the hurricane inside my brain

An excerpt from “Why I’m Social-Media Promiscuous”,  from The Good Men Project Magazine.

[read the full story here.]

I had been socially awkward for most of my life. I’d show up in social situations and not be able to remember if the person I was talking to was married or divorced, had one kid or three, was a Republican or Democrat. Acquaintances would ask me questions and I couldn’t think of what to say in return.

Half of me was worried I’d let slip something stupid about my life, and the other half was scared that I would totally screw up what I should have known about their lives. Nearly every conversation filled me with anxiety. When I could, I’d say as little as possible and leave the room. I rarely spoke on the phone. Work was a safe haven: the conversations were safe, scripted, and professional. I worked a lot.

In the summer of 2008, right before I made the decision to get on Facebook, I read an article in The New York Times by Clive Thompson called “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.” Clive wrote about something social scientists call “ambient awareness”:

Each little update—each individual bit of social information—is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend wouldbother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of ESP,” an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

Ambient awareness not only made perfect sense to me, it was what I’d been missing my entire life. My fear of interaction and social situations meant I didn’t interact with people. I didn’t know how. A form of ESP—some way of knowing enough about people’s lives to be able to have a comfortable conversation—was exactly what I needed.

Like Gladwell’s concept of weak ties, the idea of ambient awareness was information I could act on. All I had to do was get in the rhythm of seeing what was happening in people’s lives through status updates and other postings; that way, when I connected with them in real life, I could have a conversation. I knew when someone had been promoted to vice-president, or when they had been fired. I knew if his or her relationship was “complicated.” And not only could I recognize people, I could recognize their kids.

The running joke about Twitter was, “Who wants to know which breakfast cereal you’re eating?” The answer?I do. When in doubt, I could have a conversation about Corn Flakes.

???

The full story, like most stories of love affairs, is long and complicated. Read it here.

I never knew selling socks could be so stressful — or, what kind of economic system is this, anyway?

I’m in the mall today with my daughter Shannon, and we’re shopping for socks. They need to be red, and high – just over her knee – it’s Halloween after all, and she needs to be the perfect Snow White. She’s detailed her costume out down to the height of the sock.

We strike out in three stores, but finally find a shoe store where the salesguy sees us looking at the socks and comes a-running. “Can I help you find exactly what you’re looking for?” Shannon explains her sock needs, and he hustles us over to a different section, flips furiously through the rack, darts in the back room. Comes back with a pair that he talks about passionately but honestly. “These are boys socks. And…I’m sorry, they have a white stripe. But they are mostly red and because they are boys socks they should up to just the height you want them to.”

Shannon says they’ll do. She darts off to her next favorite store, “Forever 21” and I make the purchase.

“Phew” says the sales guy. I notice the flat black earlobe-stretching earring in his ears. “I made my sock quota.”

“You made your sock quota?”

“Yeah. I had just about given up. What were the chances someone would walk in the store 20 minutes before closing and buy a pair of socks? You made my quota. And my day. Thank you.”

“Wow” I said. “I am SO glad I made your day.”

I tell Shannon the story and she looks at me seriously. “What happens if he didn’t make his quota, mom?” I tell her I didn’t ask.

We skip into one last store to get a pair of leggings, which she gleefully finds unattended. We go to pay, and the woman behind the counter says casually, “Oh, and if you’re looking for socks to go with those, it’s buy one pair half off on the rack behind you.”

I drop my wallet in astonishment. “Don’t tell me YOU have a sock quota?”

She nods grimly. “Yeah. And even worse.” She leans over the counter conspiritorally. “I have an insole quota.”

An insole quota. Man, I feel for her. And this time I know what question to ask. “So what happens if you don’t make your quota?”

She shakes her head and sighs. “Not good. First you don’t get promoted. If it happens a few times, they demote you. And it doesn’t take long before they actually fire you. Happens all the time.”

Wow. How sad is that. An economic system based on punishing people if they don’t sell customers stuff they probably don’t want. That’s got to change. No wonder I hate malls so much. It can’t be sustainable. It can’t be fun. And, yeah, this I never knew. Selling socks –one of the most stressful jobs ever.

“The subhead looks funny. I can’t figure out if it should have a period.”

We all keep working. Benoit will figure it out. He’s been a writer for the New York Times Magazine. The author of two books. Surely he can figure out a period on a subhead without help from us.

“Can anybody help me figure out why it doesn’t look right?”

“I’ll google it.” Henry doesn’t sigh, but his foot starts tapping a little faster. Benoit says, “I’ll look on Salon, see how they do it.” “Hmmm…they’re inconsistent, let’s try Slate.”

My keyboard clatters as I type. “Forget those pubs, how does the Times do it?” I hadn’t wanted to worry about subhead punctuation protocol, but we’re four days away from launching our own online magazine, and it has to be right. We search for subhead trends in every publication we aspire to.

“Does anyone know how to change the size of a video in blog post?” Sarah had been surprisingly quiet as she chewed her lower lip.

I lean slightly right, point to the part of the screen she’s scowling at. “Maybe…I think….here…in the embed code. Try reducing these numbers by a percentage.”

Sarah’s face lights up. “Ahhhh…calculator?”

I slide my phone over to her. We laugh.

Surely there are more important things I have to do. There are contracts to be signed, revenue models to figure out. There’s the content strategy for the next 6 months, the second book we’re putting together, the playwright we want to hire. But for today, I’ve promised my team I would focus on just the magazine, and that’s what I’m here to do.

I look around the conference room table. We’re a motley crew. It would be easy to label us: man, woman, old, young, gay, straight, single, married, divorced, tattooed, uninked, tall, short, have children, don’t. I won’t bother to tell you which of those describe me. But when you’re committed to a common vision, differences are irrelevant. We all love sentences. We understand the importance of design. We believe in the power of stories. We want to do some good in this world. We want to create something amazing.

And we’re four days away from a magazine launch and the subheads have to be figured out.

“Let’s go with no punctuation.”

“We can’t. Some of the subheads are two sentences. You can’t have a period on the first, but not on the second. That’s why it looks funny.”

“Some of the subheads aren’t sentences.”

“We have to be consistent.”

A while ago I had seen a question floating around the internet. The question was “If you were investing in a CEO, would you care how passionate they were?”

My answer to that question was that I think sometimes excitement gets mistaken for passion. Pure excitement about something? No – look at the numbers instead. But – to me – passion is really about caring. In relationships. In business. In life. And yeah, caring is important. Caring about the little things. Caring about the big things. I’d put my money on passion. For sure.

Benoit and Henry have settled on a format for the subheads. I know they will move on; a standard has been set, documented, and put in place. We will be consistent. We will be clear. We will be interesting. We will care, always.

There are new decisions to be made. “Hey Lisa.” Benoit is ever-serious as he poses the next important question. “Which headline do you like better for this article – ‘monogamously challenged’ or ‘make love like an animal, cuddle like a man?’”

I smile. I wouldn’t trade working on this launch for any job in the world.

The Good Men Project Magazine launches June first, 2010.

I started blogging, tweeting and using other social networking/sharing/media sites not too long ago. The experience changed my life, in amazingly powerful ways, a comment that is still met with a great deal of skepticism almost everywhere I go.

But “Social Media” (a phrase that doesn’t even do what it’s really about justice, as most people equate the words “social media” with “getting on Facebook”) has given me the chance to meet brilliant, thoughtful people from all over the world, and talk to them as equals about things that are important to both of us. It’s helped me get involved in projects I never could have dreamed of on my own: producing a book and a movie, getting a cameo role in a movie; having crazy, impassioned conversations about the future of publishing, sexism, war, pornography; gave me a chance to help start not just one but three online publications; taught me how to shoot, edit and produce a hundred small videos; gotten me over my last final fears of technology. But most of all, I discovered the power in helping other people.

So why wouldn’t I want to blog about social media, if it brought about such profound and wonderful changes?

Because that would be like having a blog about email.

What I’d like to do here is to give you insights into the way technology is colliding with human interactions and communication, insights that will cause you to say “wow, I never saw the world that way.” And, at its best, will let you see the actions you can take next to create the profound changes I think we all can make.

I’m sure that sometimes I’ll slip up and talk about social media, because it still is such a passion of mine. But, on the whole, this blog is not a social media blog.

What is it instead?

It’s a “how the way we interact with each other affects the places we go together” blog.

It’s a “let’s think about creative ways to solve problems and then go out and solve them” blog.

It’s a “what if you didn’t think about technology and communication and marketing and friendship and business and art and change as separate things, but ONE thing” blog.

It’s a “where the heck is this all going to lead us 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now?” blog.

It’s a “wow, this is cool and here’s how it might translate into a business model” blog.

It’s a “Think. Do.” blog.

As always, comments are adored, opposing views are welcome, feedback is thoughtfully considered, and spammers are not tolerated.