I had a bit of a messy weekend and found myself looking for some ways to self improve, as I always do after feeling particularly unproductive or useless. The best way to do this, for me at least, is to be inspired by other noteworthy individuals who have made great changes for the better in their lives. I had always heard about TED talks, in bits and pieces of conversations from friends, but never bothered to check them out. At last, today, feeling super hungover and rather remorseful (to be perfectly honest) I decided that if there was ever a time I needed a collection of inspirational talks at my fingertips, it was now. And so, the TED-talking marathon began.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is basically a community of ideas worth sharing on every topic one can think of. I was immediately drawn to a few talks about how to maintain a life of happiness, and positive thinking. I asked my sister to send me any she found of interest and she ended up sending me psychologist Sherry Turkle's speech on modern technology and its impacts on society. Now, I know this doesn't sound like a topic as interesting as, say, Heidi and Seal's impending divorce or whatever shenanigans La Lohan happens to be getting herself into (drugs, DUI's, bad hair choices; that's all you need to know re: Lohan anyway) but it was a far more relative and engaging talk than one might initially think. If a twenty-something with a short attention span like me was easily consumed, trust me in saying it's a talk worth watching.
Anyway, if you still want to skip it, here's the gist of Turkle's argument: society today has become so dependent on constant online interactions that we've learned to expect less from actual human interactions. In other words, instead of feeling emotions with each other in person, we share statuses about feelings and (maybe) feel them after. It's a good point as many of my friends, myself included, put a lot of effort into our edited, manicured, and Photoshopped online versions of ourselves. Sure, much of it is for business and self-promotional reasons, but that doesn't change the fact that living edited online takes away from living for real in life. (I know my club promotions look much better coming from the streamlined Facebook page of an uber-cool model who posts slick dance songs and apathetic sounding status updates...but my true dork self slips up most of time, which is why you often see goofy family pictures, jubilant statuses on cake and Justin Bieber songs. What? He's awesome guys, I can't lie.)
I mean, how many times have you been at a dinner and every single person is on their Blackberry, Droid or iPhone tweeting or status updating about how awesome the dinner is when....well nothing is really happening at the dinner? It's a creepy perfected online world we've become used to expecting of each other. Pictures are perfect, wording is well-thought out and nothing is posted without being approved by some one. The thing is...real life is messy. It's demanding. It's sloppy. It's complicated. And most of all, it's kind of awesome for all those reasons. What we attempt to control online, we can't control in real life and I wouldn't change that for anything.
Perhaps it's just the company that occupies the night life industry I am surrounded by, but these super-savvy and highly image-conscious people almost seem afraid to live messy, real lives for fear it'll ruin their online personas. Heck, everyone is so afraid of getting hurt, it seems, that it's an easier choice to just become Mr. Roboto and not feel. Unfortunately for them, I'm thinky, feely (perhaps a little too much so) and complicated...oh and plan on living as emotionally loud as I want to. Messy? Perhaps. But real as can be.
Comment, like, and share this blog entry as you like, but don't forget to mention it to me in person too...Arigato, Mr. Roboto!
x
Showing posts with label FACEBOOK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FACEBOOK. Show all posts
Monday, April 9, 2012
Monday, July 11, 2011
Social party networking...OMFG
What are we looking for when we go out? When I was 15 it was a bouncer who I could wink at so he wouldn't know my New Brunswick ID was totally fake (thank you, sketchy "souvenir" shop on College Street) but now, nine years and countless nights out later, what is there left to do?
My group of friends are all around my age (mid-twenties), have all been out and about a ton, (in Toronto, in other cities, drunk, sober, on drugs, not on drugs, dirty underground things, upscale celebrity things, you name it and we've probably done it. Twice.) and are now we're all....well a little bored. The scene here in my darling city is a little conservative to say the least and the industry players usually don't travel outside of the safe, but overly-gentrified areas (King West, blah blah blah...I might suffocate from familiarity the next time I'm out on King West.) and usual crowd (suburban folk make up the majority). Sure, I could go venture to something entirely new and go out in, say, Ossington, where things are decidedly more hipster, but are there really no options other than mainstream ginos and not-so-indie hipsters? Surely.
Location be damned. It's not about where but who that makes a quality party now. It seems as we grow older, our mindset changes from not just the seeking out of a good time, but a good opportunity as well. The busiest parties, events, hootenannies, shindigs and what-have-you in Toronto are the ones where attendees know the mingling crowd will be one of a professional standard. And I'm not talking about the late-night girl professionals who work the King West crowds. (Ha.) Rather I'm talking about the people in this city who are creating business opportunities by pursuing their passions, and thus creating opportunities for others as well. Magazine launches, after-work corporate happy hour-esque mixers, big name charity galas and social media unveilings guarantee a like-minded crowd; if your current train of thought is business-savvy, ambitious and determined. They also happen to make the best, and even (at times) craziest, parties. Money, brains, and a young, handsome group of the city's top folk ensures that the party is not only marketed to a tee, but that it's planned to one as well.
Gone are the days where the most talked-about rager happened spontaneously in so-and-so's grimy after-hours space filled with dirty-yet-pretty rave kids, a plethora of drugs and un-posed-yet-posed Polaroid photos....we're in our mid-to-late twenties now and want to go places where we don't have to worry about scandalous pictures leaking onto Facebook. (Well, on most nights anyways.) What sells nowadays are ideas, ideas, and more ideas, and meeting with idea-producing individuals in a schmoozefest of an atmosphere is, well, ideal! Perhaps it's also because as we get older more of us are in relationships too which hampers the idea of going out and getting crazy. Just because we're in relationships doesn't mean we don't want purposeful partying as well! It's just that the purpose is making business connections instead of, um, physical ones, to phrase it politely.
So I guess the answer to what we're all looking for after a certain point when going out is to better ourselves; through social savvy and essentially selling the ideas we have to others in hopes to collaborate. Add chic martinis, out-of-office haute attire, good beats, & a beautiful venue and you have yourself the new coveted party scene for twenty-somethings: the social network event. Zuckerberg may have put it online, but the rest of us are keeping it going in person.
x
My group of friends are all around my age (mid-twenties), have all been out and about a ton, (in Toronto, in other cities, drunk, sober, on drugs, not on drugs, dirty underground things, upscale celebrity things, you name it and we've probably done it. Twice.) and are now we're all....well a little bored. The scene here in my darling city is a little conservative to say the least and the industry players usually don't travel outside of the safe, but overly-gentrified areas (King West, blah blah blah...I might suffocate from familiarity the next time I'm out on King West.) and usual crowd (suburban folk make up the majority). Sure, I could go venture to something entirely new and go out in, say, Ossington, where things are decidedly more hipster, but are there really no options other than mainstream ginos and not-so-indie hipsters? Surely.
Location be damned. It's not about where but who that makes a quality party now. It seems as we grow older, our mindset changes from not just the seeking out of a good time, but a good opportunity as well. The busiest parties, events, hootenannies, shindigs and what-have-you in Toronto are the ones where attendees know the mingling crowd will be one of a professional standard. And I'm not talking about the late-night girl professionals who work the King West crowds. (Ha.) Rather I'm talking about the people in this city who are creating business opportunities by pursuing their passions, and thus creating opportunities for others as well. Magazine launches, after-work corporate happy hour-esque mixers, big name charity galas and social media unveilings guarantee a like-minded crowd; if your current train of thought is business-savvy, ambitious and determined. They also happen to make the best, and even (at times) craziest, parties. Money, brains, and a young, handsome group of the city's top folk ensures that the party is not only marketed to a tee, but that it's planned to one as well.
Gone are the days where the most talked-about rager happened spontaneously in so-and-so's grimy after-hours space filled with dirty-yet-pretty rave kids, a plethora of drugs and un-posed-yet-posed Polaroid photos....we're in our mid-to-late twenties now and want to go places where we don't have to worry about scandalous pictures leaking onto Facebook. (Well, on most nights anyways.) What sells nowadays are ideas, ideas, and more ideas, and meeting with idea-producing individuals in a schmoozefest of an atmosphere is, well, ideal! Perhaps it's also because as we get older more of us are in relationships too which hampers the idea of going out and getting crazy. Just because we're in relationships doesn't mean we don't want purposeful partying as well! It's just that the purpose is making business connections instead of, um, physical ones, to phrase it politely.
So I guess the answer to what we're all looking for after a certain point when going out is to better ourselves; through social savvy and essentially selling the ideas we have to others in hopes to collaborate. Add chic martinis, out-of-office haute attire, good beats, & a beautiful venue and you have yourself the new coveted party scene for twenty-somethings: the social network event. Zuckerberg may have put it online, but the rest of us are keeping it going in person.
x
Sunday, February 6, 2011
OMFG -- It's Complicated.
As Valentine's Day approaches (or as my good friend Sean likes to call it "Singles Appreciation Day" aka S.A.D.), my other darling friend Jen noticed that Hallmark now has a section of cards dedicated to, as they put it, "Troubled Relationships". Pessimistic sounding? Maybe. But also pure genius in my opinion. Let's be honest, hardly any of us have relationships that are smooth as glass and glide along amazingly all the time. For those of you that do...please stop reading -- this blog is decidedly for the emotionally troubled and wearily jaded only! I doubt unceasingly cheerful people can appreciate my life debacles-turned-into-OMFG-moments half as much as my lovely troubled-ish-twenty-something target audience. And I'm sure it's all you slightly blasé yet still intensely emotive persons who would also agree with me in saying that Facebook needs to add another relationship status options to the likes of "Boy, is it ever fucking complicated".
When we were younger, interactions with the opposite sex were much simpler in the sense that you liked someone, and you were with them without too much else to consider. Now that we're in our twenties, i.e. the decade where we're expected to effortlessly establish the rest of our lives, there's a whole slew of considerations added to the equation, including career, travel, opportunities, partying and all the details these options entail. Yet, somehow within these often hectic and fleeting years, some of us manage to slow down enough to fall in love. And that's where the real complications start to set in..
Before I had even been in love, I would always chat with my girlfriends or hear of stories where situations sounded, to my naive ears at least, ridiculous. Situations where couples who were in love let other factors stand in the way of being together and often even dated other people. I always vowed in my head never to become one of those girls who had a super-complicated relationship with some boy in another city, or some boy she just couldn't be with at that moment in time. Fast forward a couple years and I'm in my own insanely complicated situation with nothing but sympathy with all those girls of stories past. It is only with experience -- painstaking heart-withering experience, that I've learned how logic takes a backseat to love in many cases and what we should do, and what would make the most sense to do is what we do last. In my head, I know personally that being in love means being with a person and letting all other factors play second to that, but being with some one who is simply not consumed by love in the same way allows for the situation to become, well, complicated.
There's a saying I read somewhere recently which was something to the tune of "What we remember will be how well we loved, how well we lost and how well we learned to let go." It's learning to let go which seems to be a hard feat to conquer at this age. Perhaps it's because now is when most of us experience our first loves, magically pristine in their vulnerability, or perhaps it's because we're not mature enough to see the benefits of the bigger picture. However you put it, learning to simply let go and move on is the epitome of a situation easier said than done.
I guess I was hoping all my moaning and whining about being in love at such an age would come to some sort of tidy conclusion on the topic, or at least be a cathartic release in a way, but as it turns out there are no clean-cut answers when it comes to love, unless your emotional capabilities resemble that of a robot. (And trust me when I say I've met some boys who have come damn near close.) Complicated relationships, long-distance relationships, and being in love with the unlovable are all far from ideal situations to be in. But, let's face it, we wouldn't be in them if we didn't think, somewhere deep down buried beneath our jaded souls that at the end of the day, love is kinda, sorta, maybe, just a teensy bit worth being in a "Troubled Relationship' for.
x
When we were younger, interactions with the opposite sex were much simpler in the sense that you liked someone, and you were with them without too much else to consider. Now that we're in our twenties, i.e. the decade where we're expected to effortlessly establish the rest of our lives, there's a whole slew of considerations added to the equation, including career, travel, opportunities, partying and all the details these options entail. Yet, somehow within these often hectic and fleeting years, some of us manage to slow down enough to fall in love. And that's where the real complications start to set in..
Before I had even been in love, I would always chat with my girlfriends or hear of stories where situations sounded, to my naive ears at least, ridiculous. Situations where couples who were in love let other factors stand in the way of being together and often even dated other people. I always vowed in my head never to become one of those girls who had a super-complicated relationship with some boy in another city, or some boy she just couldn't be with at that moment in time. Fast forward a couple years and I'm in my own insanely complicated situation with nothing but sympathy with all those girls of stories past. It is only with experience -- painstaking heart-withering experience, that I've learned how logic takes a backseat to love in many cases and what we should do, and what would make the most sense to do is what we do last. In my head, I know personally that being in love means being with a person and letting all other factors play second to that, but being with some one who is simply not consumed by love in the same way allows for the situation to become, well, complicated.
There's a saying I read somewhere recently which was something to the tune of "What we remember will be how well we loved, how well we lost and how well we learned to let go." It's learning to let go which seems to be a hard feat to conquer at this age. Perhaps it's because now is when most of us experience our first loves, magically pristine in their vulnerability, or perhaps it's because we're not mature enough to see the benefits of the bigger picture. However you put it, learning to simply let go and move on is the epitome of a situation easier said than done.
I guess I was hoping all my moaning and whining about being in love at such an age would come to some sort of tidy conclusion on the topic, or at least be a cathartic release in a way, but as it turns out there are no clean-cut answers when it comes to love, unless your emotional capabilities resemble that of a robot. (And trust me when I say I've met some boys who have come damn near close.) Complicated relationships, long-distance relationships, and being in love with the unlovable are all far from ideal situations to be in. But, let's face it, we wouldn't be in them if we didn't think, somewhere deep down buried beneath our jaded souls that at the end of the day, love is kinda, sorta, maybe, just a teensy bit worth being in a "Troubled Relationship' for.
x
Saturday, January 15, 2011
OMFG -- Promo-whoring 101
Between the posting, tweeting, blogging and bbming, I'm surprised any of us have time for breathing! Social media has allowed anyone with half an ego and a little bit of talent to become their own self-promotional media sensation. I'm a self-admitted Facebook fanatic and Crackberry addict (my Blackberry battery lasts a half-day on average. I travel with the charger in my purse....seriously.), and have learned with time how easily connections made online can equal real life opportunities. So, how does one balance personal with promotional? There's a fine line between keeping the interest of your followers (Twitter-speak, not cult-speak for those of you out of the loop) and having the online personality of cardboard.
To preface, I am by no means a media mogul when it comes to social networking. I try and keep Facebook to modeling and party pictures, because let's face it, no one's interested in seeing uploads of me, say waking up in the morning or anything else routine. However, being the emotionally exploding person that I am (it's touching on the best of days and downright neurotic with a dab of maudlin on the worst) I tend to catch myself emotionally binging on the site via cryptic statuses and whatnot every now and then. Usually such trivial posts get deleted once I come to my senses, but if some one were to creep my account constantly, I'm sure they could put together a nice little timeline of my emotional episodes. (That, by the way, is by no means encouragement. Girls are moody bitches. Get used to it.) That being said, I am observant of those who have perfectly poised yet endlessly entertaining and most importantly genuinely expressed profiles which in today's world can be powerful tools of opportunity.
First things first: nobody cares about your personal life. Until you reach levels of popularity that those fame-whoring Kardashian sisters will envy, it's safe to say that the general online public, excluding friends (if that...let's be honest.) does not give a darn about who you're dating or why you're cutting up pictures and sniffling to Bruno Mars. If you're anything like me, or worse, and just cannot help emotional vomiting all over that little blue and white screen, it's best to keep Facebook for personal friends and another online account for professional matters.
Whether you're a DJ, model, PR rep or other persona where personal promotion is an asset, thinking successful is undoubtedly part of the journey to being successful. In other words, every action you participate in that deals with your job is something worth posting. Whether it be a behind-the-scenes shot of you getting your make-up done, or a rough demo recording of an upcoming track, if it's of interest to your product, it's of interest to your online image. The busier you are the better -- the most interesting news-feeds to me are the ones where there is a constant momentum towards new ideas. Or, to put it bluntly, the news-feeds of those who get shit done and get it done fast.
Last of all, share what makes you happy. If you're in the right field, this should overlap with your passion anyways and thus make it easy to promote your professional self. But random things, like hilarious moments you've somehow captured with the click of your Torch or a snap of anything else that triggers a smile or thought are ways to inflict personality in your posts. Obvious as this sounds, there are countless of self-promoting individuals out there who have remarkably boring updates despite being immensely talented at what they do. No one wants to follow Promoter Cardboard of the online world because chances are his parties are just as droll.
My own Twitter account has been dormant for almost a year now --- I'm about the take my own advice and prep for a relaunch! You'll be seeing me in your virtual worlds darling bloggees...and if you're promo-savvy I'll see you in mine!
x
To preface, I am by no means a media mogul when it comes to social networking. I try and keep Facebook to modeling and party pictures, because let's face it, no one's interested in seeing uploads of me, say waking up in the morning or anything else routine. However, being the emotionally exploding person that I am (it's touching on the best of days and downright neurotic with a dab of maudlin on the worst) I tend to catch myself emotionally binging on the site via cryptic statuses and whatnot every now and then. Usually such trivial posts get deleted once I come to my senses, but if some one were to creep my account constantly, I'm sure they could put together a nice little timeline of my emotional episodes. (That, by the way, is by no means encouragement. Girls are moody bitches. Get used to it.) That being said, I am observant of those who have perfectly poised yet endlessly entertaining and most importantly genuinely expressed profiles which in today's world can be powerful tools of opportunity.
First things first: nobody cares about your personal life. Until you reach levels of popularity that those fame-whoring Kardashian sisters will envy, it's safe to say that the general online public, excluding friends (if that...let's be honest.) does not give a darn about who you're dating or why you're cutting up pictures and sniffling to Bruno Mars. If you're anything like me, or worse, and just cannot help emotional vomiting all over that little blue and white screen, it's best to keep Facebook for personal friends and another online account for professional matters.
Whether you're a DJ, model, PR rep or other persona where personal promotion is an asset, thinking successful is undoubtedly part of the journey to being successful. In other words, every action you participate in that deals with your job is something worth posting. Whether it be a behind-the-scenes shot of you getting your make-up done, or a rough demo recording of an upcoming track, if it's of interest to your product, it's of interest to your online image. The busier you are the better -- the most interesting news-feeds to me are the ones where there is a constant momentum towards new ideas. Or, to put it bluntly, the news-feeds of those who get shit done and get it done fast.
Last of all, share what makes you happy. If you're in the right field, this should overlap with your passion anyways and thus make it easy to promote your professional self. But random things, like hilarious moments you've somehow captured with the click of your Torch or a snap of anything else that triggers a smile or thought are ways to inflict personality in your posts. Obvious as this sounds, there are countless of self-promoting individuals out there who have remarkably boring updates despite being immensely talented at what they do. No one wants to follow Promoter Cardboard of the online world because chances are his parties are just as droll.
My own Twitter account has been dormant for almost a year now --- I'm about the take my own advice and prep for a relaunch! You'll be seeing me in your virtual worlds darling bloggees...and if you're promo-savvy I'll see you in mine!
x
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