Jelena Woehr

TED was accused this week of “censoring” a talk addressing income inequality. After an aggressive social media backlash, the organization was forced to explain why they hadn’t publicized this particular speech—turns out it just wasn’t very good, and even TED’s liberal-leaning audience didn’t receive it well.

What’s a better story? “Organization unable to give extra publicity to every speech declines to feature talk that got lukewarm reception,” or, “Organization claiming to support intellectualism and thoughtfulness instead busily censoring talks that promote controversial concepts?” Obviously, the latter is more interesting—more tweet-worthy, more infuriating, and a much better subject for a press release.

When you hear a story about an organization with a good reputation behaving shockingly, astoundingly badly, stop before you retweet and compare the known facts to the known spin. In this case, the only known fact was: TED didn’t post a talk about income inequality. Could there be other, less salacious reasons for that? When you think of it in that light, the “scandal” seems dubious, since the speaker produced nothing whatsoever to support his claim that the talk wasn’t posted because of its topic or slant, rather than because of its quality or value.

Too often, tempests-in-a-teapot on the Internet end up only damaging the innocent. In this case, TED has taken a mild hit to its brand, but, more importantly, people who are talking seriously about income inequality may be perceived as reactionary and irrational. Shame on the speaker who decided his talk’s publicity needs outweighed the value of his chosen cause.

My state legislature is currently—as I type this—debating civil unions. Again. For those outside of Colorado, here’s a one-paragraph summary of the recent drama:

Civil union bill passes the Colorado Senate. Passes three committees, with one Republican on each voting for the bill. Speaker Frank McNulty adjourns the legislative session to avoid letting the bill get an up-or-down vote on the House floor, though not before Republicans (who hold the majority in Colorado) filibuster their own proceedings. Governor Hickenlooper calls a special legislative session to consider the bills left on the calendar due to the early adjournment. McNulty reacts by reporting to special session as instructed, but assigning civil unions to the “kill committee,” comprised of the legislators most obedient to the Speaker. Debate in that committee is happening now, and the bill is expected to die there.

So here we are. Again. Once again, the hearing is packed with people on both sides, and once again, gay parents testify to what civil unions would do to protect their children. Once again, people claiming to be on God’s side will testify as to why it’s important to deny those children—kids who didn’t choose their same-sex parents—those protections.

Here we are again, waiting to see these families crushed when, as expected, the “kill committee” does its job. And here we will likely be again next year, hoping that those families will finally be made something-resembling-equal under the law. 

Two of the best people I know have two mothers each: One of my best friends and one of the best managers I ever expect to have. Both of them are already adults and made it there without the same protection that children of opposite-sex parents get. Both will watch their mothers age. I pray they don’t have to also watch them cope with the indignity of a healthier partner funneling end-of-life decisions through her son as a go-between because the law won’t grant the healthier woman the right to make decisions for her ill partner, just because that partner is a woman and not a man.

That matters more than whether or not at some tenuous time in the future this blog post offends a potential client, a possible employer, a friend, or a family member. 

Your support for civil unions matters more than your Google results, too.

Barack Obama is on the record. Joe Biden is on the record. And if you support, at the very least, almost-equal rights for families headed by same-sex partners, you need to be on the record for it, too. Even, and especially, if you don’t look like a supporter. Especially if you’re straight, older, religious, a family man or woman yourself, and the people who oppose even almost-equal rights will otherwise assume you’re on their side.

So, I have this cephalopod obsession.

I’m not gonna lie: It originally had nothing to do with inspiration or innovation, and everything to do with the fact that, at age 13, it was hella cool to prove an original hypothesis (“Cuttlefish will respond to human mimicry of their tentacle positions, using our ten fingers to imitate their ten tentacles”) by signing with the cuttlefish living in the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Smitten by cuttlefish and their willingness to interact with a human being, I started consuming everything I could read about cephalopods.

Since getting into social media, communications, and marketing, I’ve adopted the class Cephalopoda as a totem of sorts—there are three in my cubicle, and I had custom cephalopod-themed thank you cards made via Etsy, which I send mostly to business contacts. Only recently did I sit down and really think about why I like to be surrounded by cephalopods as I work. As it turns out, they’re a pretty good metaphor for marketing in the rapidly changing world of high tech and digital media.

1. “Cold” or “Deep” Intelligence

Why don’t we think of the octopus as intelligent or emotive, like dogs or cats? Research on the Giant Pacific Octopus (some of it’s quoted here, and I’d be happy to forward the PDF sent to me by a leading researcher if anyone would like it via email) suggests that the culprit may be the “cold” intelligence of the octopus, as it contrasts with the “warm” intelligence of mammals. Octopodes are problem-solvers who are enormously intelligent; research even suggests they’re probably conscious. They might conceivably be smarter than humans.

But until recently, nobody was studying octopus intelligence. Why? Because we don’t relate to how they express their intelligence. Their worldview—that of a predator who must continually solve the problem of getting food on the ocean floor—is enormously different from our own, leaving little time for the gregarious and affectionate disposition we relate to in our mammalian pets. We’re stuck in our own perspective, with the priorities inherent in living as a social primate, and for thousands of years we failed to notice the intelligence of some of the most interesting animals on Earth. How much have we failed to learn about the ocean as a result?

Marketers and corporate communicators often fall into the trap of forgetting user experience when users’ priorities, life experiences, and the way they express their needs differ enormously from what’s visible on our side of the screen. How much are we failing to learn about how users or customers experience our products as a result?

2. Cuttlefish and Color-Blindness

Cuttlefish are beautifully colorful animals, changing their colors and patterns in response to environmental stimuli, including humans and other cuttlefish. But they don’t see their own camouflage in the same way we do. In fact, they’re color-blind. It turns out that, instead of color vision, cuttlefish have polarization vision—and the best such vision found in any animal species so far.

So, when cuttlefish communicate through altering the visuals displayed on their skin, we can’t see what they see, and they can’t see what we see. The message they’re sending is in polarized light, but the message we receive is in color. Communication still happens, remarkably enough, but not only are we speaking different languages, neither of us is biologically equipped to learn the other’s language.

In marketing, some of the biggest goofs come from a message sent in one language that’s received in another; take Groupon, for example, which recently sent a message in the language of startups—a message that excused a major mistake by blaming it on the newness of the company—without considering that it would be received in the language of investors, people who trust kinda-sorta-important matters like their retirement savings to the ability of companies to have their shit together by the time they go public, no matter how new they are. Anyone who’s worked for a startup speaks “Oh shit we did not just do that, did we?” but anyone in communications for a publicly traded company, even a startup, also needs to speak “Yes, you just did that, you morons, and it may mean my 401(k) is worth $10,000 less than it was yesterday.”

3. Humboldt Squid Turn Global Warming into World Domination

There won’t be a lot of winners in the animal kingdom if global warming continues. Especially not in the ocean, where a warming world could change just about everything most species rely on to obtain food, habitat, and other resources. The Humboldt squid, however, is already winning big. Its population is exploding, to the point that some areas have removed fishing limits for these squid entirely.

Why do squid win when the other guys lose? For one thing, the Humboldt squid eats most of the other guys. It’s not dependent on krill or fish populations to survive; whatever’s in abundance, the squid will learn to feed on it. Even other cephalopods might fall prey to these indiscriminate eaters. So, when any outside force throws the competition’s habits out of whack, Humboldt squid show up to decimate the remaining population. That benefits them twice: First, they get a meal, and second, they’re reducing the number of predators remaining to eat tiny Humboldt squid babies. 

Marketing in a recession is a lot like living in the ocean during a period of global warming. If you’re a salmon, and in the business of swimming one way, spawning one way, and eating just a handful of things, you’re in trouble. If you’re a Humboldt squid, you’re dining on the salmon. Can your marketing plan “feed” on whatever remains abundant when times are tough, or are you dependent on a single source of success? How many markets do you “swim” in? The next time the economy contracts, will you be in the squid’s position, or the salmon’s?

textsfromhillaryclinton:

A submission from Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Original image by Diana Walker for Time.

thewhitehouseproject:

Today is The Girl Scouts 100th birthday, and to celebrate (aside from eating a questionable amount of Thin Mints) I’d like to talk about girls in the media —teenagers, specifically— because they are our future leaders- a promising generation that could achieve gender parity for good. But…

visiblechildren:

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.

UPDATE: Facebook has blocked this blog. Complain here and post on Facebook about visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]com instead. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on…

staff:

One of the great things about Tumblr is that people use it for just about every conceivable kind of expression. People being people, though, that means that Tumblr sometimes gets used for things that are just wrong. We are deeply committed to supporting and defending our users’ freedom of speech,…

This is an inspiration. How content moderation should be done. Reddit, are you paying attention?

My local newspaper, the Denver Post, has apparently hit on a new way to make Facebook pay: Post “sponsored” status updates, directing fans not to Post content but to an advertiser’s link. Brilliant, right? They have to spend money on a social media manager anyway—why not add some advertising to the feed? Make those 134,000 lazy “likers” earn their daily stream of news posts by helping to close a few ad sales deals!

This LOLcat adequately conveys about a tenth of how NOPE this is:

Terrible monetization strategy, how do I object to thee? Let me count the ways.

1. You’re abusing your audience’s permission to send content directly to their News Feed. Yes, Sponsored Tweets exist, but brands do not typically use them to exploit fans of their brand. 
2. The sponsor is incredibly controversial. A news site forcing fans to look at a TSA jobs ad is like a Catholic site forcing fans to look at a Yazmin ad. Sure, not everyone who reads news dislikes the TSA, but those who do object to it, object intensely.
3. Ads in a newspaper don’t have a comments section. Using your Facebook page to post ads? Great way to scare off your advertiser by attracting a bunch of nasty comments! (See above.)
4. Your posts—of your own content, the content your fans liked your page to receive—are already sponsored. Intensely. Look what the Post looks like without ads: Negative space!
5. You’re not offering any value in exchange for using your fans as a sales pitch to your advertisers. It’d be acceptable if a Post advertiser wanted to sponsor, say, a contest (as I believe has happened before) and provide a prize. But just putting an unwanted ad in fans’ feeds? No-no.

Look, I feel the newspapers’ pain right now. It’s a tough business to be in. A few sponsored statuses won’t make or break the Post’s business, but they will influence a certain number of fans to click “unlike.” I’ll start!

There are plenty of Facebook pages that will feed me a steady stream of local news, without ads that I can’t even get rid of by installing Adblock. To paraphrase the President, “I’m not anti-ad. I’m anti dumb ad.” And Post? That was one dumb ad.

I’m a recovering tomboy. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a tomboy! I still maintain that barn dirt is a cosmetic and horse sweat is a perfume, but I used to be the kind of tomboy who rejected “girly” because it was girly, not because of a genuine personal preference. Over the last few years, I woke the heck up and drew the long-overdue conclusion that I don’t need to choose between being a tomboy and being a lady. Problem is, in my family we’re all on the “tomboy spectrum,” so, in terms of my lady-knowledge, I’m about on par with the average Twilight-viewing preteen. 

Fortunately, several women in my life have patted me on the head, taken me under their wings, and gently explained a few things. They even do an excellent job of not rolling their eyes at what I don’t know. In case you’re also a tomboy who occasionally likes to act or look like a lady, here are a few open secrets I’ve learned:

1. Tinted Moisturizer. Use that.

.

It’s like wearing makeup without having to know how to wear makeup. And there’s sunscreen in it. Mother of God, this stuff was made for those of us who don’t know the difference between a foundation and a powder and a bronzer, and what in the world is contouring and highlighting anyway? The one above is even at the grocery store, but I’ve heard positive things about “Urban Defense,” too.

2. You Don’t Need Shampoo or Conditioner.

Baking soda, water, apple cider vinegar, and tea tree oil. That’s seriously all you need to replace all that Bumble and Bumble or whatever in your shower. Or you could keep the fancy shampoo and use it once a week or so, but you don’t have to. Check this Livejournal community for instructions. My best friend taught me her method — keep premixed baking soda/water in a squirty water bottle and diluted vinegar with tea tree oil in another in the shower. Baking soda is shampoo and vinegar is conditioner. It’s that easy. Congratulations, now your $80 haircut no longer comes with a $30 shampoo purchase every time. 

3. Fleece-Lined Tights Are Real.

No pic for this one because you don’t really need to see my tights to know that fleece-lined tights sound like the most cozy, amazing thing ever. They are. They’re like sweatpants you can wear to work (most places, anyway). This is the first winter I’ve worn skirts and dresses at least once a week, and the entire reason for that is because I’ve discovered that fleece-lined tights exist and are suitable for Colorado winters, and way more comfy than pants. $7, TJ Maxx. Or $10 at Payless Shoes. (Really.) Don’t use greasy lotion right before putting them on if you don’t like lint stuck to your legs.

There you have it… three of the secrets the women of the world may be (unintentionally) keeping from you, my fellow newly-girly gals. Or guys. Nothing wrong with a boy in tinted moisturizer and tights with naturally clean hair, I say. 

feministdisney:

unknowablewoman:

abaldwin360:

With links and everything. This is why people are so pissed at the people who are trying to defend him.

Yes.

This is one of many reasons why we despise Ryking—

He defended this man and tagged his posts with ‘I support TAA.’

wooord.  For anyone following me: more on that whole “Amazing Atheist” fiasco.   Except, explained more concisely than I ever did.   Also I am pleased as punch that he’s already started going around deleting everything from that time period, although I still doubt he feels anything except “victimized” by the reaction people had to his whole lil’ “I’m going to try and trigger you because I know you’re a rape victim” thing…

trypnotik:

Damn it feels good to be a Banksta.

Colorado police recently conducted a prostitution “sting” on East Colfax Avenue, notorious locally for prostitution. The arrested sex workers—including one who was HIV-positive—were booked, and mug shots were taken. That’s called law enforcement.

Immediately thereafter, multiple Colorado news outlets (including The Westword, which makes a pretty penny printing advertisements for sex workers) published the prostitutes’ legal names and mugshots. Fox 31 drummed up traffic for its slideshow of mug shots via its official Facebook page. Westword made a special effort to point out that some of the arrested women were not as attractive as prostitutes portrayed in popular movies. That’s called tabloid “journalism,” misogyny, and a bloody awful editorial choice.

Why name and shame prostitutes, while the “johns” who hired them apparently were neither arrested nor photographed nor reported in the media?

Why name and shame prostitutes, but not the people trafficking them? Not the pimps? Not the abusive partners?

As a feminist, I believe in choices. I believe that some sex workers have made an informed choice to engage in the sex industry. However, I also live in a place called reality, where a rough-looking bunch of Colfax streetwalkers aren’t likely to be happy, high-dollar consensual escorts. They’re likely to be women with no other marketable skills. They may have mental illnesses or substance problems. They may well have pimps who discourage or threaten them when they show signs of cleaning up their lives.

They’re breaking the law; the police did nothing wrong in arresting them for doing so.

But these women aren’t responsible for the existence of the sex industry. They don’t deserve to be publicly shamed in a way that will further eliminate possibilities for them to escape sex work and find a legal career. They certainly don’t deserve to have their looks mocked by some privileged Westword hipster who almost certainly has never had to choose between selling his body and letting his kids go hungry. Especially since that hipster is probably typing his “story” one-handed while on the other line he sells a text ad to one of the sex workers he so reviles.

Please join me in sending Letters to the Editor of the Westword, objecting to the paper’s choice to name and shame prostitutes while deriving revenue from advertisements for the same.

Please call FOX 31 at 303-595-3131 to let them know you’ll be turning off Fox 31 News as long as it continues to exploit already-exploited women for Web hits.

feministdisney:

hopinginmystery:

“According to a new study, people can’t tell the difference between quotes from British ‘lad mags’ and interviews with convicted rapists. And given the choice, men are actually more likely to agree with the rapists.”

disgusting, but not surprising.

oh. and did I mention disgusting?

I normally do not refer people to things on Jezebel since it’s had so many issues and published really questionable ish for the sake of site hits before, but this piece is worth reading. And idk. I guess not completely surprising but it totally makes me want to puke. And then people are like “No we don’t live in a rape culture you’re just being too sensitive!111!!!” It’s like… how much evidence do you need before you’re convinced that something is wrong, terribly wrong, in the way our culture discusses sexuality and the sexual agency of women???

I hope, and presume, that this mostly just indicates that men’s magazines are about as indicative of the views of real men as Cosmo is of the views of real women. Let’s all stop buying these gender-stereotyping rags…

shitmystudentswrite:

Our house was a constant target for drive-by shootings and mazel tov cocktails.

Having trouble with perspective? Try this vantage point. The world looks better from here.

Tahrir Square, Cairo: Christians protecting Muslims at prayer.

There are few things more powerful in this world than to say, “He believes differently from me, but I will protect with my own life his right to that belief, because he is my brother.”

In times of turmoil, we see humanity at its best and at its worst. Cairo has seen murder, disorder, police brutality, kidnapping, and torture this year as the “Arab Spring” transformed Egypt. But it only takes one person to reach out his hand, and the second person to reach out to a third, and so it goes, until a moment of transcendent beauty is born. 

All those who worship peacefully in this country are my brothers and sisters; this is the image that will be in my heart the next time that I hear someone advocate for discrimination against or violent mistreatment of Americans for their religious beliefs. I’m reaching out my hand — will you take it and reach out to the third person? 

If you’re a Coloradoan, or just a carbivore, there’s a good chance you shared a photo of some grownup mac and cheese on your Facebook wall earlier this month, thanks to a Noodles and Company promo offering to “hook you up” with a bowl if you shared their photo. If you shared that and were never hooked up, you’re not alone; Noodles pulled the promo with a none-too-detailed, but seemingly sincere, apology. 

Shortly after the promo started, this was posted:

Thanks for the overwhelming response on the “sharing” promotion - we’re going to pull the plug a little early on this one. We’ll be in touch with how to get your coupon!

Then, apparently, Noodles started to get some idea of how difficult the original, poorly worded offer would be to fulfill, and the “Whoops” post hit Facebook:

Whoops! As you may have seen, we tried a “share” promotion this afternoon. We soon realized the offer was unclear, and was creating confusion, so we took the post down. No bad intentions. We just made a mistake. We are so sorry if we upset anyone. We will do better next time.

Outrage followed, along with a few pro-Noodle posts along the lines of, “Do you people really have nothing bigger to worry about than not getting $7 of noodles for free?” A final apology attempted to soothe ruffled feathers:

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive and understanding. Our sincerest apologies that we disappointed you. We are working to make this right!

Then, Noodles simply moved on to business as usual. Back to quirky photos, quotes, and the funny, brand-compatible noodle talk fans expect from their favorite pasta purveyor.

So what went wrong?

• The original offer was impossible to fulfill. There was absolutely no way Noodles could contact everyone who shared the photo to send them a coupon. What about people who shared it privately? The original promo didn’t clarify that only public shares, or even only shares from users in areas with Noodles restaurants, would count; nor did it involve any method of sending contact information to Noodles. There’s a reason numerous companies are edging toward profitability developing Facebook apps that allow companies to run promos a little more sophisticated than a wall post.
• Nobody caught that before thousands of fans had offered up their own personal recommendations of the mac and cheese, thinking they’d get a reward. It’s a little embarrassing to share a photo to all of your contacts just to get some free noodles; the people who did so darn well hoped they’d get the noodles.
• The first “pulling the plug” post still didn’t acknowledge that even those who shared earliest wouldn’t get anything from Noodles.
• “Working to make this right” is a nice phrase, but Facebook attention spans are a couple of seconds in the best of times; if Noodles wanted to take a concrete step to make the situation right (one fan suggested a donation to a food bank) they needed to do it right away; if they didn’t intend to, they should have simply apologized and not promised future corrective action.

Here’s the thing, though: Noodles did quite a lot right here, too. Clunky apologies and incredibly misguided promo aside, the fundamental fact is, Noodles isn’t one of those brands that flat-out doesn’t get social media. Here’s where they didn’t screw up:

• Nobody tried to hide the failure to fulfill this promo. Noodles pulled the plug and announced as much; they didn’t try to replace free noodles with some other deal easier to offer to the masses and pretend it was what they intended all along. They took their lumps right away and moved on. That’s how you do it. Everyone gets social wrong here and there. Take the hit today; don’t pull a Weiner and prolong it for weeks.
• They’re not censoring negative posts or closing their wall. If you want to rant about your lack of noodles on Noodles’ wall, you still can, and it’ll stay up. Then, a Noodles fan sick of hearing it will tell you to get over yourself, and you’re now the one who risked your social media reputation to complain about $7 noodles. Funny how sometimes the neatest reputation management trick is inaction!
• No customer service voice. All those rants? Noodles isn’t replying. What could they possibly say other than to reiterate the same apology Facebook users are already copying and pasting for them? Noodles’ brand isn’t about deferential service and solicitousness. It’s fun, young, fast, and unapologetically carb-heavy. Replying to every complaint with a fawning apology would be completely inconsistent.
• No disappearing act. Instead of laying low, Noodles went on with its life, and from thanking a fan for an enthusiastic blog post review to sending Snickerdoodles to a deployed soldier, the life of Noodles is pretty darn fine, by corporate Facebook standards. You can count on social media to forget fast once life has been proven indeed to go on. In fact, I’m probably late even penning this analysis; life went on, nobody got noodles, and nobody died of a noodle deficiency as a result.

So what’s the lesson here?

Stuff happens. If you’re handling your business in the social space on a daily basis, none of the stuff that happens will derail you entirely—unless you try so hard to lie it away or apologize for it over and over that it becomes the only story people remember about your social branding. Relax, breathe, apologize, fix what you can, then move on… and don’t take very long to get to the final step in that list.

In all of human history, has the law ever eliminated a vice? 

If you can think of an example in which something powerfully rewarding to mankind, something that is not especially detrimental to society at large, something easy, something widely accepted, something most people do, has been eliminated through legislation, I have a dozen fresh baked cookies for you as a prize.

Let’s talk SOPA.

I don’t buy all of the hand-wringing about SOPA being, at its core, a deceptively-written bill to enable the national security state to crack down on the Web and effectively eliminate digital freedom. To paraphrase, “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by acquisitiveness.” SOPA might be used, if passed, for government-initiated evil, but I believe that it was introduced for exactly the reason its proponents say: Greed combined with recognition of a genuinely problematic phenomenon.

Copyright infringement is a huge issue, and not just for Sony or Warner Brothers. People get their innocent, individual blog posts and Web articles ripped off every day, sometimes by networks of dozens of offshore content farms that “spin” the text to make it appear unique, populating their websites through wholesale theft from the “little guy.”

However, this is one area in which I differ from my party’s typical willingness to embrace regulation: The free market isn’t equipped to handle every problem, but it is better equipped than government to handle this one. Search engines will find and penalize sites who infringe in a manner that is genuinely immoral, already illegal, and/or creates a negative user experience. They will continue to make missteps in doing so that unfairly penalize original content creators, but they will iron it out over time and move forward.

Meanwhile, “pirates” will keep sharing music, movies, and other digital content illegally no matter what the law says and no matter how much is spent on enforcing it, because vice crusades don’t work, and bootlegging has been a human vice since the dawn of time. 

How many Prohibitions, Drug Wars, wars on sex, and now, wars on liking-free-stuff will it take for us to get the idea that you can’t make people stop liking something that they like very, very, very much by making it illegal?

If the recording industry spent as much on innovation as it does on lobbying, they’d stop losing to pirates in very short order.