You Only Get *One* Pageview: Make It Count

So, yesterday, some blogger decided to use twitter to drive traffic to their site. Specifically, the link they posted was about the poor, beleaguered TSOs that are stuck having to implement the TSA's regressive policies.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that, yes, the TSOs "are human beings, too". And, yes, I get that many find things about their jobs that they don't like. Point of fact, most, if not all, people have parts of their jobs they hate. Many people utterly despise their jobs. Many people love their jobs. Most of us fall somewhere along that love-hate spectrum - frequently, all across it, depending on when you ask. So, yeah, "I get it."

That said, when I've hated jobs, I've typically sought and found other, less soul-crushing ways to earn my living. It's what you do if you want to stay sane. It's what you do if you don't want to poison the rest of your life. And, yes, many times, I've had to suck on the poison-pill while I wait for that next job to come along that alleviates my need to deal with the odiousness of whatever the job I seek to escape is.

All that aside, I don't pity the TSOs their positions. They're employed voluntarily. They can leave any time they want - after all, they're employeees, not slaves or conscripts. If they hate that they have to grope people, if they go home crying, every day, because of the verbal abuse meted out to them in response to what they say or do to passengers, then quit.

Chances are, the reason they're crying or just feeling bad is that they know that what they're doing is wrong. Providing the excuse of "just following orders". And, no, it's not unfair for passengers to say that the TSOs are acting like Nazis. At the Nürnberg Trials, some variant of "just following orders" was a fairly popular defense (Adolf Eichmann being one of the most famous for employing it). It didn't work then. It won't work now.

For those TSOs who were in the US Armed Forces prior to the TSA, your military code of conduct says that you should refuse to follow what you believe to not be a lawful or moral order. So, don't try to pull my heartstrings about having served in the military prior to being a TSO. Your military training makes it so you should know better.

For those TSOs of Jewish decent who take offense at the comparison? I've little pity for you, either. As Jews, you should be acutely aware of the history of how distasteful the "just following orders" defense is.

And, to the writer of that blog entry? I don't care whether you feel like you're being a mouthpiece or not. I don't care about the rest of the contents of your site. When you posted your link on Twitter, it was for a specific page on your site. There are billions of pages up on the internet. Only a few of those pages are of sufficient interest to make a reader want to read more by a given author. So, when you use Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. to drive traffic to your site, know that 99.999% of the readers who get to your site through those means will only know you through what they see you write on that one page. So, when you add commentary to your article that seems apologistic or you quote links used by the same people that are the source of irritation, you will be seen in the light of those comments. Deal with it.

LJ Maintenance

So, adding LJ to my "updates" email distribution list was a mistake. Just erased a bunch of stuff on there. Also de-linked the few friends I actually had on there. Six(?) clicks and all the friend-links are one way. At least at this point, the only shit that's viewable, there, is the same stuff that's viewable, here. Need to keep someplace that I can write closed.

Self Documentation

I think people underestimate the potential longevity of "social media". The fail to see the forest for the trees. They see that specific sites have popularity lifecycles (e.g. LiveJournal and MySpace) but fail to see the overall trends or place them within the larger historical context. Simply put, people have a compulsion to document their lives. People have a compulsion to be social. All that FaceBook, BlogSpot, Twitter and the like are is an extension of these compulsions.

Our primitive ancestors drew pictograms and glyphs on cavewalls.

Clans, tribes and communities sat around communal fires telling stories of their daily exploits and of their ancestors epics and sagas.

People who have had the capability of recording their thoughts in writing have kept journals, exchanged letters or otherwise recorded their lives and their thoughts for themselves and, in some cases, posterity. How many history shows or articles have you seen that have centered around uncovering the lost journals, letters, etc. of the famous, infamous and the "Average Joe"?

Granted, the mid/late 20th century saw a wane in personal writing. It saw the beginning of the decline of the personal letter and the diary. But, it also saw a proliferation of camera ownership. "Regular people" had anything from big, fancy, professional rigs down through Polaroids and disposable cameras. These days, though film seems to be dying, it's replaced by digital cameras with ever more MegaPixels - and cameras are ubiquitous on converged devices like cell phones.

Cell phones, themselves, are just another extension of this desire to record and share. How many people walking down the street, absorbed in their phones, are doing anything more than sharing their lives with the people on the other end of the line. Yes, they were originally marketed towards business people needing to make work-related calls, but that's such a small portion of what they're used for any more.

So, while Vox may die and while MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. may all lose popularity, the underlying need will continue. So long as there is someone or something to fulfill that need in a way that's relevant to the consumers of that time period, there will be successful providers of those outlets.

So, yeah, FaceBook may be a passing fad, but the larger trend is unlikely to fade while humans have the time, capability and inclination to share. Until such point as the fundamental nature of humans change (i.e., we evolve to be non-social beings or simply die off), there will be a place for some equivalent to "social media".