head off the virtual stampede of delicate New Age Twitterites bitching about their offended sensibilities at another symbol of the oppression of women everywhere.

Except in Pakistan or Afghanistan, where they shoot women in the head for going to school or chop them in the head 15 times with an axe for bringing dishonour to their family somehow.

Anyway, back to that hideous newspaper report that set everyone off, causing them to spill their soy low fat decaf mocha lattes all over the paper.

So what was it that set the Twitterosphere into a frenzy about this rather innocuous anecdote about Brill’s celebrated life? I think the PWAF sums it all up pretty well..

The issue is, so what if the obit began with a testimony – by the woman’s son, no less – to her cooking skills and her excellence as a mother?

If I were to be farewelled by the Times, I’d be flattered if my scallops or short ribs got a mention.

And opening any profile piece with a bit of colour is a time-honoured technique: Yeah, sure, she built rockets, but quirky details like a good stroganoff are what humanises a subject.

So as PandoDaily and PWAF note, using the simple and time honoured literary technique that seeks to make a high achiever more human in order to make the reader more connected with the subject is something that the people polluting Twitter with their feelings and observations on the world either dont appreciate or, perhaps more likely, even understand.

First World Problem? Not on your life mister (oops, don’t mean to oppress anyone with this throwaway idiom). This is SERIOUS, man (Damn, I did it again).

But is it everyone on Twitter that raised hell in the name of the dearly departed? Um no.. it seemed it was just the POOs again, doing what they do best. Being OUTRAGED! You know the Perpetually Offended and Outraged and their gaggle of Post Modern Feminists that we all encounter in today’s world.

Now POOs and PMFs aren’t necessarily post-modern women railing at the oppression they face everyday at the hands of the patriarchal hegenomy that is Western Civilisation, no way that would be stereotyping women (and we don’t do that here, we pick on everyone equally), they also include many, many men too.

You know the ones I mean, those try-ever-so-hard, hipster, metrosexual fellas who reject the oppressive nature of the hetronormative patriarchal establishment, whatever the hell that is, and more than likely detest the fact that unfortunately they were born with a penis and as a result are thereby denied victimhood.

In a lovely segway (Yes, that’s a good one if I do say so myself), let’s go back to The Prick with a Fork, for he elegantly sums up exactly who these POO PMTs are…

And by “feminists”, I don’t mean the vast majority of nice and normal people who believe that men and women should treat (and pay) each other equally and with dignity but who also don’t fly into a paroxysm of rage when a fella holds a door for a dame. Or uses the word “dame”, for that matter.

Rather, I mean political feminists, those overgrown undergraduates for whom life is a constant search for something against which to take offense.

Seriously, what has happened to these people that they feel so aggrieved about pretty much anything and everything that they encounter in their daily stumble through life?

I’m blaming not only Puer aeternus, otherwise known as the Peter Pan syndrome, but also our society’s infatuation with everyone expressing their feelings ad nauseum and ad infinitum.

I would think that there are a great many of you who may well agree with me that because of this infatuation with feelings, society has morphed into being populated a big bunch of sooky la-la’s that cant get through their day without proclaiming their feelings to EVERYONE else on the planet about EVERYTHING in life and how their resultant lack of control of their own internal emotions thereby renders them incapable of functioning until their delicate feelings have been soothed by the soft cooing of their own POOey peers and whatever has offended them is removed from their lives.

So you don’t like the fact that a son loved his mother’s attention and beef strogonoff?

Stiff. She wasn’t your mother so get over it and get a life. There are much more important things to concern yourself with, like you know, your own life.

But at the end of the day, it does raise the question…

What was the world’s evil misygonistic mastermind, Tony Abbott’s role in all of this?

Footnote:

Before anyone calls me a bloody hypocrite…

Yes, I realise that I too am expressing my feelings here with you today on this subject.

But the big difference between the POOs of our world and I, is that I don’t expect the world to change just because of the way I feel.

Things upset me all the time, but no one seems to care about my feelings and nor should they really. So go ahead, flop on the floor and chuck a tanty, I couldn’t give a rat’s posterior.

You don’t like my opinion? Good, I don’t care much for some people’s opinions either, but I respect that just like everyone has a you-know-what, everyone also has an opinion and you’re allowed to express that.

Just don’t expect me to change everything because of what you think is right or wrong in the world because in the Razor’s world no one really cares what you feel or think or do in life, so just get on with it already. – Dacka

Why companies don’t really get social media

Trevor Young, the PR Warrior, has a great blog post titled Forget Twitter: Start Acting and Caring Like Human Beings – which is all about how some companies really need to step back from the whiteboard and actually think about why they’re using social media.

…getting confused between simply using social media tools because, well, everyone’s using them, and leveraging them strategically to open up your business and communicate with people in ways that are meaningful, respectful and that have impact on an ongoing basis.

Forget the tools for now. The moment you start thinking about channels specifically – around ‘what’ platforms you should be on – your social media efforts will be severely compromised.

Instead, start asking why you should be on Twitter? Why should you have a Facebook presence? Why should you produce videos for YouTube?

I’ve worked for several organisations in the past that thought quite fervently that they just had to be on Twitter or Facebook, mainly because execs had seen a really snappy powerpoint presentation at a conference but really in essence they didnt really understand the why.  They were too engrossed in the what.

Companies whose social media presence just doesn’t add value to either the business objectives or more importantly address how being on social media enhances their customers experience of interacting with them online are really missing the point.

Out of these two issues, I definitely think that it is the second one that is the most important when considering social media. But for many organisations the “why?” question is just not considered, they are too concerned with just doing what everyone else does or says that they should do.

To my mind, there isn’t a lot of mental rigour or strategic oversight going on when you do something without thinking “why are we doing this exactly?”

In our hyper connected world, our lives are increasingly spent online where we are exposed to countless adverts and promotions that try to leverage old world marketing techniques in the new world of digital.  What I am increasingly feeling when I am online on either Facebook, using mobile apps or just browsing the internet is that the way that the majority of companies approach using these platforms for advertising just doesn’t cut it with me anymore.

I was bemoaning just the other day the intrusive nature of sponsored posts on Facebook and how updates my own friends were being drowned out by sponsored posts advertising all kinds of things that I am JUST NOT INTERESTED IN.

I know Facebook needs to look to monetize it’s gazillion members for it to be a profitable publicly listed company, but I am not sure that the way they are doing it is right, especially in the mobile space.  I am sick of seeing ads and promos that just dont give me any real reason to interact with them.  They’re flat, boring and totally one dimensional.

More importantly, I dont want these posts to take precedence over my friends posts just because someone has paid $2.50 to do so.  I would rather pay to use Facebook, free from ads than have my “social” feed polluted with adverts for stupid game downloads or ads for Jeep or whatever else is popping up in my feeds today.

As Trevor points out in his post, instead of trying to be on every social media channel, brands and companies really need to think about what they are trying to do with social media as opposed to just being on all platforms because that’s what everyone is doing.

Because of this gold rush type of mentality, I am actively considering downgrading my usage of certain social media platforms and starting to ramp up usage of social media that I can exert more control over by choosing to interact with brands on the terms that I want.

In my opinion, online marketers need to be careful not to kill off the golden goose of social media by making it just a carbon copy of all the previous forms of media that have drowned in advertising.