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Just make this annoying thing go away.
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Just make this annoying thing go away.
You’ll often notice guys in airports, washrooms, cafés, etc., talking loud on their phones, disrupting conversations everywhere.
You’ll also often notice that these are often powerful-looking guys: business-types, tall maybe, expensive phones, etc. In fact, you might even have a situation in mind. I know I can think of a few.
Sometimes, these scenes go on for a long time– so long that everyone around them starts looking around at each other. Knowing glances pass between tables.
Then, everyone kind of shrugs, thinking “well, what can you do?”
Watch a scene like this sometime– you won’t have to wait long before it happens. Everyone wants to tell these guys to shut up, but nobody does. No one steps up to the plate because no one wants to be “that asshole,” or because they’re embarrassed or don’t want to be told off.
But these scenes aren’t just random acts of social violence. None of it is not a coincidence. The reason these guys have these symbols of success is because they have balls. They’re willing to do what other people aren’t, have extreme confidence, and get by because of it. It’s why these guys get where they are today, why they have the expensive clothes, the phones, and the loud voice.
They flaunt their status and ignore social cues that their behaviour is undesired. Maybe they feel they’ve earned the right to do so, I dunno.
But no one ever told them no.
This happened to me one time on the Camino de Santiago with an old German guy. He was talking on his phone really loud in a dormitory filled with about 50 people. Everyone was looking at him. They wanted to sleep, but he didn’t care.
I walked up to him in my underwear, about 60+ hours of tattoo work in full view, and gestured for him to fucking close his phone immediately.
He left the room. People started laughing. Everyone was grateful.
Please take this story to heart.
Nobody else will ever say anything, ever. It has to be you.
Filed by Julien at 1:28 pm under community, culture, social hacks
4 Comments
Update: Aaron Wall left an epic comment here which adds significantly to the discussion. Click here to see it (it’s #55).
I remember having a conversation with Chris, sitting in Café Méliès in Montreal one time, talking about business. We had an idea for a private forum. This was a few years ago, I think– maybe even before the book.
We would base is on Aaron Wall’s private SEO community, base it on our expertise in social media etc. We’d split whatever money we made, pay any blogger who wanted to be an affiliate. The idea was simple, but good and scalable. It would make a lot of money if we did it right. So we called Brian Clark– he was doing Teaching Sells at the time. He said, “Good stuff. I’m in.”
The joke is, Chris and I never did it… at least, not in that format. :)
Much later, Third Tribe would be released– pretty much the same thing we talked about. Good on Brian for actually having the initiative. :) Aaron Wall’s forum would increase in price, from $100 to $300 per month (still a good value IMHO) and continue to grow. Chris would launch Kitchen Table Companies and other private communities of the same type.
Except I’ve been talking to Mark O’Sullivan at the exceptional Vanilla Forums, who says that big web personalities are asking him about private forums for their sites. I’ve been interviewing Brett Rogers, who funds his documentaries partially by having people come along on his adventures. And I’ve just started working with Martin Berkhan, who can’t handle the flood of questions people ask him about his workout and nutrition methods because they seem to work so well.
What is there was a solution to this? I think there is. But let’s veer off for a second.
Something big changed with the web. We could create personal brands, broadcast ourselves for free, and create a following. Except if we got popular, we started not being able to pay attention to everyone anymore. This is normal.
I’m thinking of Richard Nikoley. His (successful) experiment with not washing his hair for two years has led to articles in the Chicago Tribune and other places. He can’t handle the emails he gets anymore. Also Chris Guillebeau, who recently got 800 comments on a post he put out.
As Aaron Wall has said, popularity is an inequality between supply and demand. You solve it by raising price.
Books and conferences are price points– they are old methods that people are used to and don’t flinch at. I use both, and they work well. But there’s a problem with them.
Middlemen take over the old methods. They live as parasites off what you and I produce. Many of them do it without adding any value whatsoever.
There is something missing from Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans method. It is fine for artists, for producers of actual artifacts, artists, etc. This is one reason Seth Godin’s Domino Project is so interesting. It cuts middlemen out. But it still requires the creation of an artifact… of a product.
I believe that what people want when they read your book, when they come to see you speak, or sing, or when they buy art from you– I believe that what they actually want is you.
This method has worked for authors before. Gary Vee and Tim Ferriss basically sold 1-on-1 time with them in exchange for bulk book purchases. This has the advantage of making them look big to a mainstream audience, but the end result is the same. People often want them, not the book. Same with all the people I mentioned who do amazing things.
Your audience wants to be a part of your life. Maybe, in some cases, you should let them.
Here is another assertion which I might be a bit shocking.
The web naturally creates an ecosystem of micro-stars, like television, but doesn’t necessarily have a way to turn this into a living. If you keep answering emails, forever, you become exhausted and your personal time is sucked out of your life.
The solution is paid access.
Of course, you don’t want to monetize your strong ties. That would be insane. The social norms space stays pure. You don’t pay your wife for the nice dinner she made.
But weak ties, by definition, take more than they give. They do not, as many people say, “pay in terms of attention,” except in huge masses which become unwieldy because of a new kind of demand– bug fixes, emails, etc.
Here is my theory. Once supply and demand of personal access are no longer equal, solving it through price not only helps you maintain a solid personal life but accelerates the process of popularity, by helping you free your time and do cooler shit.
A new stream of income means more freedom, which turns into a more interesting life, which turns into more popularity, which turns into more income, etc. A virtuous circle.
Of course, most of what you do is free and public. That’s one level of access. But I think that you should turn on different levels as well. Everyone in social media right now wants books and speaking gigs. You only get those at a certain level of popularity, but you could turn lesser levels on as well. Forum access, email access, Skype access– any of these could become an income stream for various types of web personalities.
But wait!, I hear you saying. Let’s say some of these weak ties become strong ties! What do we do then? Well, easy. Stop monetizing them. We could call this the dinner party rule– if you’d invite someone to dinner, then they should have free access to you. This impacts the bottom line, but that’s natural with friendships– wanted, even. Besides, friendship is more valuable than $47 a month or whatever.
Look, this post has already gotten much longer than I thought it would. I could go on forever about this– it’s so logical to me that I could argue it until the cows come home. But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll ask you what you think, and to spread it if you think the idea is interesting or worth talking about. Tweet or subscribe below.
By the way, I don’t know if it’s something I personally want to do– although I’m pretty sure I could. Maybe you could too, once your audience reaches a certain mass. Wouldn’t that be easier than trying to get a frikkin book deal or becoming a social media expert? Besides, I suspect there’s only enough of those to go around.
Filed by Julien at 11:09 am under business, community, experiments, social media, trends
70 Comments
In The Nature of the Graph earlier this week, I talked about friction– ie, transaction costs– inside groups and how they impact the efficiency of groups.
A transaction cost within a financial relationship can be a lot of things: from a broker taking 10% to a lawyer drafting a contract. We have to pay these over and over, but they allow us to deal with a much wider group of strangers than was previously possible.
Within social situations, friction takes other forms– we have to build a relationship instead of trusting a middleman. Once we’ve built it, though, it’s there forever, so costs are reduced. One could also argue that maintaining the relationship is a kind of upkeep cost, but I’m thinking that social upkeep is cheaper than paying fees over and over again.
But what happens when people don’t comply with contracts?
Legal contracts are simple– clauses are outlined and noncompliance results in consequences that are written in black and white. They’re usually pretty severe, which is why we don’t break them.
Social contracts, in contrast, have lower transaction costs, but something scarier happens when we break them– we get ostracized from the group. So in a situation where community has been built, we chance lose everything we built.
That’s the interesting thing about community. It makes things easier but it also puts us more at risk.
I would say that 1000 years ago, the community may have been weaker than the market. But that was mostly due to their shorter reach– after all, currency travels farther than favours. But now that they can be global, community is once again very valuable.
What do you think?
Filed by Julien at 5:14 pm under community
3 Comments
Everybody needs a Craig Silverman.
I’ve just started going to a neighbourhood Crossfit gym. My roommate had been into the system for a while (which is like an intense, military-style workout that pushes you FAR beyond your comfort zone), and I’d been once, but I was slacking until Craig called me up last month to tell me he’d be going.
So I went with Craig that first time, and I’ve been back several times since. Why? Because he exerts just the right amount of social pressure.
It’s so important to have a support network for any change you’re trying to achieve in your life. But if you can’t have a whole group, you at least need one person– someone who will harass the hell out of you to make sure you’ll do it, especially until it becomes a habit.
So how does Craig do it? Here’s how today’s conversation Twitter went, just to give you an example:
Craig: “so 5pm today, right?”
Me: “fuuuuuck FINE”
Craig: “atta girl”
There it is. Bullying? Check. Insulting? Check. Accusation of wussiness? Yup, that’s there too.
You could never treat your child like this, or your girlfriend/boyfriend like this, but you know what? Sometimes it’s necessary.
You need to be that person, or find them. You’ll be happy you did.
Oh and Craig, I hate you.
Filed by Julien at 2:28 pm under community
2 Comments
The other week I was hanging out at a bar with a few friends and someone asked me about a project.
Basically the idea was this– how to build a community around a filmmaker so that they could thereafter fund a film project if they thought it had merit. (A little bit like Kickstarter does now.)
I explained that this was what Chris was (and is) able to do. That’s the power of the platform– to direct attention wherever you’d like it to be, compounding the chances of success for each of your successive projects.
Anyway, my friend was unconvinced. But another was like “Have you ever read his book?” (Like most good friends, almost no one there had.) :) But then Eric, the one that had read it, said something in such a clear way that it’s changed the way I think about it myself. He said:
“Listen, imagine all of your friends get phones. What are you going to do, sit around waiting for a letter all day? Or are you going to get a phone?”
I’ve now totally internalized this idea– and told Eric that I was grateful he wasn’t on the web a lot, or he would have my job. ;)
The way I think about it is this– when people think of a project they want to do, they go out and try to rouse interest and meet people that are doing it. I mean, it’s only natural, right? Go find people that can help.
What does work is to build something with a large network early, before you need it. Meet all kinds of people, no matter who they are. Be generous all the time, before you ever need anything. Go where the people are beforehand, and you’ll know them well if the time comes where you’re in need.
All of this relates extremely well to careers, btw.
Think about it another way. When you go to a house party, do you just go to the fridge and grab a bunch of beer? Or do you bring your own to the party? How you’re seen will depend on what kind of person you are. Decide accordingly.
Filed by Julien at 11:27 am under community
4 Comments
Fucking Facebook is starting to piss me off. Between 1-3 times per day, it’s now sending me notes that people I no longer really wanted contact with (mostly during my highly awkward high school phase) want to be my friends again– whether they were in the first place, who knows.
I’ve already sacrified present and future privacy to the internet. It probably knows all of my friendships, acquaintances, relationships, and wrongdoings over the past 5+ years. Now, it wants access to my past as well.
I remember a point in human history where we had the opportunity to leave the person we were behind as we moved forward. Now, this is being lost… and I’m not sure it’s with consent.
Filed by Julien at 12:19 am under community, random
11 Comments
My 150th show, done from the balcony of a hotel room during SXSW 2007. The state and future of the web and of media personalities, my position within the structure, and where I hope to be. It all came out.
This was a great show to do.
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Filed by Julien at 1:30 pm under community, hip hop, music, podcast, travel, trends
14 Comments
w00t, so I was tagged by Bill and Charlotte for this 7 song thing. You basically choose songs that you’re enjoying right now, share them through the post, and then spread it to more people. Here are mine. All of them I’ve discovered recently– I hope you like them:
I tag the following 7 people: Patrick, Anji, Clyde, Marko, Emcee, Ed, and Leesa.
Filed by Julien at 4:25 pm under community, music
3 Comments
So I’m in San Francisco right now, chilling in a house we rented with Patrick and a certain girl. The next few days involve recording a podcast and general vacationing, getting together with some Podshow peeps and listeners to the show. Yesterday was Flickr’s 3rd anniversary party, which was super fun.
The Podcamp Toronto thing thatweall organized was seriously awesome. Here’s a few things I learned:
1) Mitch said one thing that I suspect will ring true for us a number of years from now– that social networks and dating sites will soon cause a drastic drop in the divorce rate.
2) Twitter is all over the place! Chris Brogan had it on his slides; Chris Penn did too. Scoble just added his 700+ fans to his friends list, as a radical listening experiment. This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen someone do in 2007.
3) Podcasting may finally be ready to move beyond the simple monetization methods that have long held the medium hostage. Through ourTrust Economies session I feel that some momentum is pushing the idea of networks-as-ROI forward. Take a look at the video here (it requires Quicktime), and please leave your comments if you’re so inclined– I’d love to hear them.
Filed by Julien at 9:23 pm under community, podcasting, projects, travel, trends
6 Comments
Holy crap, this is nuts. Talib Kweli, a conscious rapper best known for his work in Black Star with Mos Def (but also his albums Quality and The Beautiful Struggle), just joined Second Life.
Go read it on his website. This is nuts. Here’s his island.
Filed by Julien at 12:23 am under community, hip hop, trends
1 Comment
