"Social media marketing suits me perfectly..." (illustration by Shane Clester)

If this is the social media revolution, wake me when it’s over.

Social media was supposed to forge stronger relationships between companies and customers. It was also supposed to provide a massive improvement over traditional advertising, since social media doesn’t “interrupt” people when they’re trying to enjoy their favorite reality shows set in New Jersey.

In this revolution, customers aren’t pestered by marketers; rather, they give “permission” to marketers by visiting their websites, signing up for their newsletters, or following their social media accounts. It’s an idyllic marketplace where companies and customers all like each other and swap +K’s in exchange for “value” and “utility.”

Too bad it doesn’t exist.

Plus, we all remember what lurked in that other Garden of Eden…

In Twitterland, amidst the chirping blue birdies and plummeting whales, a new creature has emerged from the undergrowth: the Twitter Stalker (a Twalker?). He won’t interrupt your valuable stream of tweets about where you had breakfast, the deaths of celebrities who haven’t really died, or retweets of articles talking about other people’s thoughts about Twitter.

No, interrupting all that would be sacrilegious.

Rather, the Twitter Stalker just follows you. He doesn’t attempt to send you a message or even comment on your tweets. He just saw that you tweeted something about, say, SEO, and since he works in SEO but isn’t very good at it, he decided the best way to sell you his services would be to simply follow you…

Silently…

In hopes that you’re one of those tweeters who mindlessly follows everyone back, so that you might see his tweets about algorithm tweaks. And then, maybe, you know, hire him.

It didn’t have to be this way…

Had he done any research, he might have learned that you have no interest whatsoever in search engine optimization — indeed, you don’t even have a website — and that you meant to type “SFO” at the airport, but the damn autocorrect changed it.

But he’s a Twitter Stalker. He don’t do no stinkin’ research. ‘Cause everyone told him “Twitter is revolutionary” and “all you have to do is start an account and start following people.” He was told not to try to sell anything — that would violate Twitterquette — but to just build relationships.

But they never explained to mediocre SEO guy how to start and maintain relationships with thousands of people at the same time. Indeed, he turned to the Internet in the first place because building relationships in real life wasn’t his thing, either.

So he just follows. And follows. And waits. And if you don’t follow him back, he might unfollow you… wait a few weeks… then follow you again, so that you might respond to the second notice that you’re being followed. And somewhere in the background, you hear The Police singing, “Every breath you take…”

You may think I’m exaggerating, but some guy from something called Social Media Marketing Magazine kept doing this to me again and again and again. Given this demonstration of his social media prowess, I ignored him. But he kept trying and trying and trying. A regular Energizer Bunny of Twitter stalking.

But he’s not the only one. I also have all these tango schools and instructors and nightclubs following me, failing to note that Atomic Tango is a marketing agency, not an explosive new dance program. They all follow. They never say a word. I do like the image of being stalked by tango dancers, though.

And the stalking isn’t limited to Twitter.

LinkedIn seethes with stalkers who barely have anything on their profiles, and who invite you to their networks by claiming that you’re a “friend.” I’ve messaged a few of them with a, “Sorry, my memory cells are toasted. Where did we meet?” but they never respond. Some are obviously spammers. Others are apparently startled that their stalking generated an actual human conversation. “Wait, you mean we’re supposed to talk to people in our networks? I thought we just connected with them, and they would offer us jobs and money…”

To all these people, I just want to say, knock it off. If you want to sell me something, fine, just go ahead and interrupt me already. Look up my contact info and drop me an email or a letter with a thoughtful offer based on my interests. I have actually responded to some of those.

And just run some freakin’ ads already.

Particularly clever and creative ones. I’ve responded to more than a few of those, too. Really.

In fact, lots of people do. For all the claims of social media’s superiority as a marketing tool, there’s far more proof that traditional advertising drives conversations and sales, and that social media rarely sells anything but kogi tacos. (Hint: “friends,” “fans,” “followers” and other f-words do not necessarily translate into sales.)

What I don’t respond to: silent lurking in the background of my social networks. When it comes to marketers like that, I don’t want a relationship — I want a restraining order.

An uncut industrial diamond ready for hyping. (photo by Shieldforyoureyes Dave Fischer, via Wikimedia Commons)

When I was fresh out of college, I met this millionaire who made his fortune selling diamond jewelry through supermarket tabloids. You may be wondering, what kind of jewelry sells through the cheesiest rags on the planet — newspapers that you wouldn’t dare use to line a birdcage lest you kill the bird?

That’s a good thing to wonder.

These were genuine diamonds — genuine industrial diamonds, that is, worthless in the general jewelry market. Yet the tabloid readers saw the word “diamond” and their eyes lit up and their mouths watered and their hands reached for the telephone as the words “my precious” escaped from their lips…

Of course, we poke fun at these tabloid readers, even though many of us consume a giant digital tabloid, 140 characters at a time. And we roll our eyes at their gullibility when it comes to jewelry, because we know that even gem-quality diamonds are mostly the product of marketing and monopolization, right?

(Tip: look up Australian brown diamonds, which were worthless until a massive marketing campaign recast them as “champagne” diamonds. Yes, we marketers can sell anything.)

Seeing that I was a business newbie, the millionaire taught me that some people will believe anything — you just have to find the right people and feed them the right magic words. He also advised me that if something sounds too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.

And that doesn’t just apply to shiny rocks…

Faux Facts About Facebook

Fast forward a couple of decades. That advice came back to me a few weeks ago when I read a headline on AllFacebook.com proclaiming, “96% Of Small Businesses Are On Facebook“.

Hmm, that didn’t sound right to me. Most of the small businesses in my neighborhood aren’t on Facebook, and this is a busy part of West L.A. I also know that most of the businesses (small and large) in my hometown of Roseburg, Oregon aren’t on Facebook, either, which I’m guessing is true of most small towns. So 96 out of 100?

Odder still was the attribution: “These figures from engagement marketing company  come in higher than anything we’ve seen yet…” (sic). In addition to the awkward phrasing, that sentence contained an extra space where the name of the “engagement marketing company” should be. That’s some odd editing.

Finally, near the end, the article acknowledged that the stats came from a study by email-marketing firm Constant Contact of 1,972 organizations, “ninety-five percent are Constant Contact customers.”

Really, AllFacebook.com? You’re hyping the fact that small businesses who employ an email marketing service are on Facebook? Why not go a step further and tell us that they own computers and use electricity, too?

Let’s play with numbers a little more…

That 96% is only 1% more than the number of Constant Contact customers in the survey. That tells us that, among the NON-Constant Contact customers in this survey, a very small percentage (as low as 25%) are on Facebook — and that still sounds high to me.

Like the diamond-hungry tabloid readers, today’s social media zealots see any remotely shiny factoid about their industry and their eyes light up and their mouths water and their hands reach for their keyboards as the words “my precious” escape from their lips…

They seldom dig deeper, and even when they do, they refuse to acknowledge that the shiny nuggets they dig up are actually worthless junk. To validate themselves and their efforts, they spin marketing tales in hopes of convincing us that imperfection = champagne.

Now Facebook can be a useful tool for small businesses, but exaggeration and misdirection will only turn off savvier small business owners — the ones who could actually create success stories worth talking about. Until more of those stories emerge, just repeat what that millionaire told me: if it sounds too good to be true, it’s too good to be true. And if you meet anyone who still believes the hype, let me know, ’cause I can get them a great deal on some diamonds…

It’s predictable: Apple releases a new product, and the devout start camping out at the Temple O’ Jobs to be one of the first to lay their hands upon it.

And just as predictably, people will ridicule these fanatics, usually with aspersions about their sex lives (or lack thereof). Note this tweet from comedian Aisha Tyler…

These same cooler-than-thou critics, though, never mock the thousands of fans who line up for nosebleed seats and overpriced food and even inclement weather at a sporting event, even though the same game is on TV and could end in a depressing way.

Nor do they mock the Hollywood entourages who absolutely MUST see a movie on opening night, even if it’s been ripped by critics and will appear on DVD in three months.

Indeed, I know people who will spend hours in line for a food truck.

So what’s the difference between the Apple fanboys and those who line up early for rock concerts, conventions, sporting events, autographs, theme parks, Black Friday shopping, hot Christmas toys, a new designer line at Target, or some trendy nightclub?

The answer: the hardcore techies actually provide value to the rest of us.

The faithful wait to enter the shrine (photo by Rob DiCaterino from Jersey City, NJ, via Wikimedia Commons).

1. They test the waters. Any new product, whether it’s a car or Broadway play, usually has glitches when it first hits the market. I dig Apple products, but usually wait three months so Apple can kill the bugs. But someone has to go first, and ideally it’s someone with the tech savvy (and enthusiasm) to identify and explain the glitches. While the rest of us blow gaskets when our tech toys develop problems, the techies not only don’t get flustered, they relish the opportunity to flaunt their bug-hunting savvy. We count on these unpaid product testers to write the early reviews on Amazon and CNET that guide our delayed purchases.

2. They serve as influencers. Early adopters, particularly hardcore fanatics, help spread the word as other consumers seek out their insights. Whether we’re talking a new phone, horror movie, or restaurant, marketers have always leveraged influencers to spread the word — early religions called them “preachers” and “evangelists” — since that’s far more efficient and cost-effective than targeting millions of consumers one-by-one or running a Super Bowl spot. Influencers are particularly valuable in social media, since they rush to issue their passionate verdicts on blogs, YouTube, and message boards, where followers await their word from on high. Their early enthusiasm or disdain also tells marketers whether a product is worth further investment or should be quietly shelved.

3. They initiate the buying that leads to economies of scale. New tech products are expensive to begin with, since they haven’t been manufactured in enough quantity to reduce costs. Some companies intentionally cut their margins (or even take a loss) to have a low “penetration price” from the get-go. But most companies need to charge full price at launch, and the early adopters willingly pay those “skimming” prices to be first (they’re the fashionistas of tech). Because they get the ball rolling, providing essential early profits for the company, the rest of us can wait. Without a sizeable crowd of early adopters, the rest of us only get a lower price when the company dumps its remaining inventory (see “$99 HP Touchpad”).

4. They raise the bar. Those queues in front of trendy clubs are a form of marketing, since they signal to passersby that there’s something inside worth wasting hours of your life. However, in order to ensure that fanatics will line up not just once but on every occasion, a company needs to consistently innovate and conjure up something OMG-worthy. When the lines disappear (or fail to materialize), you know your products have become commodities, right Dell?

Now, I love Apple products, but I won’t camp out for them or even wait in line. (I’m generally allergic to queues, particularly if they involve velvet rope.) However, I give serious iProps to those who do. These tech adventurers go out of their way at their own expense to facilitate and popularize our favorite toys — technology like smartphones and Twitter that some comedian will later use to ridicule them.

Now if I could only find someone who’d wait in line for me at the grilled cheese truck…

How business terminology is cooked up.

My friend Nina writes…

“I’m reading this article, and I can’t help but wonder: who comes up with the names for various consumer groups, like Millennials or, as in this piece, ‘X-fluents’? How do they gain traction? I think ‘X-fluents’ is stupid. It sounds too much like ‘effluent.’”

My response…

You remember the commercials that used eggs to symbolize a brain on drugs? Well, terminology fabrication is like that, but think of some mighty big brains and a drug called “fame.”

The perps include ad agencies, consulting firms, marketing writers (Seth Godin coins a term every 5 minutes or so), self-proclaimed social media gurus, research agencies, and professors trying to get published in the Harvard Business Review. For these guys, coining a term that gets adopted by society is like recording a #1 pop song or concocting a hit cocktail recipe. Since the theory-class doesn’t actually create anything that everyday people need or use, new terminology serves as their ticket to fame and immortality,

It’s a strategy that we didn’t study in business school (self-promo for wonks), but it’s a contagion that’s spreading. At least, according to us X-fluent wannabes (XFW’s).

This could only work in Texas.

In the Lone Star State, there are two dominant religions: Christianity and football. And I would dare say that if there were a Cowboys game on a Sunday morning, most Texans would opt for football first.

As a Texan for one year and a football fanatic, I can attest to that. I lived in Austin the year that the University of Texas Longhorns beat my USC Trojans, and I’m still haunted by the whoops and hollers of Texas football fans. I also loved the book “Friday Night Lights” and watched the TV show of the same name before it devolved into “Texas 90210.”

So it doesn’t surprise me that a Texas university would file a lawsuit and pander to statewide jingoism in order to save a religion from breaking up. And, no, I’m not talking about Christianity…

Bear Necessities

Baylor University, a Christian college in Waco, is threatening to sue one of its rivals in the Big 12 Conference, Texas A&M, to prevent it from joining the much more successful Southeastern Conference. And it’s not because Baylor loves the hedonists and heretics of Texas A&M. It’s because of that other religion: money.

If Texas A&M leaves, that forebodes an exodus of biblical proportions from the Big 12 (which was already down to 10 members before the season began — the ability to count is apparently not valued by its member universities). Already, Oklahoma and other Big 12 schools are flirting with other conferences, including the hated left-coast conference, the PAC-12.

If the Big 12 conference were to break up, that would likely leave Baylor as the wallflower, standing alone. That’s because the Baylor University Bears have been less than almighty on the football field, achieving just 18 wins and an Alamo-sized 101 losses in the Big 12 prior to this season. Baylor endured these gridiron indignities since being part of the Big 12 is (was?) extremely lucrative.

The way college football is structured, all teams in a conference share in the major bowl game winnings. Since Texas and Oklahoma regularly appear in the BCS bowls, Baylor scored big on its financial ledgers if not on the field. If relegated to a lesser conference, Baylor would see all those millions generated by Oklahoma and Texas dissipate.

Time to Mount that Sermon

So naturally, it’s suing to protect its finances — and that makes sense. What I find amusing is Baylor’s publicly promoted reason for doing so. It’s not about money — nosireebob! — it’s about preserving Texas culture and tradition and “great minds.” In a sermon entitled “Don’t Mess With Texas Football,” Baylor sings the praises of Texas football tradition, and makes the other schools look like they’re planning to physically uproot their campuses and relocate to the Sodom & Gomorrah of Florida & California…

Nothing is more beloved in Texas than Texas football. Entire towns travel to neighboring communities on Friday nights as rivals meet under the Friday night lights; Saturday mornings find families rushing out to pee wee football games and spending their afternoons with friends tailgating or watching some of the most historic and storied football rivalries in the nation; Sunday afternoons see families gathered in living rooms across the state to cheer on the Cowboys or the Texans. Football in Texas is more than a passing interest, it is a part of the fabric of this great state.

• Will Texans stand by and watch hundred-year-old rivalries be cast aside as the state’s largest universities align themselves with other states across the country?
• Will Texans sit and watch as Texas’ flagship universities pledge their loyalties to other states?
• Will Texans stand by as our most promising student athletes are lured out of Texas by new rivals?
• Will Texans watch as our most precious resources—the great minds of the next generation—are exported to new conference institutions?

Texans must stand up and call the leadership of the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech to clear-headed thinking about the state’s future. Texas’ flagship institutions of higher learning are the guardians of the state’s future—their loyalties must first be to Texas and to her citizens. Ask these leaders to take a stand for Texas and to stop this madness that will lead to the dissolution of the Big 12 and the end of an era for Texas.

Last I checked, college football teams have about 100 players, most of whom aren’t known for “great minds,” compared to the tens of thousands of students on their campuses not playing football. But this is Texas, so let’s not let facts get in the way.

Also I don’t recall Baylor taking such umbrage when Texas Christian University joined all dem libruls in the Big East conference.

Finally, if Texas football tradition is what matters most, Baylor could still honor it by joining the West Division of the much less lucrative Conference USA, which includes four fellow Texans: the University of Texas El Paso, Rice University, University of Houston, and Southern Methodist University. That’s as many Texas schools as are currently in the Big 12.

I speak blasphemy, don’t I? Damn Californian.

Causewashing 101

Baylor’s sermon is a new twist on causewashing, which usually involves corporations adopting some charity or cause to cover up pure greed (“Do People Care? People Do”). But if self-interest disguised as state jingoism is going to work anywhere, it will work in Texas. After all, this is the state where the governor threatened to secede from the union before deciding to run for president of that same union the very next year while begging for federal aid.

So I applaud Baylor’s stand for its financial interests, and as a marketer who loves football, I admire the school’s creative approach. But there are much bigger forces in play — the financial interests of Texas A&M and other apostate Big 12 schools — so if Baylor thinks it’s going to win this game, it will need more than a few Hail Marys.

***

Check out these related articles:

• Keeping Score: Oklahoma Football $4.3 Million, Boys & Girls Club $1 Million
• Buffaloed in Boulder: University of Colorado’s New $780,000 Logo
• What Will You Start? West Virginia is Wired In

"Buy now, and I'll include this squiggly hair that appeared in the frame!"

Just read a Mashable article by daily-deal entrepreneur John Amato, who trumpets how great Groupon and other discountosaurs are for everyone (“Why Daily Deals Are Here To Stay”).

His key points: people have always loved discounts, the customer acquisition costs are relatively low compared to other methods, and the market is still maturing. He’s right on the first point, needs to provide more data for the second, and is completely off point with the third. (The market is still maturing? What’s that got to do with whether a tactic is worth employing? And isn’t that an argument to hold off until the market’s ripe?)

My thoughts: While there are certainly some businesses that benefit from offering deals, let’s not apply this tactic too broadly…

First of all, discounting devalues the product.

If you have a luxury or prestige brand, you will destroy its hard-won position with overzealous deals. Also, any kind of discounting, whether a coupon or a clearance sale, teaches consumers that they shouldn’t pay full retail, and they should simply hold off until the next sale. As advertising legend David Ogilvy once noted, discounts are addictive. Give them once to a consumer, and the consumer will want them again and again.

The second problem is that this kind of daily deal is not discriminatory enough.

A company should make special offers to the kinds of customers and the kinds of behaviors it wants. It’s a waste to offer a money-losing deal to a short-term bargain hunter who has no brand loyalty and will not return. It’s also a waste to offer a massive discount to a regular customer who was going to pay regular price anyway. A more strategic approach would be to offer special loyalty rewards to current customers, and special long-term incentives to prospective customers. And those rewards and incentives don’t have to be discounts.

There are other issues with daily deals…

Retail staff and inventory managers may be unprepared to handle rushes, and consumers are already suffering from daily deal fatigue. (I’ve personally unsubscribed from the onslaught of discount emails that were little distinguished from spam. Really, how many tanning offers do I need?)

So while daily deals offer some benefits, such as a performance-based advertising platform, they’re definitely not a good deal for everyone.

More effective than your average banner ad. (sticker graffiti by Heath Bunting)

When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad? If you’re like most people, the answer lies somewhere between “never” and “I don’t remember”…

Banner ads now boast a click-through rate of just 0.1% — in other words, only 1 out of 1,000 people who see a banner ad click on it.

Since most banner ads are sold on a CPM basis (Cost Per 1000 views) ranging from about $2 to $10, that’s one expensive click. (And, note, a click is not a sale. How you convert those $10 clicks into sales is what guys like me get paid to figure out.)

Now, you’ll find many reasons why banner ads are as popular as hockey games in Atlanta. I described a few of these reasons in my post “Stop With The Dancing Cartoons Already: 7 Tips For Better Banners”. And the reasons still stand: boring and annoying banners have compelled consumers to ignore them — or even technologically block them.

Even worse: ad blindness. The ads are there, but nobody notices. So your 1,000 “views” may be more theoretical than actual.

Now you might be thinking, any ad platform that dismal should fade away like a one-hit popstar, right? To the contrary: U.S. advertisers spent $6.23 billion on banner ads in 2010 — and that spending is growing. Which proves that drug abuse is as high as ever in America.

How do advertisers justify wasting money on banners? Easy: by disavowing the click.

Notes Todd Wasserman in Mashable.com:

“Even the staunchest defenders of banner ads concur that an average click-through rate of 0.1% is very low. But the numbers aren’t so bad, they argue, if you take into a account that not all ads are designed to be clicked. While a portion of banner ads contain a so-called ‘Call to Action’ like entry into a sweepstakes, some banners are designed for branding purposes. For instance, if Coca-Cola runs a banner on a youth-skewing site, the brand may be more interested in raising awareness than getting someone to click.”

Wait, did I just read that correctly? The ads are not designed to be clicked? I thought that was the whole revolutionary point of digital media: it’s interactive and it’s measurable. No more guessing about effectiveness, results or ROI — you just count the clicks and track the consumer’s clickstream throughout your site and beyond.

“¡Viva la revolucion!” roared the zealots. “Down with traditional media! Long live new media metrics…

…until those metrics start to suck. Then we’ll use the same lame excuses that we ridiculed traditional media for using. You know, that it’s not about immediate results, that it’s really about, um, awareness and the, uh, what’s that word? You know, it starts with a B… B-b-brand! That’s it, brand! Digital media advertising is about branding! And awareness! And did we mention branding?”

In other words, instead of $2-$10 CPM, you can generate the same results with a sticker on a lamppost.

Now, of course I believe in digital media advertising. I teach it and create it. I also believe in relics like newspaper ads, booths at conventions, and giving T-shirts to college students. You do what works — but the only way you can tell what works is by measuring it. And if the numbers start looking lower than the attendance at a Dodger game, it’s time to make new strategies, not old excuses.

One-to-one conversation, circa 1988 B.S. (before social media).

NUKE: I love winning, Crash, you hear me? I love It. Teach me everything.
CRASH: It’s time you started working on your interviews.
NUKE: What do I gotta do?
CRASH: Learn your cliches. Study them. Know them. They’re your friends. Write this down. “We gotta play ‘em one day at a time.”
NUKE: Boring.
CRASH: Of course. That’s the point. “I’m just happy to be here and hope I can help the ballclub.”
NUKE: Jesus.
CRASH: Write, write —”I just wanta give It my best shot and, Good Lord willing, things’ll work out.”

— from the 1988 classic “Bull Durham” script by Ron Shelton

I don’t get it.

For years, sports fans have complained about boring sports interviews. You know, the usual vacuous pre-game/halftime/post-game blather like, “Gotta give the other guys credit. They’re just a real good team and they just outplayed us. So we just gotta take it one game at a time and play harder and make the plays and put more points on the board.”

Almost as mind numbing as a social media conference, huh?

Then the two came together: athletes and social media and — boom goes the dynamite! — some of the athletes actually proved to have opinions and personalities. But instead of welcoming this development, sports fans and the socialrati went all Church Lady. “Oh no he didn’t!” “Oh yes he did!” “OMG what was he thinking?!”

Sure, some of the posts athletes make on social media are inane or inept. The L.A. Times just wrote a whole article on the topic today: “When Athletes Post On Twitter, Controversy Can Follow.” (You can tell things are slow in sports when Twitter is the front page story in the sports section. Yesterday, it was a story about a Pau Gasol look-alike. Really. I love my L.A. Times, but the NFL lockout better end soon before they start writing about athletic supporters. But I digress.)

What were people expecting? Have they seen Twitter lately?

Inanity and ineptitude are as common as typos. Most “Twitter Trends” look like assignments for People Magazine or the National Enquirer. I recently followed one prominent social media expert, and her tweets included musings about the weather and retweets of other people flattering her.

If that’s what the experts are doing on Twitter, what do they expect from a multimillionaire superhuman who spent most of his college years hitting other superhumans on a grassy field?

But a few unfiltered athlete tweets led to a brouhaha, which required trotting out the social media experts. And here’s what I noticed: their comments could apply to ANY medium. Check out these “insights” from the L.A. Times article:

“You can start up a business and you can build a brand very quickly. But the downside is, you can destroy a brand very quickly.” (And that’s different from television because…?)

“Some people just don’t realize the harm you can cause. Some of these processes aren’t really inherent to people who don’t do journalism.” (And that’s different from a radio interview because…?)

“The shorter the message, the easier it is to distribute and the easier it is to understand.” (And that’s different from a quick sideline quote because…?)

And that’s one of the biggest problems with the social media lovefest going on right now: treating social media like it’s something completely different.

The social mediaphiles strut and gush as if celebrity scandals and political revolutions and marketing conversations didn’t happen decades before 8% of the US adult population experimented with Twitter. (Compare that to the percentage of American adults who have experimented with other hallucinatory substances.)

And that distorted view of social media leads some people — say, professional athletes — to think that the old rules regarding traditional media don’t apply. “Oh, this Twitter thing, it’s different, right? So I don’t have to speak in clichés anymore, right? I can just be myself, right?”

It certainly doesn’t help when the “experts” start preaching “authenticity,” a word that’s so overused and abused it now carries as little weight as the word “cool.” One social media guru quoted in the L.A. Times article even said that athletes shouldn’t avoid talking about sex, politics and religion, since avoidance would be “inauthentic.” To which I say, so what? As I noted in an earlier article, many fans love the idea of “authenticity” until they actually see it.

So, sorry, Nuke, it’s time to stop listening to the fanatics who misled you into thinking social media was a special place. It’s just another medium where you can still get burned and burned badly. That means you need to keep listening to your old-school PR rep, lawyer, agent and manager: the ancient rules of decorum still apply.

Now, as a fan, I hope athletes flout the rules. I love it when they flaunt their personalities and opinions. That’s why Charles Barkley is the most watchable guy in sports journalism. That’s why media-magnet Dennis Rodman got all the movie roles and media-shy Clyde Drexler got retirement — and Rodman didn’t have Twitter around to make it happen.

As with all other media, you can get fame or get flamed. So while the equipment may have changed, the rules of the game are still the same.

cardiac arrest by the spoonful

Nice to see American capitalist ingenuity focused on what’s important:

1. Finding new ways to help Americans socialize
2. Finding new ways to help Americans become Goodyear blimps

Denny’s has taken the latter to a new level with a Maple Bacon Sundae (and based on the media attention so far, it’s been one effective publicity stunt). As Denny’s describes it in their menu:

“Bacon makes a classic ice cream sundae even more awesome. We start with maple-flavored syrup, and a scoop of rich, creamy vanilla ice cream and then a generous sprinkle of our diced hickory-smoked bacon. Add another sweet layer of syrup and vanilla ice cream topped with even more bacon and a drizzle of syrup.”

Now don’t get me wrong — I LOVE me some bacon. While I generally don’t feast on swine, I make an exception when it comes to those crispy savory strips. It’s an addiction. I know. And I should seek out a support group. I’ve switched to turkey bacon from Trader Joe’s, but have been known to sneak a strip or two of the piggy variety when no one else is looking.

That said, I do draw the line between addiction and obscenity. And the Maple Bacon Sundae deserves a solid NC-17 or NSFW or a WTF?! Here’s the nutritional breakdown as found on Denny’s own site:

Serving Size – 12 oz
Calories – 810
Fat – 40
Trans Fat – 0
Saturated Fat – 21
Cholesterol – 150
Sodium – 460
Carbohydrates – 97
Fiber – 0
Protein – 16
Sugar – 85

All for a mere $3. What a bargain!

This discovery left me speechless. For a bit. Then a song crept into my head…

My country tis of thee
land of obesity
my how you binge

Land where the people died
of foods so deeply fried
it’s gastronomical suicide
of thee I cringe

Everyone sing along! And bring a spoon…

Freddy’s Intro: Cordelia is the daughter of a colleague, an incredibly talented young writer, and a member of a rare and amazing species: a teenager who loves to read. (Quick, sample her DNA for future cloning!) Her blog Impeach the Muffins contains inspired turns of phrase and fresh perspectives undampened by such soul-anesthetizing pressures as monetization and returns on investment. In a recent post, Cordelia described the effect that Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, has had on her. Since I write about e-readers in a more clinical manner, I thought I’d share her much more colorful and heartfelt perspective…

Romance 2.0: A beach. A story. And a Freescale 532 MHz, ARM-11 90 nm processor, 32 MB main memory, 2 GB moviNAND flash storage and a 3.7 V 1530 mAh lithium polymer battery.

At first glance, Amazon’s Kindle appears like most other new technology: overly hyped and unnecessary. At least, such was my opinion when my mother forced me to accept one as an early Christmas present. I could not have been more mistaken…

The Kindle in fact is an incredibly useful device if you are looking to have crushed hopes and dreams that you had no idea you were harboring. Maybe they could make that their description: “The Kindle, implanting dreams in your brain and erasing illusions that they make come true since 2009.”

Now I’m getting ahead of myself!

When I finally got over my initial hatred of the idea that reading is actually reading even if you don’t shove your nose into the book spine and inhale deeply as often as possible, I decided to buy some books from the Kindle store. My mom had sent it to me with five Jane Austen books and The Works of Sigmund Freud along with a slew of American classics already downloaded. I skipped over these in favor an author with whom I fell in love at the age of ten when I first stole one of his books off my stepmom’s nightstand table:

David Sedaris.

David Sedaris: the man of her e-dreams. (photo by Jesse Costa/WBUR via Wikimedia Commons)

Every time I see a book of his short stories in a bookstore, I sit down in the aisle and read a few, savoring them like the last glops of cake batter on a whisk. My mother would then find me what felt like mere seconds later with a crinkly plastic Border’s bag in her hand and her cellphone wedged between her shoulder and ear. Between affirmative sounds to the person on the phone and sighs of poorly concealed frustration, she would mouth out “I’ve already paid. Let’s go.” I would plead at her with my eyes, and mouth out “Please? This one is really SO good.” (Though we’re fully capable of speech, lip-reading on both ends increased the drama of the moment that I knew would lead to parting with my precious paperback.) My mom would smile and mouth out “Next time, sweetie.” And she would hurry out to the car where she could finish her business call in peace.

My first Kindle purchase being Me Talk Pretty One Day made perfect sense. Within seconds the entire book was in my hands and I read it at top speed. Voraciously I continued to buy all of the books one by one in the Kindle store, finishing them each within hours. I watched as Sedaris evolved from a young cynical writer who shared my dark sense of humor to a bitter older man. It was this last part that crushed my dreams.

I had always secretly hoped of meeting him and laughing over all the things in common that we hated. Now that he has aged considerably, he probably won’t want random teenage girls waltzing into his house and criticizing the lack of hand soap in the bathroom.

I had always harbored the hope of meeting Sedaris and becoming his friend the way aspiring young authors dream of being mentored by J.D. Salinger. When Sedaris stated in When You Are Engulfed in Flames that he is currently 48, my heart skipped a beat. A small cry escaped from my lips. “No!” He is too old to have children and now I will never get to marry one of the Sedarises. (Yes, yes, I know that he’s gay. :) That doesn’t rule out surrogate motherhood lol. My other plan was to fall in love with one of his offspring and marry him, but alas, 48 is not past childbearing years but likely well past “desirous of baby” years.)

Logic not exactly playing into my thoughts at the moment, I cast my Kindle aside.

With one easy press of a button I had read the line that crushed years worth of dreaming built up even further by the sudden everything all-at-once magic Kindle itself. If it weren’t for the Kindle, I may not have even realized his age until my late twenties, at which point my love for Sedaris would be more subdued thanks to a childhood spent reading his stories one by one in bookstores.

The Kindle momentarily seemed so good. “Look here, your dream come true! A whole entire David Sedaris book all to yourself. Right here! Right Now!” Alas, no. The line I so often thought while reading stories of David’s experiences living in France and Tokyo, that rang so true to mine here in Argentina, “Let’s be foreign together!” will forever go unused.

About Cordelia in her own words: I am a California girl straight to the core currently spending my sophomore year of high school in Argentina. I hope one day to be an anthropologist or an investigative journalist. My baking specialties include banana choclate chip bread and rainbow cake. I don’t know anything for sure.