Monthly Archives: August 2007

The Insidious Power of Marketing

I’ve started reading a blog called Get Rich Slowly. I’m not typically in a tight financial spot most of the time these days, but I’m trying to be more aggressive about (a) cutting costs and (b) actively saving more, in a savings account. In that vein, I posted a little while ago about my view that ads are often mental poison.

Today, I read a great post from Get Rich Slowly, entitled “Beware the Insidious Power of Marketing“. In it, he highlights a book called The Consumer Trap, which discusses product management techniques such as planned obsolescence, and talks about tricks retailers use to get us to buy more. In particular, he points out an example of how displays are placed to slow us down in grocery stores (from Why We Buy).

Supermarkets are just rife with tricks designed to get you to buy stuff that you don’t need or even want. As I mentioned in my last post on the subject, Fravia’s Anti-Advertisement and Reality Cracking pages detail a number of these. In particular, see Supermarket Enslavement Secrets. Essayists on Fravia’s site tend to use over-the-top titles, partly intended (I think) to “reverse” the benign views we tend to have of people’s attempts to trick us into buying their crap. The Supermarket page dates back to 1997.

Improving my Social Interactions

I wouldn’t say I’m anti-social. Once upon a time I was surely rather awkward, and I’ve always been a little edgy in crowds.

Nonetheless, aging a bit and making an effort to improve have resulted in a more happy, outgoing Brock. That’s only the beginning, really. I don’t want to be simply not-obnoxious. I want to function well in social settings. To that end, based partially on Never Eat Alone, I have come up with the following general procedure when meeting new people. I brainstormed it some time ago, and had a to-do (or NA for you GTDers) to clean it up and memorize it.

I figured I might as well post it as long as I’m cleaning it up. And here it is:

  • Introduce yourself with your full name early on. Preferably immediately.

  • Use the other person’s name whenever you address them. Eye contact or “uh, hey” don’t count.

  • If you forget their name (are you trying to get their eye contact instead? Hmm?) just ask. Then write it down. Apologize for being bad with names if you get a strange look.

  • When you write their name down, take some notes on their general appearance or something that will help you remember them.

  • Get their photo. If it’s someone you already know, and you have a phone with a camera, ask to add their picture to your address book. This doesn’t work well in dark restaurants and bars.

  • Follow up by phone (at a time when you’re likely to get voicemail), email, or in writing within a week of meeting them, if you care to build any kind of relationship.

  • Figure out whether you have any mutual acquaintances

  • Pay attention to what people are looking for. Do they need to hire someone for something? Are they looking to add another player to their weekly poker game? Do you know anyone that could help them?

  • Always be honest if you have to go. Don’t make excuses. In particular, if the conversation dies and you’ve exhausted all that you both have to discuss, excuse yourself in a polite and straightforward way.

This is a long and difficult list to habitualize. However, I’ve added some of these things to my habits over time and have seen benefits even from one. It’s not necessary to do them all at once. They should eventually become a natural part of your personality.

Transition Complete

If you visit VirtuallyShocking.com directly, rather than just getting it through a feed aggregator, you’ll notice that the look of the site has been changed. I switched to a theme that functioned more as I wanted it to, in particular adding a menu bar and going to a three-column set-up.

I also created an image bar, but this will be replaced in a little while by some artwork that I’m having done.

In the wake of my decision to abandon my personal wiki, I’ve moved all of the outward-facing stuff from BrockTice.com to various pages here on Virtually Shocking. In particular, brocktice.com now redirects to the about page, and I’ve added a contact page. I’ve also moved my CV to LinkedIn, while my publications remain on the “Publications” page. The Talk References page has been cleaned up a bit, and some of the other pages are no longer available via a menu. As I clean up some more, those pages will either get links somewhere on the site again, or be deleted.

Aside from the lack of a spot for publications (which I may request), LinkedIn is actually a pretty good way to create and distribute one’s CV or résumé. Not only does it offer a public profile with a customizable amount of content, it provides the ability to create a nice PDF of the profile for snail mail or whatever.

Now I’m just hoping that I don’t lose my Google ranking from changing websites. It went okay before when I switched wikis, so I’m not anticipating any problems. I added my little tagline at the bottom of the page to help things along.

Search Brainstorming

This seems so obvious in retrospect that I’m sure someone else has already thought of it. I just don’t know what they call it.

I call it “search brainstorming”.

This is when I’m trying to put something together, like a project plan, a proposal, or a talk. Whatever it is heavily involves an internet search. What I’ll typically do is punch in a google search in Firefox, and then scroll through the results. As I see something I think is useful, I open it in a new tab, and keep going with the search results. Once I’ve exhausted the search results, I turn to my newly-opened tabs.

I read through each tab. As I find things that interest me, I add them to my Google Notebook. I close each tab as I finish with it, as the notebook saves the URL with each clip. Then, I go through and prune the notebook.

I call it “brainstorming” because to me, it seems so analogous to normal brainstorming. I let google generate a rush of ideas. Some of them are clearly not what I’m looking for, so I ignore them. The rest, however, may or may not be of use to me. I can’t tell until later. Therefore, I investigate all of them, adding what might be useful information to a list (notebook), trying not to really evaluate the content. The key ideas are generation and collection. I don’t want evaluation to hamper them — it comes later.

Is there another name for this?