PurpleCar

Antony Mayfield shares a great little technique we can all use to break up the social flow of a stressful situation, which gives us a chance to redirect that flow and sail toward a better outcome:

The best question you can ask: How fascinating! What can I learn from this? | Open (minds, finds, conversations)….

Basically the technique is this: when in a stressful situation, stop, throw your hands up in the air and shriek, “How fascinating! What can I learn from this?”

Sure, it may seem a bit strange but it definitely could be construed as within the normal range of behavior. I can see such an action being very helpful in lots of different situations. Go give his story a read, it’s fascinating, and we can learn something from it!

More Fake Twitter Followers Than You May Think puts up a “fake follower” chart and score for major political figures and brands. The chart suggests that places like CNN, ESPN and Facebook paid services to boost their follower level.

The evidence isn’t clear. Twitter’s own account seems to have 37% of fake followers. I doubt the official Twitter account on its own service would have a need or a care about boosting its follower numbers. That stat alone makes the data seem quite iffy.

Business owners pull me aside at whatever cocktail hour or charity event we’re both attending and ask me about follower numbers. I usually advise pretty strongly against it, because more tech is coming out for users to query your account for fake accounts and that loss of trust can be damaging. On the other hand, Behavioral Economics researchers have noticed that people are more likely to engage in behaviors that they feel as though the majority of their peers are doing. For example, major hotel chains figured out that guest complied more with a sign that said “[the majority]% of guests staying here opted to hang dry their towels to help save the environment” than with a sign that simply said, “Please hang dry your towels for re-use in order to help save the environment.”

In that sense, more followers, the pure numbers, may help initially to bolster your numbers. We all seem obsessed with follower numbers. Popularity-ranking apps like Klout and Kred weigh follower numbers heavily into their algorithms. The real drive, though, isn’t about numbers on any one platform. I tell business owners to just slowly and steadily build up their audience until they have a core crowd of believers, then deliver useful content to that core group.

AdAge and other brand watchers have long noticed that major products and companies can’t seem to get anywhere near the follower numbers of celebrities. There’s a reason for this: companies/brands ARE NOT PEOPLE. We’re just not all that interested in interacting with what are essentially buildings. The integrity of the relationship just doesn’t exist; one just cannot speak with a brand.

There’s only so much interaction from the public that businesses can expect. Email marketing still seems to be trumping tweets for generation, so small businesses should concentrate on building up and respecting that list, using Twitter as a niche add-on.

Fake followers are easy and cheap, but will they really buy you the exposure you want? Yelling into more darkness is just as effective as yelling into a small bit. You’re still yelling to a non-existent crowd. Best to keep things on the up-and-up and build your follower numbers the old fashioned way: slowly, surely and with great content.

Fans. Meet Shit.

A bunch of unsuspecting fans got hit with piles and piles of shit this week, and it seems all the corners of the Internet have been sprayed with putrid muck. I’d like to weigh in on the controversies like the Scientific American writer/editor story and the tragic story of the 12-year-old girl in Florida that took her own life after being bullied. I’d like to talk about how my women friends are rallying behind a “imwithshea” Facebook page set up to support another girl who received anonymous and threatening texts.

But everything I want to say about these things is considered unacceptable. My words will seem crass to the ‘net-polizzi . My responses about sexual harassment especially come out as victim-blaming. My words seem biting when I write about getting harassed via anonymous sites like ask.fm and Pinger.

The Right Answers

I know the proper things to say about these subjects. I know the right answer is that sites like ask.fm and Pinger shouldn’t exist. I know the other right answer is that children should act more empathetically and not send harassing notes through anonymous sites. I know that men should never use their position of power to influence an underling to listen to their sexual woes or intimidate them for sexual favors.

Yes, in an ideal world, none of this shit would ever hit any fans, because none of it would happen. In an ideal world, men would not push their power around, and children would not be cruel to each other. Despite decades of consciousness about the banality of men and the barbarity of children, we are still not living in the Eden we’d been promised. Let’s talk about the harassment that is here in this world now.

Sexual Harassment Engine

Yet we mustn’t ever speak of the reality. We mustn’t ever learn how to handle the huge piles of shit that are in our way, because, you know, the Eden people say the shit shouldn’t be there in the first place.

The idealists may acquiesce 1 point: we can go after the technologies and systems which allowed the shit to pile up in the first place. Hell, we can even go after the fans that are spreading shit everywhere. We can shut down apps. We can penalize companies that don’t fire these slime ball bosses. Indeed, if the Twitter and Facebook storms are any indication, whole contingents are working on these solutions.

In the meantime, am I not permitted to ask what it is we ourselves can do in situ? Is the young freelancer to endure an inappropriate tirade from the next powerful editor, with no immediate recourse or resource within herself? Is she supposed to sit there, stunned that she has happened upon fecund fistfuls of feces that shouldn’t be there?

I feel deeply sorry for this young woman with the bad editor. She wasn’t at all prepared. But my question is thus: Why wasn’t she prepared? Yes, yes, the world shouldn’t be sexist or bullying or harassing. Some of us are working to fix that. (Hint: we need more male allies). But in the meantime, why was this woman shocked? Why was she a deer in the headlights? Why was *I* a deer in headlights when it happened to me, more times than I can count? Why are we raising girls to be deer in headlights?

It Happens

Preparing our girls for dangerous situations isn’t permitting or accepting said dangers. Reality exists. Shit happens. The cold, hard fact is we need to recognize when a meeting is going nowhere quick. That writer had no chance with placing any pieces with that editor. The editor was interested in only 1 thing: sex. The writer, by her own account, sat there, listening to the editor’s lurid narrative, holding on to the hope that she could salvage the working relationship.

Herein lies the flaw. Here’s where we raised-to-please women go wrong. Men seem to have the freedom to ditch a social situation as soon as the situation warrants it. We think if we seem empathetic and caring that we can cleverly and imperceptibly slip out of the dangerous grasps and terrorizing disapproval of these predators. We women think we can turn things around. We need to recognize when we have no chance.

Hopefully next time that talented young writer can instantly recognize the situation for what it is: a set-up. Hopefully next time she can voice her disdain as soon as the conversation goes awry. Hopefully next time she doesn’t enable one more second of an asswipe’s behavior. No job is worth it, and there is always another path to success. (Advanced Warrior status: stay and record said asswipe’s harassment and present it to asswipe’s organization.)

Don’t Equate

Don’t generalize what I am saying here to situations of rape or any other forcible, repeated physical abuse. Don’t seethe crazy over what I’m saying. The woman was in a cafe. She was not being held down by anything but her own false (but originally reasonable) hopes. Yes, the pile of shit shouldn’t have been sitting across the table from her. But we can all learn to recognize the smell a bit more quickly and hightail ourselves out and away. We can accept the reality while still working toward the fantasy. These are not mutually exclusive endeavors.

UPDATE + more rant I’m not supposed to publish: I’m already receiving upset comments on Facebook. One simply cannot address the lack of self-defense or suggest a bit of self-preservation in this environment. It’s only: “Men are not allowed to do this.”  Nothing else? We can’t discuss any of our own agency ever?

I can’t sit and read through another woman’s account of the same predator and not think, “Why put up with that behavior?” Women as well as men enabled this piece of shit’s crimes. Are we never to mention this fact? Are we never to teach women how to lay down boundaries (continuing to email or speak with a person who insists on speaking that way is not laying boundaries)? Why am I the devil and automatically a victim-blamer because I am suggesting that we women don’t have to feel like sitting ducks, waiting for shit to dump on us again? I don’t think the victims deserved any of it. I am not blaming them for anything. I am suggesting that they can, now that they are awake, learn to recognize sexual harassment and react to it accordingly. Because if we don’t, it will keep happening, as it did in the case of this Bora asswipe.  Swift and resolute reaction (when possible, if one is physically safe, obviously). That’s all I’m saying. All of these cases involve a need to please this guy in power. Remove the need to please and a lot of his power is taken away. It isn’t our fault that we don’t have that power. It isn’t our fault that we are oppressed. But there are better, more clever ways to navigate these things than kneeling down and trying to appease a sexual harassing elder. I’ll bet there are women out there who found a way to work around or without this Bora person. What did they do differently? Are we to assume Bora didn’t harass them? There are different styles. This is fact. But apparently I can never ever mention it.

Before anyone thinks I can’t possibly imagine what being harassed is like, I can guarantee you that I can, and I have more stories than I can count. I have had to leave at least 3 workplaces due to harassment. Like, lawsuit-worthy levels. I’m not kidding.

I may ask the question “Why put up with it?” but I actually am acutely aware of the answer. I put up with it because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought I had to endure that treatment. I was taught to please, to never rock a boat. To sit down and shut up, to be a sympathetic ear. In those awful jobs, the best I could do was quit as soon as I was able. Do I think I am to blame for that? No. What happened to me shouldn’t have happened to me. Many more incidents of sexual harassment later, I changed. I learned something. A man in my life asked me, point blank, why I took it. In questioning my actions, I realized he was “giving me permission” to act another way. Acting this other way, with self-esteem and strength, might, god forbid, get me labeled as a “Bitch” (which, if you are new to this planet, is the Official Absolute Worst Thing to Be Labeled), but it also might make my life easier and happier.

So, I could be seen as a “bitch” by sexual predators or I could feel slimy at every job I’ve ever held. I took Bitch. Strangely, the Bitch thing turned out to be a myth. Now if I’m labeled as a Bitch it isn’t because I’ve rebuffed slimebags, it’s because I’m more honest, more strategic and/or harder working than others, which, all considered, makes “Bitch” a semi-fair slur. Honesty is bitchy sometimes, even when it is delivered in the nicest of ways.

In recent years, I’ve been harassed, obviously, as I’m a woman and it is everywhere. But my reaction to it has been such that it doesn’t happen again from that same person or in that same environment. I no longer give a rat’s ass what a slime bucket thinks of me, firstly. Secondly, I immediately step back and assess my next course of action. No part of that course of action is wondering what it was I did or said that brought on the crime. See? THAT’s victim-blaming. Telling a woman that her actions brought on a crime is victim-blaming. I’m talking about WHAT TO DO WHEN THE CRIME HAPPENS! But I’m not allowed to say that. No. Telling a woman that she actually has permission to get up, walk away and report is taboo. Instead, we have to let her stew in her own low esteem and wonder what it is she did that brought it all on. It’s taboo to say, “Once you are safely away, you don’t have to allow it to continue” (continued emails? For the Love of Mary!) or “Here are the typical ways situations like this go down. It’s OK to make decisions based on this information, even if this harassment isn’t exactly the same.”

I am victim-helping, not blaming. I don’t care if a woman goes to ComicCon NAKED, she shouldn’t be touched. Hell, she shouldn’t even be stared at. But will she be? Probably. Is there anything she can do to prevent this? No. Some of you may suggest she wear clothes. I don’t think that’s necessary. She is (maybe) allowed to be naked at private events.

Instead, I say, make a VERY loud example of the asshole who touches you first and every single one thereafter. If you see someone staring, stare back and say, “Do YOU MIND? Your staring is making me uncomfortable.” Be aware of your skin and know when someone is touching you and deal with it immediately. Some naked women may want to employ some allies, bodyguards, other naked women, ComicCon staff. Whatever. That’s a good approach, too. A BAD approach would be to cover oneself from head to toe when one prefers to be naked. A BAD approach would be to stand there until the slime are done touching you, then go back the next day and let them do it again, because you don’t want to hurt their feelings or make a ruckus. A BAD approach would be to tell yourself that you are a bad woman because you want to be naked at ComicCon, even though you are an artist and an expert in the human form.

We are all victims of the patriarchy. We are undeserving of our position in it. That’s plain. But internalizing that message and behaving accordingly isn’t necessary. There are other ways to live.

PHOTO CREDIT: Teemu Mantynen on Flickr

TORrid Road

The FBI’s recent block of illegal-goods trading site Silk Road uncovered some deep potholes in the Information Superhighway. Regular World Wide Web commuters never see these craters. Our rides down Memory Lane in Facebook and our lightning-fast races through Twitter rarely reveal this dark side of the Internet, a place where anything, and anyone, can be bought and sold with a barely-traceable international digital currency.

The shining hero’s journey that is the myth of the Internet will need a good buffing after this. We like to think of the Web and its base, the Internet, as a talisman of freedom, a bright promise of liberation from oppression. It’s the Internet as Luke Skywalker, a simple and pure force destined to bring balance back to the universe. Until, of course, it isn’t.

In the dust of the closure of Silk Road (“the drug world’s equivalent of EBay” – LA Times), grumblings about digital technology will resurface. Pundits will say “something has to be done” about the Bitcoin and Tor networks that make illegal drug sites possible. Parents will wonder anew what their kids are buying online. Grandparents will admonish the lack of security in online transactions.

Bad things happen to good technology

Legendary Tennesseean Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton shuttled moonshine in a Ford Model T he called “3 Jug” after trading three jugs of his wares for the trusty old truck. In 1904, criminal Bert Oakman of Hillsboro, Oregon stole a bicycle to escape from police after murdering a friend who threatened to tell Oakman’s fiancee about Oakman’s wife back east. No-one banned Model T’s or bicycles when these men met the law.

Examining the availability of the tools and technology used in crimes is our natural tendency. We’ve had some success where limiting certain tech’s use resulted in less tragedy, e.g., the raising of the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 years of age decreased youth highway fatalities.

There will always be the ones who defend the technology itself and bristle at the idea of mandates on its use, but mantras like the NRA’s “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people” come up as empty. A Gallup poll from early 2013 showed that 91% of Americans would vote for a law requiring criminal background checks before gun purchases. We can also see the lack of gun deaths in the UK and other countries that ban or highly regulate ownership. The technology per se as free-wheeling hero doesn’t hold weight.

Not So Fast

Regulating Bitcoin would require nothing short of a total redesign of international law, trading agreements, and belief systems. Bitcoin is a grass-roots digital currency that is “mined” through having your computer work on complicated math equations or it is bought for the market-value equivalent in US dollars (or other currencies). The value of one Bitcoin changes on a daily market, much like stock prices. If a person is patient, she can buy Bitcoins at a low price and sell them at a high one at a later date.

Tor networks prove to be just as complex. Tor technology uses the Internet’s connection to millions of computers to provide private pathways for data. A Tor supporter volunteers her laptop to be used for masked and encrypted transfers of data from one user to the other. Tor networks are necessary for the anonymous transfer of Bitcoins.

Interpol and the FBI can support laws to ban Tor software. The law enforcement agencies can put up bait sites and then track the IP addresses that download the software, much like the way they nab child pornographers. Unfortunately, international efforts to ban child pornography have only had small victories so far, despite the worldwide disdain for the crime. Silk Road, while deadly, would not evoke such an unequivocal and unanimous hate. People and countries famously disagree on drug laws. International crime-fighters would have an uphill climb to consensus on banning drug-selling sites, let along regulating Bitcoin and Tor as tools of those sites. These kind of sites are here to stay. Already on Silk Road’s Facebook page, users are posting multiple alternative sites to fill the void.

Just Speed Bumps

Ultimately, speed bumps like Silk Road do little to stop web (or drug) traffic. We accept new tech, knowing it brings bad with the good. We adopted the early Ford motor cars, moonshine-hauler warts and all. Bicycles, despite their popularity with purse-stealers, are pervasive in our culture. The innovation that these inventions brought to our economy was too powerful to pass up.

Still, we managed to build up relatively common “rules of the road” around automobile driving (“wrong side/right side” debate aside). Perhaps we each start learning more about Bitcoin, Tor, and some ways we can pop the lid on the dark engines that run on our shared digital roads.

Graphic Credit: modified (by me) version of the wikimedia commons Bitcoin image