Welcome To The Browns

I can't say I wasn't warned that one day my share price would stop rising and would then fall,  displayed on the site as a brown, negative number in parentheses after the share price.   I've noticed for a couple of days now that my growth was beginning to level off, so it wasn't exactly a surprise.    But it definitely is not fun.

I'm not sure if I ever did fully figure out what made me so anger about the departed's sudden re-appearance yesterday.   Part of it I came to realize was anger at myself for having been so very drawn in by someone whom I'm beginning to see is largely a very big ego leading what a friend has described as a "social media orgy".   ("It looks more like a circle jerk to me,"  I replied.   She laughed.)   I still have to look at things like Amplify and paper.li  and decide what other social media/content-creating things I want to do.    Nice as the ego-stroke is from having a rising share price and dozens of stockholders,  I am realizing that the biggest value from participating in EA lies in occasionally meeting a really special new friend you would not otherwise have ever encountered.      Hopefully then,  my EA-addiction is well on the wane and I can continue having fun with it,  but stop taking it quite so seriously.

Why Am I So Pissed-Off?

The problem is,  I really don't understand _why_ I'm so pissed off.   I've known the guy for less than a week.  And while I was surprised and a bit stunned by his abrupt departure from the group he created,  honestly it didn't really ruin my day.    And I can't really say I was surprised either, by the fact that a couple of days later he showed up again.

It seems to me reasonable to have been annoyed that he showed up again without a word of explanation.   He simply re-joined the FB group and created a new profile on Empire Avenue.    What really made me angry though is that most of the participants in this group immediately fell all over themselves to welcome him back with open arms.    Not one person requested an explanation.

To be fair, explanations do appear to be forthcoming.   And when he finally broke his silence, he did begin with an apology.    And yet,  two picas to the right of  'I apologize',  he breaks forth immediately into talking about his problems with Facebook  (and again,  to be fair,  I can appreciate them) and then goes on to talk about 'giving everyone a chance to buy in'  before he connects his 'major networks' to the new EA account.   And everyone is slapping him on the back and saying how great it is to see him again.   And I sit here typing this little account of the story and honestly don't know why I am So angry about all this.    Ron downloaded a cartoon once-- it's late at night and the wife in her nightclothes is urging her husband to come to bed.   He waves her off and continues typing away at his computer, calling out to her over his shoulder "I can't stop now, somebody is wrong on the Internet!"  

Honestly,  I don't know who if anyone is "wrong" in this instance.    Nothing seems to be black and white, cut and dried in this instance.    A friend shared with me that what bothers Her is that he's opening up all this drama.   I can handle drama, though, so I don't think that is it for me.   For now,  I continue trying to figure out my feelings about all of this.   And I keep biting my tongue so as not to say much of anything until I can come to understand why I'm so pissed off.

Watching For A Resurrection?

Full Disclosure:  This post has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Christianity,  share prices, lunar cycles, the sun, the heavens, etc.


I had planned today to blog about my reluctance to Amplify my remarks;  my hesitancy to create my own press.li  newspaper and other various means of giving myself 10 blogs on EA without actually going to the trouble of setting up and maintaining oodles of blogs.   But after playing around with Amplify a bit,  I'm not at all sure what is going on there or what the value and consequences are,   so I put that post on hold to continue a bit along the lines of yesterday's post,  wherein I wrote about death, even though No One Has Died!


My thoughts today turn instead  to the idea of  "resurrection", not because it is getting on towards Easter (although it is) but because the man who disappeared from the group so abruptly on Friday evening appeared, albeit briefly and insubstantially on Sunday.    Weekends are traditionally a slow time online,  although activity often picks up starting Sunday afternoon or evening.   It was Not a slow weekend for my share price-- which as of this writing has soared to 51.34e.   I keep hearing from folks how jarring it is the first time your share price declines.   I know of course they are right and feel quite lucky to still be on an upward trajectory after about 10 days on the site.   Empire Avenue continues to hold my strong interest.  And with hashtags like #EAvKinK and #UterusHighFive,   #SocialEmpire  group on FaceBook continues to be, most definitely,  not your run of the mill FaceBook group.   It was a little slow on Saturday,  but the handful of us who were there had a grand old time,  talking about any and everything.   And of course,  the number of participants did pick up Sunday afternoon and evening.  

I couldn't help noticing during that somewhat more active time,  a member of the group added the departed back in.   Once in,  that user posted a thread  Watch This Space,  and then said nothing else at all.    Who knows,  at this point it still _could_  (conceivably at least) be some kind of publicity stunt in connection with the planned introduction of a FaceBook app to compliment the game and the group.   Although it seems unlikely.   The departed's name came up very rarely,  and the powers that be tried to say very little-- a combination of vague and re-assuring that is tough for even the most talented PR-type to pull off well.   Then comes Monday morning and a couple of those business types march in all decked out in sysop garb and try to say Reassuring Things.   This alarms me.    As I recall the Bible,  resurrections take three days.    I'm willing to wait until Wednesday to see how this one turns out.   But in the meantime friends,  Please.   Hold the sysop stuff.

A Death In The Family

No one died.    I need to make that clear right up front.  But removing one's profile from a social networking site is a kind of death,  a social suicide of sorts that can be quite disconcerting to other participants.

It definitely was not the classic "Goodbye Cruel World", histrionic sort of exit.   There _was_ a  heated discussion, largely on the topic of Ayn Rand. (Which is not one of my favorite things to talk about;  honestly I found Atlas Shrugged more or less unreadable and usually parrot some bit of popular opinion when Ms. Rand and her writings come up-- although my friend Holly is expanding my perspective a bit where Rand is concerned.)  Except for once asking a clarifying question (which was completely ignored)  I didn't say anything,  just sat back and watched the two participants have at it.   It did seem to me that the man made a few comments that certainly could be construed as misogynistic and condescending.    The woman did an admirable job, it seemed to me,  of not rising to the bait.   A moderator did step in and asked both participants to cool it.   The moderator was at first ignored,  though the discussion did die down a short time later.   The man announced other obligations,  thanked the woman and then left.    Fifteen minutes later he was history.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one standing there feeling a bit shocked.   On social networking sites it is So easy to get to know a whole bunch of people;  so easy to fall into routines and come to count on people to be there, day after day.   So easy to miss the fragility and fleetingness of the connection,  which really can be irrevocably ended just by pressing a button marked  'Delete My Profile'.   Today,  as the #SocialEmpire group continues along, seemly without a blip,  I find myself thinking about other friends I've made and lost online over all these years.  Thinking how important and impactful so  many of those relationships have been.  How amazingly enduring at times, and how utterly fleeting.   Easy come.  Easy go.

Folders

I'm thinking this morning about the many different folders we tend to tuck people we meet into.   Over on Empire Avenue for instance,  most everyone has some set of criteria for whom they put into their "Newbie Folder".   And I doubt there are many human beings on earth who don't, at least to some degree keep an "Assholes Folder".     Categorization is useful certainly, and just as certainly necessary--  the thousands of books in your local library would be of very little use to you, if not for the librarians who carefully classify and categorize Everything and the scores of library pages who spend their days putting books back on the shelf and making sure everything is in order.

But most of us do not have master's degrees in library science and are at times ill-equipped to quickly categorize and classify the dozens or hundreds we meet over the course of a day, a month, a lifetime.    A book that deals extensively with seven different subjects, dozens of sub-topics, multiple authors and such can easily take a professional librarian hours of work to accurately classify and create a good bibliographic record.   Most people, in my experience are at least as complicated as the most complex book I have ever handled.   Yet more often than not,  we usually just stick people into one particular folder.   And the folder that we decide to stick someone in,  usually fairly soon after first meeting them,  will to a fairly large extent color and even direct all of our subsequent interactions with them.  

People who fit into a folder that is easily labeled (deaf, blind, gay, blue-eyed, big-breasted, well endowed, tall, short, fat, skinny, shy, assertive, crippled, amputated, injured, ill, smart, funny, etc. etc) often find it Very difficult to get folks to see them as anything But the folder they got filed in.   It doesn't really matter than in many cases the file highlights something the filer considers quite good.   It is not much easier to move beyond being listed in everyone's braniac file than in everyone's crippled file.    Somehow I doubt I will persuade the bulk of the people out there to rush out and sign up for Library school.   But I do ask that today you make a special effort to file anyone you meet into at least three different folders.  

That's my thought for the day.  Here's wishing you a fantastic Friday!

Wednesday in the Empire

OR  Egg On My Face

Wednesday was a great day,  although a couple of times I ended up with egg all over my face.   I spent hours hanging out in the #SocialEmpire group on Facebook.   So many bright and interesting people to get to know.   @ryanjz is the leader of the pack.  He reminds me of a manager I worked for at Sprynet-- a brilliant mile a minute kind of guy who every now and then disagrees with me and challenges me a bit.  Ryan calls me on stuff sometimes and that's  good thing.   Every writer needs an editor who can see right through their bullshit.

In the afternoon I got to meet and spend some time chatting with Honor MacDonald (e)HMD.  A bit later I got to meet and chat with @starry_girl  and got to spend some time getting to know Fee Cooper (e)BOOTCOOT,    And belive me,  Fee is a hoot.    And what was so nice is that all of the participants are good at conversation and are also good sports.   At one point Paul Bowyer threw out some pretty provocative comments and there was a real and lively debate between actual liberals and actual conservatives.    I have previously written about my fear that people who disagree with each almost never associate with each other any more.   They get their hard core news from Red State or Daily Kos,  they watch Keith and Rachel or go for Glenn and the Fox crew.   They sometimes shoot flames at each other over the heads or other participants who sometimes try in vain to actually discuss the issues,  only to get ignored and drowned out in vitriol and rhetoric.   It was an amazing discussion and while there was sharp disagreement, there was never any hostility or rancor.  And as so often seems to be the case when human beings talk calmly with each other,   there were actually a few areas of agreement between the two sides.   Honestly it was  the highlight of my day. 

My otherwise great day was marred only by two incidences in which I was compelled to post with egg all over My face.    A bunch of us were just hanging out, shooting the breeze and I made an observation-- that while creating content on blogs is the primary value of the Empire Avenue game  (the activity which rewards the Most points), it sure doesn't seem to drive a lot of traffic to blogs.   Being the arrogant SOB I can be when I get real relaxed and start phoning it in,  I naturally expected an amen chorus.   But I distinctly noticed a slight chilling in the room when 2 two people rather stiffly told me that they had indeed visited this site.   I didn't exactly get reprimanded,  but it was kind of like the entire room was glaring at me-- ("are you really whining about your traffic as we try to discuss much more important things").     Ooops.   I had to sit down and stfu for awhile.

I also really enjoyed meeting and chatting privately with Holly Jahangiri-- who it turns out is a wonderfully gifted poet, with a wicked sense of humor.    You must go read her poem  How Can a Writer Not READ?  Holly is a fantastic writer and a wonderful down-to-earth lady  (Holly is definitely a lady) who is one of the nicest and most charming me people I've ever met.    After you've read her poem,  do buy a few shares in (e)HGJ.   You'll shoot yourself for missing out on the opportunity to invest in Holly at 60 when she is on the bestseller lists  and celebrating her membership in the 300 club.

And finally,  my second egg all over My face moment--  I got as little bit confused about all of these really great women I met today and tweeted about Holly's poems  with @starry_girl credited as the author.  Mea Culpa.   My straight men friends might look askance at my excuse that I just met so many lovely ladies today. But it's honestly the truth.   And the admonishment about not whining about traffic is well taken.    I long ago learned that the most  sure-fire way to draw in a whole bunch of people and get most of them to comment, is to write a post that talks first person about a whole bunch of people and then link to every last one of 'em.  Which brings me to.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my little memoir today.   And I hope that you are enjoying your time on The Ave as much as I have been enjoying mine.   Happy Thursday everybody!

Living In AET

The little clock at the lower right corner of my computer screen says it's 1am  (Pacific Daylight Savings Time).  But I find lately that regardless of what the clock says I am living these days  in Alan Erratic Time.    I've always been a night owl.  And since getting very caught up in Empire Avenue,  my hours are more irregular than ever.

I've been very fortunate to stumble into a great small community within EA (#SocialEmpire).  Honestly, for me it is a bit reminiscent  of my early days on Entrecard,  which initially attracted a very bright and engaging group.    Once again I am making a bunch of new friends and spending a lot of time online engaged in  good discussion with smart people.   It's really one of my favorite things to do, but it is actually fairly rare in my experience.    I am also of course recalling how @GrahamLangdon  drove Entrecard right over a cliff.   The cool kids decamped to CMF Ads-- which is great btw, but of course it was never the same.   What's funny is,  that even while I am greatly enjoying my participation and am certainly doing all I can to contribute to community creation,  a part of me is kind of waiting to see just whom it will turn out to play the Langdon role this time.  

The one thing I've learned about online communities that I believe is Always true is that the Only constant is Change.   They all have an incubation period,  hopefully followed by a start-phase,  then if successful to be followed by a prime phase, and then eventually a decline and inevitably irrelevance, relegated to the archives at the WayBack Machine.    I've seen it happen to Compu$erve,  and later to AOL,  as a customer and employee of the former and as former employee of the latter.    Today, look at Yahoo-- except for their fairly successful (though not wildly money-making) Flickr site it has clearly seen its day come and go.    Which is why I am pretty sure that after some (perhaps great and long) run Twitter, Facebook and even beloved Empire Avenue will fade away as all of the people worth interacting with there now have drifted to other sites and other people.    Some friendships and acquaintances will continue on, on other sites.  (I still try to keep up with my friends Ron and Bev from way back on Compu$erve in the late 1990's.)    And like a blogger who one day stops updating their site,  and you find you don't have an e-mail for them,  and they never post again, and one day a spammer takes over their URL and you wonder whatever happened to a person you had really considered a friend, even though you never met them face to face,  that disconnect will one day affect most of the new relationships I am so ardently cultivating today.

Such is life.   It is a bit sad, I suppose, but in my experience discovering great new sites and falling into great online communities is something that happens to me over and over again.   I was tweeting with some new friends about the nature of the universe about 1am last night.   Whether it was physics or philosophy,  I am not wise enough to say.   But it was fun.      I was going to link some of the company names above to the WayBack machine to give everyone a giggle,  but it's down now at the moment.   Sorry.   To all my new friends,  welcome to My world.   To all my old friends,  thanks for standing by me,  after all these years.   Hope it's a happy Wednesday for you.

Alan


And a PS to my buddy @scribdiva   I've been thinking about what you said.   I will e-mail you today.