This Little Piggy Went To Market

I've had nothing to say for weeks. I blame that on the person who told me if I wanted to be heard, I had to "market" myself. My stomach turned.

I've always been suspicious of marketing. It transforms people into who they are not. Isn't this how so many of us came to believe Tiger Woods was not just a golf star but a star at large? Yet one of the most successful marketing projects ever degenerated into a nightmare. Image witchdoctors the world round are still trying to sever the image of a pathological philanderer from the products he advertises.

It's unlikely I would face the same issues as Tiger, at least not right away, but I was still ambivalent. How would I market? The "f" word immediately came to mind.

There are now over 400 million Facebook (FB) users. Even God has a FB page* so it may well be the marketing medium of choice.*

FB is revealing, as much because of what people write or post as because of what they do not. The person who posts what he had for breakfast may be more opaque about his political views. FB creates an illusion of social and communicational transparency.

And if statistics are to be trusted, FB isn’t just for kids anymore. For adults, Facebooking may not be like breathing, as it is for most under 24, but it's still an adult preoccupation.

Some adapt to FB frighteningly well, posting items as care freely as teenagers. Others go through a honeymoon phase of reconnecting with long lost friends before fading into voyeurism, snickering at friends' posts and accusing them of PWI (Posting While Intoxicated). Still others, like Penelope, marvel at the promise of the FB paradigm, but break into a cold sweat at the mere thought of posting something on their own wall. What would it mean?

How can one ever decipher the implicit rules and the secret language of FB? “Friending” someone may have little to do with friendship in the traditional sense. P'lo gets that. They may be friend junkies inviting others to see how many friends they have (hoarding friends in order to win the unannounced competition for the most friends).

Who can imagine translating the implications of intergender FB gestures? "He friended me" may resonate with some girls as "He wants to date me" while it smacks of "Great, I'm just a buddy . . ." to others.

All of this said (posted) and despite her deep-seated fears of FB and becoming a networking tramp, after several cocktails and a flickering of an epiphany, Penelope resolved to market herself and create her own FB page.

The background info was easy (although maybe this is not a place for candor but another marketing opportunity? Who cares who Penelope IS—who SHOULD she be?) but then she hit "The Wall." Did Pink Floyd ever imagine "The Wall" would be an internet venue for sharing the minutiae of our daily lives?

Penelope was speechless (postless).* Are people who update their walls numerous times a day really lucky enough to have friends who care what they ate for lunch?
Or are they pumping their profiles for the News Feed?

The more one updates one's page, the more one's profile will appear in the FB Newsfeed (the CNBC ticker of your own social life) when your "friends" (in the most inclusive sense: random acquaintances; frenemies; ex-husbands; estranged relatives . . .) log on to FB. It doesn't matter what you think of them, but how often you think of them.

Despite all this, Penelope wants to "friend" you. Her motive is not impure—she really wants to know what you think and have to say and believes FB will facilitate this. If FB isn't for you, she understands, but she still wishes you would check out her blog, comment, criticize or just post an emoticon.

If you’re shy, need to protect your identity, or work for the CIA, please consider adopting an anonymous persona. After all, one of the reasons the Internet and blogging have become such robust and blissfully transparent fora for the swapping of ideas is the anonymity they allow.*

Looking forward to hearing from you (and your friends).

Yours truly—P’lo

NOTES
* See http://www.facebook.com/pages/God/10141208299?v=info. He is very Christian about accepting new friends.

* See proliferation of evolving citations to articles posted on the Internet about the power and necessity of marketing via FB. Seriously, between the time Penelope writes this and you read this, anything Penelope could cite would have become stale—that’s how many articles are being written about FB and marketing.

*At this point, you may be wondering why I am referring to myself as "Penelope" in the third person. Well, I hired a bespoke marketing agency (too elite to identify here) that, together with a psychoanalyst, specializes in blogging. They immediately recommended that I switch from the first person to the third person. The shift is intended to create a sense of disembodiment and self-alienation that enables Penelope to do and say things that I certainly never would. The shift also creates intrigue for Penelope's audience (previously known as "you"!).

*For a thought provoking analysis on transparency and the Internet, please see the four part series posted by Paris-based sociologist qua marketer, Minter Dial: http://themyndset.com/tag/transparency/