"Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way, the way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and communality of their ways." – Carl Jung in The Red Book.
I went to a party of 'normal' people on Saturday which quickly turned into a focus group about why I’m so weird.
I am very weird. Very insecure, probably didn't get enough attention as a child and have daddy issues. I fear rejection, seek performance based affirmation, have abandonment concerns and don’t eat five plus a day fruit and vegetables in palm-sized portions. All of which I’ve self-diagnosed from my Frasier box set series seasons 1-11.
To be fair they didn’t actually say "why are you weird?" they said "I just don’t get what you get out of all this blogging and tweeting and vlogging and stuff. I guess you make money out of it."
Many people give me far too much credit for strategically doing things online for financial reasons. I wish I was that clever. Most of the social media work that I do now is for global brands briefed overseas and you won’t see it here or know that I worked on it. It sits in big ugly two hundred page media reports that I use to prop up my monitor and is activated by in house teams. The companies I work with have no idea about my personal activity online (I think?).
The reason I clatter away so much on my personal accounts is that it gives me a voice and it make me feel important. Also, I work by myself a lot and online is my virtual workplace where I chat to Dennis in accounts. Whether anybody is listening or not doesn’t really matter, it’s cathartic for me and it’s cheaper than therapy. I feel involved and part of something. Online communities self-regulate, it’s opt-in or out by your choice and you can connect with people across ideas. Sometimes when I spend the day talking to real-world people about breastfeeding and the new tiles they got in their kitchen and their wheat allergies (interest level zero) I need to go and look at Jake and Amir dot com and Failblog to wash all the boring off. Some people say hyperconnection is a bad thing. I say it is awesome.
I read a New Yorker article on the weekend (yes I read the New Yorker…bite me) about a 16 year old girl who escaped from North Korea into China. She had had never heard of the Internet and was terrified abut talking to the American reporter Barbara Demick because “Americans are evil and our enemies.” All the press is government controlled and little things I take for granted like asking John Key on Twitter what time he’s going to drop my new panda around would have me in front of a firing squad. The freedom for people to express ideas freely sounds all a bit sop but it made me feel quite grateful to be around at this time in history and not have to listen to Newstalk ZB anymore for Joe Punter drunken 3am opinions. And not get shot for being a smart-arse.
I'm no Che Guevara but I’m not so hot on hierarchy or authority or people creating industry associations and making themselves the Chairperson of them to be important. Someone suggested we need an association like WOMMA in New Zealand- the whole idea makes my skin crawl and is anti the grass roots democracy concept that makes two-way communications an exciting area. Maybe I’m just a stereotypical Gen-Y who expects respect to be earned because I really don’t care if you’re the CEO or the Grand Poobah of anything (but I don’t believe in that ‘generational’ theory, lazy market researching).
I think I lost the ‘normal’ people at the party around the ‘Frasier box set series 1-11 part’. They just blinked at me and walked away and said ‘you’re probably going to blog this crap aren’t you?”
Yes.
News Ltd has today released details of its study into how readers consume various sections of its publications.
The Sectional Reader Study was based on an online questionnaire of 14,108 respondents across Australia. It was conducted by Newspoll, which is co-owned by News Ltd, late last year.
The study covers News Ltd’s five metro groups – Sydney’s Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Melbourne’s Herald Sun; Adelaide’s Advertiser and Sunday Mail; Brisbane’s Courier Mail and Sunday Mail and Perth’s Sunday Times – plus The Australian.
According to the study, the section most likely to be read are news pages on a Sunday, with more than 90% of readers saying they always or mostly read them. Least read are Sunday business pages with less than 30% of readers saying they always or mostly read them – the weekday figure is fractionally higher.
Among the metro highlights according to the study:
Highlights of The Australian:
Tony Kendall, director of sales for News Ltd said: “Some of the results of the study were a surprise.” He claimed: “More women read Confidential than the leading weekly women’s magazines. We also found that health and beauty is important to male readers who spend over ten minutes on average each week reading Body+ Soul.”
The move by News Ltd comes as debate continues to rage of readership metrics.
Newspaper Works – which is funded by newspaper publishers – has beenattempting to set up a rival readership study
Kendall said: “The market place asked for accountability and we’ve invested heavily in this national study.”
If there’s two groups of people that love to moan it’s doctors and farmers.
Farmers complain that it rains, that it’s sunny, that the government needs to interfere, that the government is too interfering, that can only replace their Commodore every three years now instead of every two years.
Doctors and med students are again moaning that their student loans are too big and they feel undervalued. Boo hoo. I came out of uni with a fair whack of a loan that I’m still paying off. I run a business and have no guaranteed income (unlike most doctors that are paid by the government through taxation). That’s my decision. I’ve got nothing against doctors or farmers but I know plenty of people that have struggled over the last couple of years, been made redundant and worked in hard conditions through restructures and felt undervalued. Many are tertiary qualified but they don’t seem to share the same sense of entitlement and bang on about their student loans.
If you want to play with cows or broken people for a job that’s your decision and you knew that when you signed up. That is all.
