revisiting facebook, jobs, millenials

in light of this post, i'm revisiting this post.

i wonder if this is going to change.

me, i am a brand. i embrace my inner brand and utilize it. i am the CEO of the brand of the girl Riot™. however, even CEOs get to go home. no one is Cheerios, or BMW, or Adidas all day long. even Adi, Adidas' founder, shares the responsibility with other well-titled folks. at one point, you go home. you sleep. you see friends. you connect with other people. you know... a la the point of social media: being social. and after hours, i'm sure they don't all sleep in Armani and talk jargon in their theta-state.

what gives you the right to inspect a person's private life for their job?

isn't that what applying is about? references, presentations, self-craft. now we're pushing away from that, toward transparency. "twit-pitch me. tell me what you're after and how you can help me--i'll do the background check. nevermind that you can't control what pictures other folks put up of you. nevermind that you can no longer access accounts to things you created, age 14. nevermind what exploration you did in your youth years that made you a good creative--i don't want to see it."

then how transparent are you, really? you want the real person--but only after they've covered their tracks? deleted their pics during those college years everyone had but everyone is supposed to deny? it's a shame facebook wasn't around when you Xers and Boomers were younger. are we handling this like 50s prudes asked to sit in on a sex addicts' meeting in a church basement? if you don't want the "full story" then why are you looking? keep it to the "legit" side of things. we craft those.

sure, check out their blog, their website, their portfolio, newspapers who reference them, other blogs who link to them. i'm not saying don't Google search. i'm saying to assess your digital detective choices--chances are you won't find that information solely on their facebook accounts. to me, that level of invasion borders on pervy. all 100+ pics of me on facebook? i haven't uploaded one. not one. i don't care if it's "personal and public"--it's discerned as a private space for friends (unlike, say, Twitter, which is searchable, Google tracked, and anyone can follow). just like your brand is not my friend, my employer is not my friend unless i invite you in. those spaces are not about you. they're about me.

and i'll be damned if you want me to censor my life to fit your desk job. you wanted a forward-thinking creative, you wanted experience and intellect--this shaped me. this is who i am. and yes, my stuff is on private. but then you're going to want to know why it's on private, aren't you? i'm supposed to connect with friends but not with employers. can i have a "only folks born 1986 or later can access this profile" option? why do i have to keep my personal life private if the whole reason of having the profile is to share?

moreover--will this disdain for (supposed) transparency change as more millenials enter the work space?

and if you think just cos i can do a keg-stand that i'm going to do one with your client, then i'm really concerned. my maturity isn't directly related to my flip cup abilities (which, mind you, are stellar). don't ask for transparency (look at personal sites) if you don't want it. my brand is excellently crafted. my personal life isn't. and if you can tell me how to control all aspects of your personal life, that's really a blog post worth writing.

so i return the question to you all:
how well do you expect someone to cover their tracks? what are you really looking to get out of trawling potential employees' facebooks and myspaces as opposed to their blogs, LinkedIns, websites? ...what are you really expecting? --and will those expectations change?

[post script & further transparency--i had a really engaging conversation with Jason Falls about his post; this is not an affront on his views: i actually highly value and understand them, and respect him, which is why i engaged in the conversation to begin with. after all, my facebook is on private. i'm just arguing that it shouldn't have to be.]

challenge me! taking World of Advertising to the streets... err blogs.

[longest blog post title evarrrrr]

Creative Beef has taken agency fun and games to the next level: BATTLE. mwuaha. in the spirit of a certain mmorpg, adhack brings you World of Advertising. click for all the different classes, from CD to AE.

on Dear Jane Sample, Jane and i are putting that game to work. she asked for a challenger, and so now we are comment-battling (for what prize, i have no idea. someone level us up? haha). amusing nonetheless.

she nearly slew me with her Shaolin Jargon:
[...]they won’t pay for that” which slowly brings you back to reality. But to restore goodwill, I will let you present your “best idea ever” to the client … as long as you deliver to me what I asked for in the brief. Oh and you don’t get and extension.

i rebutted Tiger Style with a near-fatal:
[...]it’s the “they won’t pay for that” which causes the damage. we don’t want the Creative Vision ruined by Shitty Production (booo, hisssss). so we drink some english tea which enhances our Ability to Work Under Pressure (+5 which combined with Free Pizza), enabling us to Meet Brief 2 Minutes Before Deadline.

who will win? only time will tell. want to do battle? leave me a comment! get creative.

hey radar's robert, sure your name's not richard?

"They felt threatened by our youth, confused by our lack of earnestness, and deeply troubled by our lack of appreciation for James Taylor. The boomers' entire identity was wrapped around being young and progressive. Gen X was an affront to their place in the world." -- Robert Lanham

[stop][rewind][rewrite][play]

You feel threatened by our youth, confused by our lack of earnestness, and deeply troubled by our lack of appreciation for Your Ass. The Gen X's entire identity was wrapped around being young and progressive. "The Millennials" are an affront to your place in the world.

...that's really what you're saying, isn't it?

reading: Chet > Safer > Lanham > Anastasia > Adrian > Me in April.

then again, radar is all about "pop + politics + scandal + style."
this is jack's complete lack of surprise.

haha dude, i love friendster.

and that's the only time you will ever, ever hear me say that.



unremarkable in the land of social networking war vids, but friendster makes it.

if you're looking for more silly branding videos, try this intervention piece.

hook, line: an open letter to Burpee etc.

dear Burpee:

i seem to have a problem. i bought a package of your seeds the other day from my local supermarket. seeds seemed simple enough to me, and i know you're a well-known, reputable name, so i don't impugn your seeds at all--i just seem to be having trouble.

i took them home and placed them on the window sill. should i not have done that? i thought plants needed light, but i could be wrong. i know it says that your seeds grow but i've seen minimal results.

i'm really disappointed in your product. i don't know that i will be purchasing again.

cordially, miss Riot.

----

"seeds that grow"?! wtf? as opposed to seed that don't? auto-growing seeds?
picture courtesy of my brother, who shot and pic messaged it to me last night.

plurkers, plurking, and plurk you.

plurk.
what does this evoke for you? lurking pigs? fluorescent pork? frat boy puke?
something unspeedy and possibly the antithesis of a bird, say... twitter?

some are pointing this new platform as the answer to our twitter addiction problems. it's new--that means more uptime, right? and it has to be better, if it's new. new and improved, or something.

well, i'm going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly on plurk.

THE GOOD:
for visual learners, this is a plus. it's a flash reminiscent timeline that enables users to scroll through the day, with most recent plurks on the left, and a pull of the mouse enabling you to view back previous plurks (do i really have to say that?).

it's more visually engaging, offering different emoticon sets for those with different levels of Karma (which is earned via participation and recruitment), as well as personalized "plurk user mascots" to better express your plurkiness on your plurk profile. case in point:

[this winged thing best represents the digital plurk me]

to boot, when you respond to a plurk, it's like a little mini comment feed, enabling you to keep track of conversations in a neatly organized way. the following system is set up very similarly to Ning. you can have friends (mutual followers) and fans (those who you don't follow back) all plain to see (for some this may be a bad thing!) however, you can select what group (clique) sees a particular plurk, which i know some folks have been wanting (though i personally don't).

lastly, my personal favourite aspect is the Twistori effect, wherein my plurks are fed through tags like "loves," "likes," "shares," "feels," "thinks," and "asks." i'm sure i'm just associating my zen in its use, but it is, i find, a fun aspect.

THE BAD
it's closer to a mini social network than a micro blog feed. for those looking for direct comparisons, i don't also see any way for it to feed into your phones the way that twitter does, but i haven't looked that far because i'm a primary web-based twitter user and new to plurk. (as i assumed, i lied: "contrary to the official FAQ, there’s a mobile version of the site located at http://plurk.com/m which works just fine. SMS support is nowhere to be found, though." found here.)

it's really, painfully slow. i can add a friend, and they can add me back, and i won't know for twenty minutes at best. my karma doesn't update. it takes awhile for others' plurks to show up. it doesn't auto-refresh (so there's still that problem). the alerts are always "late" (ie, an alert was still there to add a friend, even after i'd added him ten minutes ago). as we speak, i have 3 plurk "responses" but the feed only clocks me at 1. statistics = fail.

also, it's not intuitive and somewhat confusing. it's certainly going to be more difficult for "easy adopter" types to stick with it. your mom won't be following your plurks anytime soon. the layout is a little clunky--i can't type a response and view my timeline comfortably at the same time. direct messages don't technically exist; instead, you plurk to a particular person and set it to private. clunky. it's hard to get a sense of who is saying what when. also difficult to figure out where someone "replied" to something you said--requires a lot of back-scrolling.

not to mention, it's difficult to find anyone else, though not impossible. you can go through your friends' friends myspace style. you can invite friends. you can search for existing friends via their emails. but it's so convoluted that it's a little hard to be bothered. all in all, it's very much "twitter 2.0" with all the web graphics and complicated nonsense. in some regards, it's cool, but it takes some getting used to with all the "noise." i don't think i'll be switching over fully anytime soon.

but, in case you want to find me, i'm here: user/thegirlriot or use this link, which automatically makes you friends with me, and you can skip that annoying part of the show where you have to locate me: make friends with Riot

THE UGLY
............PLURK?! really? wtf name is that?

what does "plurk" mean to you?
if you heard this on the street and had to define it, what would you say "plurk" is? noun, adjective, verb?

honestly. at least "twitter" and "tweet" is an actual word. "plurk" is like lurk with a superfluous "p" for flair, or pork with a random "l" injected. i keep typing plork instead of plurk. ick.

my contribution is that "plurk" is a noun, slang, for that person who sits in their office plunking away at their keyboards, lurking on extracurricular stuff, and only pretending to do work. heh.

first impressions. om nom nom nom.

random smattering of thoughts. more structured posts to follow. i'm vocal today.

RANDOM: Om Nom Nom Nom
this site, despite my best efforts, has assimilated my life.
i do indeed now say "om nom nom nom" with surprising frequency. never underestimate the power of boredom, sleepiness, late work afternoons, and Microsoft Paint. it's like lolcats version 1.5, if you don't count manbabies.com (and i certainly don't).

FILM: The Strangers
advertising decent enough to get me to go.
however, after conclusions of the movie, tamara still "isn't there." in fact, tamara isn't even mentioned again. who the fuck is tamara? and more over, what did she do with the plot of this movie? because it doesn't exist. way to go for a suspenseful let down. as in, a suspenseful lack of plot arc, motive, and, dare i say, creativity.
prove me wrong. please, somehow validate that 12 bucks i won't get back.

FILM: Kill the Sequels
an uncountable number of sequels you really didn't need to know were occurring. or rather, you could know--but why? lemme go with... i will likely never go see nearly any of these. you could sell me on shrek 4 & 5 (i'm a sucker), the grudge 3 (i'll see any shitty scary movie that comes out; see above), and silent hill 2 (because i liked the 1st one). cars 2? for real? why? [watch. there'll be a Strangers 2. -headdesk-]

ADVERTISING: Change Lingerie
a campaign i think i like. not love, though.
i say "i think" because while i instinctively like the political overtones of the campaign and the aggressive, in-your-face tactic, i'm not sure if it's tasteful. i mean, i think it is? it's odd. it's like one of those things where you feel guilty for liking it. like i think i perhaps shouldn't like it. i'm not sure why. clever, to be sure. caustic? unsure.

ADVERTISING: Bob Garfield, Lasagna?
okay, bad joke, as in, i have shamed myself. regardless.
why the disaffection for cheese? that campaign doesn't offend me enough to get me to stop purchasing cheetos. no, i don't want orange underwear (unless i buy it that way!) and no, i don't think they're very clever commercials. but breeding baby drug lords? come on now. for serious. eat some cheetos and calm down, parents of america. i am losing serious respect for adage by the day.

@dailybiz @thegirlriot - garfield needs readers and no better way to get them than to say something completely ridiculous :)
(he is as wise as he is charismatic.) edit to include his wicked awesome post about this here.