Social Media as the Eye of Sauron

"The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."- JRR Tolkien

I had an interesting real-time social media moment today that bears repeating as a warning for those who underestimate the immediate power of SM and the PR as well as promotional benefits of being able to listen to your consumer.

I have several Tweetdeck alerts for ongoing projects, brands, etc. One of these is The Comedy Store, my place of employment, which is an incredible, but badly damaged brand. It is a hard sell most of the time, and our product is still not in great shape after 20 something years of complete neglect and a pretty gnarly reputation for being unfriendly to outsiders.

My mantra since arriving here has been built around this Brand Heaven and Hell illustration that I found when I first started dawdling in marketing.

(If anyone can tell me who is responsible for it, I'd love to give him/her credit.)



If you'll note, one of the most basic steps, the FIRST step, in fact, is "Positive interactions".

A customer had a negative interaction today with one of the guys who works our phones. He tweeted about it approximately five minutes after his interaction. Seconds after he tweeted, I received a notice, and read this tweet: "Just called "The Comedy Store" to find out about open mic and the guy was a dick... so nothing unusual."

With that comment, not only was the customer able to let me know that we had dropped the ball, but he also let his 198 followers know as much too. Not only did he tell them that our customer service was terrible, but he also told them we had a history of such things. BAD brand karma. I tried to recover from it, offering the usual free admissions and apologies, but the damage has been done. In real time, with a nearly immediate effect, I saw our brand depleted by one idiot employee's insensitivity and i saw that message delivered into 200 people's feeds, and I pray he's not linked his twitter ans Facebook accounts. This is the world of Social Media, where the negative can be spread as quickly if not more so than the information you export. For someone like me who spends most of his waking hours attempting to paint the kindest, most sincere and positive picture of this place, it is infuriating when that is derailed by an insensitive employee who frankly, is not doing his job. Like Sauron's evil eye, a Negative interaction will find you through social media and "pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."

Ugh.

*** UPDATE!!
After my overtures the customer above decided to swing by on the day we were holding a special promotion for new comics. I was greeted by this tweet from his stream this morning which I promptly retweeted: "Had a great time at The Comedy Store... people were really nice and it was great fun watching new comics work."

What an amazing interaction.

Disbelief: Explaining Morality in Atheism to The Religious

Now I've done it.

I was posting a chat on facebook (Yeah, that's what i get), lamenting the loss of my hometown's innocence to the right wing evangelical groups that hijacked it. I got some varied banter agreeing or disagreeing but one kid was very keen on exposing me as a "Trendy Atheist". He replied a few times to different comments i made arguing that facts are different things to different people, and then tying his logic into very silly knots. Eventually however, he asked a question I hear from a lot of people of faith:

"If I am here solely because my ancestors evolved and crawled out of the water, why does it matter if I go walk up to some homeless dude and kick him in the nuts? I'm not accountable to a set moral or virtuous code because who is to say what is really good? "

This comment astounds me, and I figured I might address it, and perhaps give a little insight to my own total fall from religion.

The rejection of my Catholicism is somewhat recent, and it was prompted by a Homily given during mass. The priest was explaining some paintings he saw while in Rome that depicted Christ ascendant with bones at his feet. The priest recounts that he as he researched further, he realized the bones were representation of Adam and Eve who Christ rescued from hell and brought to heaven thereby redeeming original sin.

All was well.

That is, until Spiderman went after the ring of power in the land of Oz and had to defeat a Sith Lord named Pikachu.

After hearing that, i asked myself," Do I really believe that? In my heart, even as a child i've felt they were all stories. Now as an adult, do I have a place for this? Do I need to continue pretending?" Looking into my heart, i knew the answer was "no". I understand world religions and the need for answers well enough to know that the answers to life's questions do not rest in a single source of divine knowledge.

So how could i, as immediately as I rejected my faith and ultimately all faiths, possibly defend the question of my own moral compass? The answer, interestingly enough, has always been there for me.

Here is what I replied to the kid's question:

"The notion that we don't kick people in the nuts only because of a religion or an established set of morals is a fiction that belies the fact that we have human experience and the finest qualities of mankind to look to. In fact it is easy argualble that more immoral and in fact, violent acts are committed by beleivers than non-believers.

For me, and i feel for most non believers, we tend to negate the Absolutism of religion and bring it to its most primal level, In short , it is basic humanitarian grounding that is the basis for religious rationale. The true moral center rests with the recognition of the other, not in the belief of a higher authority. In laymen's terms I see the face of "God" in myself or and "The other".

A respect for mankind and its achievements (Humanism), allows you to work for the betterment of yourself and the world, because of its inherent benefits, not for fear of a vengeful deity or some sort of prize at the end of life. It forces you to deal with things now and enjoy and respect and truly appreciate the value of human life and the journey we all share.

Positing an agnostic or atheisitc universe, even the creation of the Christ story itself shows the redemptive force inherent in mankind. A force that is more elegant or beautiful than any ficticious parables about virgin births, or resurrections."

I think that covers it.

Let the nerdery begin!

Tomorrow morning I leave for San Diego ComicCon. The biggest gathering of dorks in this side of the Federation of Planets, and Above Middle Earth. As always I will be bringing along my camera to highlight the more horrific moments.

Please, oh please check back in on Monday.

The War In Iraq/The Battle for Minastirith

Wonkette has made some interesting comparisons between LOTR and the most recent developments in Iraq


There are massive desert battlegrounds covered in bodies.

The dead are mostly part of an evil cult.

The cult is trying to get the 12th wizard, Al Mahdi, to come back.

He became the Magical 12th Imam when he was 5 years old.

He vanished down a well in Mordor Sammara in the 9th Century.

Only an occult combination of spells and chaos magick and horrible fear will bring back the wizard.

Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni is the current “vanguard of the messiah,” or wizard.

His warrior cult is Sunni and Shia, united in common cause to bring about the End of Days.

Luckily, other Sunnis and Shia are still fighting the Sectarian War and are now bombing each other’s schools, to kill all the children.

Nearly 300 of the warrior cultists were slaughtered by the broadswords of the American warriors, yesterday.

A chief goal of the Soldiers of Heaven is to murder the “Shia Pope.”

Another main goal is to slaughter all the tens of thousands of religious pilgrims traveling to various holy sites, because more blood & horror = more chaos magic.

“There are no safe havens for Sunnis” anywhere in Iraq now, meaning that those Sunnis who don’t escape to Syria or Jordan will soon be murdered.

Bombing continues as usual in Baghdad, with a couple of hundred people killed in the past few days.

The “Shia Pope” is the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, otherwise known as Saruman the White, Chief of the Istari.

Oh, and the U.S. Army is now aggressively recruiting people who speak elvish.

Via Wonkette