Two quick stories:

Story One:
I think I had a fairly common high-school experience: I got by okay, though I was not what one would call “popular”, I was an average student, and for the most part I found the U.S. school system, like most social systems, to be designed to support the personality types of those who designed it. I did had a private studio in the basement of the school where I spent about 1/3 of my days doing “self-guided” (read: alone) industrial design study. While I can’t say high-school was the torment for me it was for some of my friends, I would say it was decidedly NOT the “best years of my life”.

Story Two:
In 2000 I found a design website called Extra Lucky run by then San Jose based designer Joe Stewart. After exchanging a couple emails, I began writing for the site, and at the same time started a near daily conversation with Joe that has lasted almost a decade, through his time in New York during and after September 11th, though two cross country moves, my engagement, his first child, and next week my participation in his wedding. Important to note though: we’ve been in the same room exactly 5 times in those 10 years.

I bring this up in response to several articles about or around Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop who recently described the social web as leading to “transient relationships”, “dehumanizing” community life and, causing a general loss of “social skills”. His commentary came up after the suicide of Megan Gillan who overdosed on sleeping pills after being bullied on the social network Bebo. What’s troubling to me though about the Archbishops position, and those that support him, is that by focusing on the social network specifically, or the web broadly, they’re hoisting up a convenient straw-man at the expense of actually helping anyone while trying to tear down the a major support system for a lot of people.

In George Pitchers article in the Telegraph he asserts that there is something fundamentally different and fundamentally less human now in society than we were pre-internet. But while it’s undoubtedly true that the world is different, I’m not sure we can honestly say it’s any less human. The logic here assumes that relationships we have in person are somehow intrinsically more profound than those we have online. Anyone who’s worked for any length of time in advertising, where “friend” gets tossed around with great freedom, knows this is not the case. More importantly to the subject at hand, anyone who’s ever been to high school also knows this isn’t the case. So while I met my finance in person, in high school, most of my communication with my actual friends is over IM these days. I’ve met more people face to face that I first connected with on Twitter this last year than I met total in the previous 3 or 4. I’m just not sure we can point to any specific coloration between relationships online and off in terms of quality. Though my feeling is that this has less to do with technology and much more to do with our notion of “friend”. In Andrew Keen’s article Social Media Can Open Our Eyes to the Value of Physical Life Robert Scoble says of the effects of the web on society “What we are really yearning for is intimacy”. But has that ever not been the case? I have to wonder if we what ascribe to social media, or the web isn’t a new problem at all, but rather something we’re only just openly talking about, perhaps ironically, because of the social web. Was there ever a time when we didn’t yearn for realness? If we’re to look back fondly on a time before the web, don’t we also have to acknowledge the very dark, isolating nature of those times too? History has a funny way of remembering the winners, those for whom the system worked, while quickly forgetting those that didn’t succeed, those that got lost along the way.

Ultimately though, I wonder if the Archbishop is even asking the right question. Whether or not social networking, or the web, Bebo, or any of it is “dehumanizing” us is moot. For better or worse, this is a major component of human communication now; and the reality is that what it provides isn’t a less human relationship but rather a different type of relationship, and for many people, a better type of relationship. I say better because for the most part human social systems are designed by people for whom society already works and everyone else either learns to deal with it or gets left behind. The web has been the exception. It has become the place where those who might have stayed in the corners can and do have a voice, and more importantly, can create social systems that make sense to them. So while the relationships developed online might not look real, or useful, or complete to those getting by with society the way it is, they are clearly tremendously valuable to many people and by understanding this and acknowledging it rather than demonizing it, we can turn our attention to helping those who actually need it rather than wasting our time lamenting technology.

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.

Not like faux dive, this place is actually beat down. It’s in a basement, so the ceiling is maybe 7 feet high. The food is, objectively speaking, terrible. The furniture is ruined. The TV’s displaying the lyrics are all shot, and audio system, at least while I was there, was blown and would regularly cut out. A problem when your angle is karaoke. It’s hot, it’s cramped, it’s filthy.

“you can only eat this when singing”

And it’s wonderful.

It is, in my mind, literally the finest karaoke bar in the city, and as far as I know, the world. The reason is Sean the KJ.

“Sean, the KJ”

Sean runs the Hutch like it’s his personal party. Everything he does, he does to make sure that people are singing, and dancing and having fun. He will sing your backing vocals. If you get yourself in a tight spot on a song, he’ll grab a mic and get you through it. A couple times a night, he’ll get out there and do a song himself. When Im at the hutch I feel like I’m in Seans basement, and he’s made the party just for me and my friends, and I’m pretty sure everyone in there feels the same, from the 50-something guy who looks like life has been rough and sings the same song every time, to the Reed College kids.

The thing is, I think we all have somewhere like the Hutch, that place that by normal measure should be awful, but we love it because it’s a great experience. The Hutch isn’t great because it’s a dive, it’s great because it’s unabashedly what it is. It’s great because Sean is passionate about what he does and it comes through.

* * *

Thursday night was Nemos “Who Killed Social Media” event featuring our own Dave Allen (@pampelmoose), Tony Welch (@frostola) from HP (one of our clients), James Todd (@jwtodd), Lee Crane (@leecrane) and Matt Savarino (@ridertech) all talking about social media, the social web, and the difference between the two. Amber Case has a great account of the evening here, or you can listen to a recording of the event here.

What surprised me most though were the conversations and questions, both at the event and on Twitter, about specific tools. “What tools we’re going to be the next big thing?”, “Do all clients need all these tools?”, “Is Twitter just a fad?”, “What happens when the cool people leave Twitter?” and so on. I had a lengthy conversation with a couple people over Twitter over “what do I do if I know my clients customers aren’t using social media?”

I think some people left the evening a little disappointed by the lack of clear answers on these fronts, but I also think that was largely the point. While obviously provocative, there is a lot of truth to Dave’s title for the event.

While some people may have been hoping for more answers, I think the lack of any clear directive regarding tools could be taken accurately as being indicative that is no answer to give. When you ask “what’s going to be the next big thing?” you’re questioned is based on the assumption that being there early is somehow connected to success. I was talking about this with my friend Rob (@therob) and he put the problem with this line of thinking very well: “A rising tide doesn’t raise all boats, in fact the waves that follow may actually drown you.” Meaning, just because you’re there early doesn’t mean that your status is tied to the elevation of the technology, and in fact, as people flood the system it may be easy to over look the people already there. My point is this: by looking to specific technology as an answer, you’re focusing on possibly the LEAST important thing.

So when Dave talks about brands needing a community manager, I think a key take away from that is that it’s not a twitter manager, or a facebook manager, it’s a person to look out for the health of your community and their relationship with your brand. Yes, having an understanding of the current technology is important, but think about where we were just a couple years ago: Twitter was tiny, MySpace was still relevant. More important is having an understanding of how to engage with people, how create a conversation and be part of that conversation. The web is dynamic, and so is your audience and their relationship with technology. So rather than asking “what’s the next big thing?” to a panel, ask your customer. Good brand experiences aren’t built out of technology, they’re built out of intent. They’re built out of people like Sean. Before anything else, you need to be focused on creating and facilitating great experiences, and that isn’t about technology.