In early 2017 I made the decision to #unfriendfacebook. I decoupled. I changed my profile picture to this.
At the time I thought I understood my reasons. It seemed to me quite indisputable that the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election had been handed to Trump by Facebook. ///HOLD IT! STOP THIS BLOG POST RIGHT THERE!
As I write that last sentence, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind tap-tap-tapping for attention. And I have just interrupted this post to hear it.
It says:
Hold on there, Roland, are you sure you want to let your political position muddy the waters here? I mean, we are a country divided and suppose one of your students or potential students is reading this. With that little bit about the 2016 election, you may have just eliminated 50% of your potential target market.
Regardless of how one falls on the many sides of that strange interrupting worry, what concerns me most, and what I need to address here is the kind of landscape in which such a worry even makes any sense at all.
And by that I mean, an online world which through the powerful and slowslowslow moving and largely imperceptible forces of corporate interests has grown and continues to tilt further and further toward a kind of malignant embrace which play acts connection but at its core is really just pretty much always trying to sell you something.
Because if this blog is seen to exist to serve two masters -- my human desire to dig down to the truth and the promotional needs of my business -- aren't we fooling ourselves just a little bit? I mean, if we actually try to convince ourselves that these two impulses can live under the same roof? Without killing each other?
What do you do when you wake up one morning to discover that the world you've helped build is pretty much one enormous billboard?
I met with a marketing consultant a few years ago who told me that the problem with my teaching website was that I wasn't promising writers that working with me would get them produced.
But I can't get them produced, I said.
But that's what they want most. And Marketing 101 is: First, identify the target market's number one want or need, then promise to fill it. [ed. point of privilege: If someone selling you any kind of course, workshop or program actually does promise to get your work produced, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.]
I recently returned to Facebook after what had turned into a five year hiatus. I have returned because several people, people close to me, friends and family alike, have repeatedly urged me to return to Facebook for the sake of my business. It's hard to quantify just how much business I may have missed out on during my Facebook embargo but the difference between being on the platform and not for a sole proprietor teaching in a niche market as I am is, I think, indisputable.
Leaving a country for a period of years (and to me it feels very much like a place, like a place with a culture all its own with habits and customs one picks up on by being there) provides a unique perspective.
What strikes me most viscerally every time I log onto the site (which I've been doing almost once a day for the past 3 weeks, but never more than four times a day) is just how baked in the promoting-my-brand-without-appearing-to-be-consciously-selling-anything-instead-coating-everything-in-the-patina-of-actual-human-connection cultural norms have become.
Notice what happens when someone posts without having quite mastered the art of promotional jujitsu.
These posts and comments go largely ignored. It's kind of alarming to me how consistently this occurs. I recently stumbled upon the post of a well-known performance artist asking for advice she might give some of her former students who were (as we all are) confronting the difficult realities of skillsets not quite as in-demand as we wish they were. Someone commented on her post with a direct link to her own teaching website, as an example of what she was doing to navigate this road. And the resulting silence was deafening.
Whenever someone forgets that we're meant to pretend we're all on Facebook for each other, not to promote ourselves as brands, everyone flees for the exit as though someone has just flicked on the overhead fluorescents and it's way past last call.
Nobody wants to be seen in all their naked promotional neediness.
And yet here we all are. Each with something to promote. Some of us (me, for sure) with multiple stuff to promote.
And, I guess, here would be where I'd attempt a masterful segue to my next [fill in the blank] show or online workshop or membership pitch. But today I'm not in the mood.
And besides, I expect you're all smart enough to use Google to find what you're looking for... that is, of course, if you know how to outsmart the best SEO.