Switzerblog

As part of my job search, I from time to time encounter companies looking for Social Media Managers (Brand Managers, Online Content Directors…every company has a name for it) with 7+ years of experience using social media to build a brand. At first, this amused me – Facebook is seven years old, Twitter just had its fifth birthday…social media as a job hasn’t existed for more than four years, with few exceptions. But as I’m getting deeper into the job search and refining what I’m looking for, my view has changed. I no longer bother applying for jobs like this, because there is no hope of success with that company, even if I got the job.

There really are only two reasons to ask for that much social media experience. As my friend Chris points out, a company might want someone who can appeal to people in their 20′s who have been using social media since MySpace’s glory days. This makes sense, but a company that is (or is trying to be) cool should probably be savvy enough to specify that this is what they’re looking for. If nothing else, it would help weed out the desperate 40-something marketers who inevitably apply for these jobs, and make HR’s job that much easier.

Example? Look at this nugget that I just found:

Ideal candidate will have around 5 years of social media experience, with around 3 years in a management experience. Must thoroughly understand YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Wikis and blogging and have worked with Google Analytics and Social Media Dashboards. Strong writing skills are required. Experience with community moderation is a plus.

The other reason is, I think, the primary cause of such job listings. A company just flat out doesn’t get it. They’ve accepted that social media is part of the business landscape, they’ve decided they need someone to manage it for them, but rather than take a little time to learn about the landscape and understand what they really need.

And this is why I don’t spend time pursuing a job that lists 7+ years of social media experience as a requirement. I have made serious changes in my life, with the express point of not settling. I’m here to pursue my passions, and I intend to be good at what I do. And I certainly don’t plan to accept working someplace where my talents aren’t put to good use and I’m not happy, just so I can say I have a paycheck. (well…depends on the paycheck, right?) Signing on with, or even following the interview process with a company that doesn’t understand the most basic landscape of what I do is a waste of my time and energy. I enjoy teaching people about social media, don’t get me wrong. But if a company doesn’t get it, and shows to this level that they didn’t try to get it, how much time should I spend trying to help them get it, just so I can get a job? Would my talent and effort not be better spent pursuing companies that know what they want, just as I know what I want, and do what a job search is really about: finding the right match?

I tweeted about this today, and was surprised at the response. It seems a lot of people feel strongly that I’m in the wrong, and I’m willing to hear about that – so please, comment, let me know what you think, and if I’m wrong, convince me! I’m all ears!

And for the record? This is why you throw your thoughts out on Twitter. Echo chambers are no fun – I may not change my mind when you disagree with me, but occasionally hitting a hot button that gets people thinking and talking is exactly where social media shines.

In the wake of yesterday’s assassination attempt on the life of Congresswoman Giffords, Twitter was filled with retweets of Sarah Palin’s infamous “Don’t retreat – reload!” exhortation, her bullseye map, Sharron Angle quotes (“Second Amendment remedies"), and news that Palin had pulled the bullseye map off her website. By late afternoon, we began to see calls for civility, which have increased by this morning. Predictably, of course, right-wingers want to insist that the only responsible party is the shooter, but those of a “moderate” bent (not that I doubt they’re moderate, btw…the quotes are just to indicate I’m using the word as a blanket qualifier) seemed to hit on a common chorus: Can’t we just grieve without making this about politics?

In a word, no. We cannot. We can’t because it is political. This wasn’t just a crazed shooter at the mall. He attempted to assassinate a Congresswoman because of her political stands, and successfully killed a Federal Judge, aide, three supporters, and a 9-year old girl in the process. Truly grieving this loss requires examining what brought it on, and being honest with ourselves about the context in which the crime took place. Doing less insures it will be repeated, and does an injustice to those who’ve lost their lives or had them greatly altered by injury.

Let’s be clear: We can all agree this was a disturbed young man. His YouTube page is a creepy glimpse into a warped mind, with the laughable grasp on logic and self-assuredness of a first-year philosophy major mixed with paranoid delusions and fantastical notions of mind control and altered states of being. And his guilt is his own. He procured a weapon (a point to be discussed by better minds than my own), drove to the site, and pulled the trigger. He should, and will, pay the legal price for what he’s done, whether in prison or a mental institution.

But we can’t look at what he’s done and what he believed and disregard where the ideas and beliefs originate. Several years ago when Abu Ghraib broke into the public mind, my feeling was always that, yes, this is what happens in war – which means that is not an excuse for it, but is all the more reason to be even more circumspect before entering into a war. The same applies here. Crazy people with guns will sometimes shoot people – which is all the more reason for public figures not to use violent gun imagery and language when discussing their political opponents. We have all encountered crazy people, and we know that they don’t see and hear this language as metaphor – they see it as instructions. As orders. Sarah Palin is not so stupid as to fail to understand this. Glenn Beck, paranoid that he is, most assuredly understands it. There’s a reason he stopped discussing Tides after the shooting in San Francisco, and there’s a reason Palin took down her bullseye map. They understand what those things meant.

Guilt, responsibility, rarely lie with one person alone. We know this from our job, where if our employee fails to perform, we bear some responsibility for not giving them the tools, support, or feedback they needed. Shared responsibility underlies our relationships with others, our social interactions, our daily decisions. This is no different. Just because responsibility seems especially repugnant in this case does not mean we are able to cast it aside and hide. It must still be faced. And those who have spent the last two years using “revolutionary” rhetoric, violent images, worshipping gun imagery, accusing their opponents of trying to end America, send people to prison camps, stoking fear…these people have created a climate which welcomes violent outcomes and filled our airwaves with what any unhinged person will read as justification and instructions for violent acts. And the responsibility for that must lie at their own feet.

In short, I cannot teach a dog to bite, then blame the dog for biting. The dog must be put down, but my training methods must also be discredited.

I don’t want to score political “points” on this issue. There are no points to score. It stopped being a game many years ago, and now that there is an increasing body count, it’s less fun than it’s ever been for me. I don’t want or need points. I want sanity. I absolutely hate Sarah Palin, just as many conservatives absolutely hate Barack Obama – but I don’t suggest “Second Amendment remedies” to Palin’s political nonsense. I work to defeat her at the ballot box, as Americans have done, in times worse than these, for over 200 years.

The truth is, Republican leaders and Fox News will inevitable find some way to pin this on their old bogeyman, the liberals. It’s just what they do. Palin has already said her map didn’t have gun scopes, they were “crosshairs like you’d find on any map”. They aren’t going to take responsibility. But my hope is that this serves as a turning point for those folks in the middle who have excused the rhetoric as just politics, and stop rewarding those who peddle fear, anger and hatred. Much as images of firehoses and dogs being used on blacks turned the public tide during the civil rights movement, perhaps the image of a 9 year old girl being collateral damage in a domestic political assassination attempt will finally convince reasonable people that violence and hate should not be the currency we trade in when discussing our political differences. We don’t have to be ‘civil’ – we just have to be human.

• Lloyd posted on January 10, 2011
  Compliments to your insightful post. Unfortunately, there are political points to be made, or at least, for Conservatives and their radical ...
• Dinazina posted on January 10, 2011
  What you said. Everything. Thanks for expressing what I wanted to.

The Holocaust is a myth. 9-11 was an inside job. These are conspiracy theories that most people are familiar with – but society understands that they are conspiracy theories held and believed only by cranks, not to be taken seriously.

Barack Obama is a Muslim. He supports terrorists. He wants to destroy America. He was born in Kenya. Healthcare reform is a government takeover. Death panels are being created. Progressives have been plotting to destroy America from within for 100 years.  These are conspiracy theories, too. Yet a significant part of the American voting population believes them, deeply. Why the difference?

The second group requires as many logical contortions and as much active refusal to accept evidence as the first group. They are as easily refuted. The difference? It benefits the cranks politically, and the cranks have an audience predisposed to believe them.

In the case of the Holocaust denial, it’s led by an already-outcast group on the fringe of the fringe. It’s those who despise Jews, they’re easily labeled, identified, and their agenda is obvious. The evidence contradicting them is mountainous. 9-11 Truthers are similarly led by an already outcast group, although it has forced itself further into the corners of acceptability. These are people so convinced of the Bush administration’s evil that they are willing to believe that an otherwise relatively inept group has been able to pull off the most complicated con job in history…without a leak, a shred of evidence, or a witness. Every level of government must be involved, and a good chunk of the private sector. These folks, the more they talk, are easily labeled and identified, and again, the evidence contradicting them is mountainous. 

Death panels, birth certificates, a 100-year progressive plot…all these things require an abandonment of logic, embracing of fear, and willingness to believe incredible things in order to accept them And yet people do, in the millions. They’re accepted as legitimate topics to be debated on news programs, and spoken as though they were fact by elected officials. The modern American right, at the “professional” level, has abandoned any pretense of governing by policy, and now attempts to govern through electioneering and manipulation. I wish this were not the case, but it is. 

From elected officials (Michele Bachmann) to ‘personalities’ like Rush, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin, there is now a feedback loop that provides its own fact-checking. i.e. if one member of the loop says a thing, another member can say it, and then the rest can run with it and call it sourced. No further investigation needed. Think tanks fill in the gaps with whatever manipulated or out-of-context information is needed to provide a patina of believability. And on the ground, the right has been trained to trust and believe the professionals without question, resulting in a frighteningly sizable group that can be enraged and brought to action with little provocation and no background work needed. These conspiracies need not be racist, homophobic, sexist, or led by anyone with those views. It just needs to be easily embraced by those who are racist or homophobic or whatever, and you can keep a coalition of angry, fearful people looking for a villain completely in your camp. And from this feedback loop has sprung every conspiracy theory in the second group, and then some. It keeps the base agitated, outraged, and active. It provides all the political cover needed to win elections, with is the only thing for the modern professional right. Governing is irrelevant when not in power, and when in power, it is perverted in the name of further political gain.

I loathe today’s political streetfight. Not because I don’t enjoy the drama and the dance, I do. But because all other things have been abandoned in place of a never-ending election. Nothing is accomplished. And the Democrats, the left, has always brought a knife to the gunfight. Not that my side is stocked with saints and geniuses, but the never-ending need to compromise, give way, accommodate has entirely neutered us and ensured that we will waste yet another opportunity to make things better. Politics is at its core about compromise, but today’s Democratic party begins every debate by saying “Here’s what we want. Tell you what, we’ll cut 50%. Okay? Guys? Do you like us now?”.  Meanwhile the right just waits for us to set the opening level and begins shredding all policies from there.  And always, always, the feedback loop is producing a new conspiracy for every event, every news cycle. Every win is met with a threat of all-encompassing progressive plans, hatched purely to end your freedom and happiness.

So how do you campaign? How do you govern? How do you hack through the weeds of conspiracy and delusion to finally talk about what is actually going on?  The answer won’t come from your television or the internet (hopefully my blog won’t spontaneously combust from the irony-plosion), or elected officials. It’s going to have to come from us. People. Just as the left has learned to push actual Communists and Naderites out to their fringe and keep them there, looking goofy and alone, the right needs to start pushing their racists, Tea Party fanatics, and resurgent John Birchers out of their committee meetings and onto the fringe. They’ll always be associated with them, just as we’re stuck with the Communists and Naderites, but your mainstream must embrace reality if you’re going to start getting something done.

Stop believing everything you’re told. 9-11 wasn’t an inside job. Progressives aren’t plotting to destroy American. No sane person supports terrorists. Government has given you healthcare options, not taken over your healthcare. There are no death panels.

When we shed these ridiculous conspiracies that both sides love to talk about (I know I’m focusing mostly on righty conspiracies – sue me, it’s my blog), we can talk about why health care costs are high in real terms. We can talk about actual regulation – your view is different from mine, but instead of saying I hate your freedom because I support slightly more regulation, let’s talk about what regulation does, pros/cons, and see what might work. Where is the middle ground between a little and a lot? Same with taxes – I don’t want my freedom infringed or my money taken any more than you do, but I see differently how that money is put to use by the government. So let’s talk about that instead of declaring crazy things about each other. Where is the middle ground between some taxes and too much taxes? What should that money be used for? These are real questions that no one discusses now, because we’re so intent on figuring out who hates America the most or who wants poor people/gays/Christians/white people/black people to all die.

When we stop listening to this nonsense, our elected officials will have to stop running their campaigns on it. It’s the only solution for conspiracy-theory politics. I hope we’re headed the right direction.