We have our orderly collections, sometimes in real space, and sometimes captured in pixels or digital files. All give us ways to display what we want others to know about us.
Several years ago I wrote a essay wondering if we were done collecting. At that time it was easy to notice that online music and “the cloud” had replaced music collections that used to line our walls. The question was then answered in the affirmative, but I’m having second thoughts. The impulse to convert our passions into materials that elaborate our lives seems deeper than I knew. Most of us are active curators. We just don’t think of ourselves with a word used to denote a person who decides what should hang on a gallery’s white walls. And yet we have our orderly collections, sometimes in real space, and sometimes captured in pixels or digital files. Collecting has its own internal rewards. But I’m impressed with how many of us want to show off our passions to others.
This is obvious to any user of Facebook, Instagram or other forms of social media. Facebook dramatically displays images of ourselves and the things and images we will allow to stand in for us. Selfies in particular can become galleries presenting the self-conscious self. We also use social media to relay pieces of the culture that we want others to like as much as we do. Most of the time a post includes a moment when we at least ask ourselves the central curatorial question: Is this post worth my association with it?
Older forms of personal curating continue as well. Model railroaders curate their collections with the passion of medievalists working at the Met. Guitarists rarely have just one instrument; most acquisitions represent a new point on their own learning curve. A lot of of us can’t resist a rare find carefully brought home to gather dust next to others like it. Even a few of us have tattoos forever memorializing moments when exuberance exceeded caution.
You probably live near a town known for its antique emporiums, used book stores and flea markets. All are ready to sell everything from art-deco ashtrays to old lobby posters promoting films. Those stores are a reminder that while we may be done hunting for the basics of life, we are still eagerly gathering.
Alas, after the original curator of a collection leaves the scene, our collections may end up packed away in the attics of our still puzzled heirs.
Collecting turns out to be an acceptable way to have too much stuff. Jay Leno has over a hundred rare cars. Retired newsman Jim Lehrer collects old buses. One of my grandmothers had a prominent display of miniature spoons with the names of such exotic places as Salt Lake City and Tulsa.
But collecting can also have a social function of representing something we hold close to our core identity. The stuff that stays around is emblematic of an individual’s enthusiasms: an expression of a personal aesthetic that still has meaning.
And so we reach the communication angle. In some way a collection on display stakes a claim about who we are. It marks crucial antecedents. We use things to be proxies of our unique affinities and aspirations. I could bore you with the reason a large model Rio GrandeRailroad boxcar is my own Renoir. But it’s enough to note that it sits on a shelf in a ‘man cave,’ ready to be the trigger for a story that is almost never requested.
Alas, like meaning, collections are not easily transferable. After the original curator of any collection leaves the scene, those carefully chosen pieces may end up packed away in the attics of our still puzzled heirs.
As a Wal-Mart executive noted at a recent marketing conference, “the customer is in control,” meaning individuals now have social media power to disrupt a marketing campaign.
The recent uproar about data mining on Facebook and elsewhere can easily leave us with the impression that consumers not only have little privacy, but that they are also pawns in the hands of shrewd marketers. There is truth to these fears. Online users do have less privacy; and sometimes we are the victims of campaigns that can seem to make us easy marks. Russian online disinformation is, without doubt, a serious threat to our sovereignty. But as is true with so many claims about advertising and marketing, we often assume an organization or company has more control than is actually the case. Like all of us, advertisers have been brought low of internet contagion that sabotages their best efforts.
For example, several years ago the marketing staff managing the beer Bud Light decided to tinker with the labeling. Building on a campaign running in multiple media and using the slogan, “Up for Whatever,” the label on some products was redesigned to include an additional hashtag and bold letter wording that said “The Perfect Beer for Removing ‘No’ From Your Vocabulary for the Night.” Obviously, the campaign was meant to appear relevant and responsive to quips that fly between users of social media. But since beer drinkers are often younger adults, it might have been expected that a social media backlash could result. And it did. Complaints poured in. Anheuser-Busch-InBev was forced to formally apologize, acknowledging heightened sensitivities about unwanted sexual advances abetted by too much alcohol, especially on college campuses. New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey was one of many Americans to express their displeasure on Twitter. She asked followers to write the company “if you agree” that the “Up for Whatever” “campaign should promote responsible—not reckless—drinking.” Her hashtag was #NoMeansNo. In a follow-up e-mail to the New York Times she noted that “We need responsible companies to help us tackle these serious public health and safety problems, not encourage them.” That was enough for an Anheuser representative to admit that “the message missed the mark, and we regret it.”
The Customer is now in control.
To be sure, this was a small moment in the nation’s busy marketing landscape. But it is representative of how quickly a campaign that seeks to tie itself into social media can go off the rails. As a Wal-Mart executive noted at a recent marketing conference, “the customer is in control,” meaning that individuals now have the social media power to disrupt a marketing campaigns that might have once unfolded with no mechanisms for immediate public rejection.
With this view in mind, a couple of short observations:
Trump the tweeter may his own worst enemy. When the time between a thought and its dissemination is nearly simultaneous, there are bound to be unanticipated and unwanted effects. His tweets are like firecrackers landing at the feet of revelers. A few may be delighted; most others are horrified.
Strong opinions made anonymously generally deserve their fate of quickly disappearing in the internet maw.
The old adage to never argue with an organization that buys ink by the barrel is no longer so accurate. Quarreling with a media outlet carries fewer risks.
All of us want to believe–and most marketing organizations sell the idea–that there are clear pathways to managing public opinion. But social media contagion can be triggered by nearly anyone from almost any corner of the culture.
This is obvious to any user of Facebook, Instagram or other forms of social media. Facebook dramatically displays images of ourselves and the things and images we will allow to stand in for us. Selfies in particular can become galleries presenting the self-conscious self. We also use social media to relay pieces of the culture that we want others to like as much as we do. Most of the time a post includes a moment when we at least ask ourselves the central curatorial question: Is this post worth my association with it?
And so we reach the communication angle. In some way a collection on display stakes a claim about who we are. It marks crucial antecedents. We use things to be proxies of our unique affinities and aspirations. I could bore you with the reason a large model Rio Grande Railroad boxcar is my own Renoir. But it’s enough to note that it sits on a shelf in a ‘man cave,’ ready to be the trigger for a story that is almost never requested.
The Customer is now in control.