this is violence

If you grew up in the U.S., and were of the age to be interested in such things at the time, you know the video game Super Mario Bros. 2 as this:

A sunny game where tossing root vegetables were about as subversive as it got. It was an odd game, weird even, but enjoyable and operating in reality familiar enough that it’s oddness was entertaining rather than threatening.

But if you lived in Japan at the same time, you knew a different game.

This version looked and sounded almost identical to the original, but the surface level appearance was just the first of designer Miyamoto’s traps. This sequel was a game where the laws of physics were changed on a whim, where identical objects might save you or kill you without rhyme or reason, where birds swim and jellyfish fly, where you have to make a choice between playing as a character with soap for shoes, or one with lead boots, and where being lulled into believing the skills you acquired in the first game were transferable was part of a well planned nightmare. It’s rumored that Miyamoto was depressed when designing this version which has been described alternately as a cruel puzzle, a mean practical joke, or the video game equivalent of absinth: a bitter and acquired taste, that will possibly leave you insane.

Whether or not the stories of Miyamoto’s depression are true, I can empathize. I’ve been in a sort of Japanese Mario 2 headspace lately myself. Having spent the last ten years working with brands online, I find myself struggling lately to understand, or at least to clearly articulate the difference between the rabid success of Twitter vs. the success of brands ON Twitter. The success of Facebook vs. the success of brands ON Facebook. Or for that matter, the success of the web vs. the success of brands ON the web. The relationship between these things is clearly not coupled but we seem to operate as though they are.

With this on my mind, Mark Olson’s post “Authenticity vs. Authority” from a couple days ago was something I feel like should have left me feeling enlightened. I follow each of the people he spoke with, and respect all them. It’s a topic Dave (@pampelmoose) and I talk about, or around, regularly at Nemo. And it’s at the heart of my dilemma in explaining how and what makes a brand successful online to my clients. But reading it, I didn’t feel enlightened, I felt frustrated. It’s not the article, or the people quoted. They all say their usual smart things, but I finished the article and Brian Solis’ continuation of the topic and left both thinking: “So?”

It’s not that I think this is a dumb question, or that I’m not interested in their answers – eloquent answers I could repeat back to clients and sound far smarter than I actually am. It’s that I’m no longer sure we’re playing the game I thought we were. When someone like Olson asks the question “Authenticity vs. Authority” the basic premise of the question is framed around how a business relates to its customer (“consumer” in his post, but I hate that word). The question exists in an online reality that is more like the U.S. version of Mario 2: strange and weird, but ultimately familiar or at least operating by the rules we’ve come to expect. Recently though I’ve begun to question whether or not these rules even exist online.

In his response to Solis’ post, Dave brings it back to a familiar concept: …once we realize that technology merely shortens the distance between us, and while ’social networking’ online we are simply engaged in the same activity that we pursue offline, perception, then, ought to [be] almost identical…Any normal person therefore ought to do the same thing when they come across a blog or someone’s Tweets, Facebook page et al – use the gut check or better still Google them or tweet search them”

This of course rings true to me, and I think it’s a basic tenet of what both Mark and Brian are talking about.

I’m left wondering in the end if it’s ultimately possible for a business to pass this gut check test of authenticity without also acknowledging that they’re trying to make a sale. But then in acknowledging this motivation, do they destroy the type of peer-to-peer relationship that has become the hallmark of everything great about the web. Is that jaded? When we look at Mark’s question of “authenticity vs. authority” or Brian’s list of other possible dichotomies

Believability vs. Transparency
Contribution vs. Engagement
Participation vs. Conversation
Hearing vs. Listening
Connections and Collaboration vs. Relationships
Humanizing vs. Being Human

I end up wondering: are we trying to understand the nature of the human to human relationship dynamics or the ruleset by which we market, the hoops brands must jump through to make the sale? And if they’re just the new rules, is anything really different? Are we just playing a new game with the skill set we learned in a previous version? More scary though to me is that I’m beginning to think these rules we seek might not be static and that there might be little rhyme or reason to them. We operate with the assumption there is a static and fixed logic to the the environment we’re operating in and that once we understand it, we can craft and bend and will situations and relationships to suit our clients needs. But what if there isn’t? What everyday represents the possibility of a completely new world with new relationships and new dynamics?

Ultimately, it’s of little use to me to sit back a question the role or existence of these concepts. I still have to go to work tomorrow, and I still need to help businesses understand and hopefully succeed on the web. But I can’t help but wonder if the web has left us with a case-by-case world where attempting to codify, or simplify, or generalize the rules aren’t the answer but a sneaky Miyamoto-like trap. Maybe not every brand can have the sort of human-like, authentic interaction I’d like to believe they can. Maybe success for some is simply facilitating these relationships between others. Perhaps the only real solution is to slow down, and look at each brand and each challenge as completely unique with it’s own set of rules that are based solely on the specific combination of the time and space each brand exists in.