Two years ago, in May 2008, I wrote “Fame, Popularity & Star Power” and then “Fame (Part 2)” two weeks apart from each other. The main point was that I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts about fame in order to respond to an opinion my friend Dave had expressed about why I do what I do.

I never actually figured out how to exactly articulate the difference between what I’ve done for basically my entire life and what a lot of people do now. Today.. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up watching a video where someone interviewed Melyssa Ford.

Melyssa was saying something about something… and then she goes “Fame used to be the by-product of success and now it’s the ultimate goal”. A few seconds later, I rewound it and listened to that line again and was like “HOLY ****!!!!! :D That’s EXACTLY The Point I Was TRYING To Make!!! :D”

Fame vs. Popularity

I’m not famous.. Though a lot of people will say that I’m MicroFamous or Internet Famous. I’ve been ranked inside the top 15 Google results for “Bill” (out of currently 377 million results) since February, 2008 (2 years and counting). I’m also inside the top 30 results (out of 264,000,000) for “Bill” on bing.com. I’ve been blogging for years, and BillCammack.com is currently serving 5,000 pages per week, according to Quantcast & Google Analytics.

Whatever infinitesimal amount of Fame, Popularity, Star Power or Personal Brand Recognition I currently enjoy is, as Melyssa would say, a by-product of my success. It’s a fringe benefit. It’s icing on a cake. It’s certainly not THE POINT of anything I do and it’s certainly not *WHY* I do anything I do.

When I post a video of something I did or somewhere I went..

It’s not so you or anyone else can go “OOOOOOOHH! Look at what Bill did! :O”.. It’s because I. ALREADY. DID. IT. and I’m trying to share an incredibly small percentage of my real life experiences with whomever might be interested. If I stopped filming things, I’d STILL be doing a bunch of cool stuff with a bunch of cool people. If I stopped blogging, I’d still be hanging out with a bunch of chicks and enjoying myself. I’m not performing or doing anything that’s out of the ordinary for me. I’m just trying to share so you have a SLIIIIIIGHT idea of what my life is like.

Sharing

Even that last sentence seems to be braggadocio. Who the **** cares what *MY* life is like? :D

Well… All I can say about that is that back in the day my friend Dan McVicar (a.k.a. Clarke Garrison on “The Bold and the Beautiful”) created and hosted a Social Media site called “The Late Nite Mash”.

My friend Marty Daniels, whom I met through Dan’s site, lived somewhere in the sticks where I was never going to visit and filmed a video while walking around at a county fair in his local area.

Was the video exciting and action-packed? Nope! :D However.. I got to experience something I never would have experienced, being that a) I wasn’t going to ever travel there to go to that fair, and b) it was being filmed through Marty’s “eyes” and experiences, so it was necessarily different from what would have happened if I had been there filming with my own camera.

I got value out of that, which I obviously remember to this day, so my goal in sharing is to attempt to pass that on to people that don’t live in NYC or don’t live in the USA at all or experience this city in a completely different way than I do.

Also, I get correspondence and blog comments from people that watch my videos or read my blog posts and got something out of it. TO ME… That’s what it’s ALL about… Sharing. Messages In Bottles. I send out the communication. If you received it, good. If you got something out of it, even better! :D

I couldn’t give a damn about serving 5,000 pages a week. I’m way more motivated by the 50 people that are currently subscribed to my blog by email. Thanks, y’all! :D I see youse out there! ;)

I’m also motivated by and thankful for my set of regular commenters, including recently Steve, Frank, Christine, Gail, C-Jay, Albert, Sophia, BM, Elly, Michele and even Fishingrod, who’s been SLACKIN’ lately, but I know she still loves me! :D

To Me.. It’s all about the communication. I post and output media in order to share, with you. If I stopped doing it, the events of my life would continue as they always have.. I’d just have more time to do them instead of taking time out to write long-ass blog posts like this one. :)

Fameballing

Going back to Melyssa’s point.. Now that so many people have access to expressing themselves via Social Media, a lot of them are doing what they can TO become famous, which has become an END instead of a BY-PRODUCT. The question for them is “What can I do to get more Twitter followers? O_o What can I do to get more Facebook friends? How do I get people to consider me a Fameball?

People want people to follow them… They want *ANYONE* to follow them. They just like how it FEELS to be followed. It doesn’t matter what they have to do or how bad they make themselves look so long as someone new subscribes to their channel or RSS feed.

This is the difference I was trying to explain to Dave, but failed until now. I’ve been popular since my earliest memory I still have available to me, around 5 years old, in kindergarten. I have *ALWAYS* had crews my entire life. I’m currently Facebook friends with guys and gals I knew in Elementary School, JHS, High School, College and from work & social environments after I graduated.

I meet new people every single time I go to an event, which is several times a week here in NYC. I’m popular FOR REAL, as a by-product of who I am as a person. I’m successful in business FOR REAL, as a by-product of how I conduct myself when I work for clients and their passing that information on via word of mouth so new prospective clients call or email *ME* asking if I can work for them, not the other way around.

This is exactly the explanation I was looking for, so Thank You, Melyssa Ford! :D

Who are you, again?

Lots of people these days are putting the cart before the horse. They want to be famous, but there’s no reason why they should be. They want to have successful blogs, but they don’t write ANYTHING ORIGINAL. They want people to follow them so they can enjoy the sensation of people seeming to give a flying **** about anything they ever thought about.

To me, that’s completely empty and worthless, which is why I’m finally getting to put this topic to rest two years later. I’m popular because I’m supposed to be.

Anywhere you put me, I’m going to make new friends & acquaintances. I’m MicroFamous because of who I am and what I do… EVERY DAY.

I did it yesterday, I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m gonna do it again today because being popular is natural to me and not something I hope to be, wish I was or would like to convince other people that I am.

I just spent a couple of hours writing this post because it’s worth it to me. I get my own kicks out of it, my email subscribers are going to receive it a few hours from now. My RSS subscribers are going to receive it right after I press “Publish”. Eventually, I’ll run into someone that will mention this post to me f2f, IRL and then I’ll be fascinated, amazed and appreciative that the current wonders of technology afford me the privilege of speaking to whomever feels like listening to, watching or reading my content.

So now I’m fully self-expressed on this topic. :D I’m fully prepared to explain to someone why I’m different from people who output content to get attention and collect followers, yet whom under careful inspection are clearly exposed to be attention-whores and who are, in reality… Famous For Nothing.

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So, The other day, I go to lunch with a friend of mine who isn’t into Social Media. I start showing him my personal fansite, my business site, Facebook, Twitter / TweetDeck, blip.tv, YouTube, Tumblr, Ustream, IRC, Skype, iChat, so then he goes:

“So how do you make money with all this stuff?”

So I laughed a little, because I knew I had a long, LONG explanation ahead of me. :D

Special Case

Before I get started with this, I need to mention that I’m a special case. PART of what I’m about to say will be useful to someone else. Most of it’s only useful to me.

My entire life is a special case. I’m very used to being the only… whatever. :D I’m usually the only non-white around in business situations. I’m normally the only MIT graduate in ANY situaton. I’m normally the only guy that’s messed with and quit more girls than most guys ever get to even TALK TO THEM ABOUT SEX in their entire lives.

I’m normally the only person that’s been videoblogging STEADILY since 2006 and put over 600 episodes on the net in that time. I’m normally the only Emmy Award-Winning video editor in a situation.

I’m normally the only person in the room that you can find on page 01 of Google if you search just my first name. On and on and on, so if you’re looking for some sort of “This will work for everyone” advice, this isn’t the article for you. :)

Why I’m Involved With Social Media

I’m involved with Social Media because that’s what I do. Period. Social Media is how I live my life. It’s how I interact with my friends. It’s how I do business. It’s how I learn about the world and meet new people. It’s how I express myself in a one-to-many fashion instead of a one-on-one fashion. It’s the reason I have friends in England, Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan, France, Mexico, Canada and all the way across the board in the United States of America. It’s the reason I’m in a YouTube video that’s been viewed one and a quarter million times…

Social Media enables us to be way more than we could be if we had to depend on physical interaction with people. It’s my own personal video game and I rock it to the best of my ability.

How Social Media Works For Me

Social Media’s about conversation and communication. The by-products include familiarity, endearment or infamy, and, in general, *ATTENTION*. Once you get that attention, you want to direct it somewhere so it can be useful for a purpose. In my case, I direct the attention I’ve generated to my blog.

Why my blog? Because I own it. My name is on it. Bill Cammack Dot Com. My name is not on Facebook (meaning not in the base address). My name is not on Twitter. My name is not on Tumblr or blip or YouTube. It’s on BillCammack.com.

Why does it matter that my name is on my blog? Because that’s what I want to show up in Google. Why do I want it to show up in Google? Because that’s what everyone on the planet uses to find people and topics they’re interested in. 67% (2/3) of my traffic comes from Google. So, to recap… I interact with my friends via Social Media. I use a bunch of 3rd party sites to communicate with people, but they all point back to MY website. Because of that, my site gets (relatively) a lot of hits and becomes more “popular” or perhaps relevant on Google. Good standing in Google makes more people show up at my site, because I rank higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Ranking higher makes my site get more hits and the snowball keeps rolling down the hill, getting larger with each revolution.

How Do You Monetize Website Hits?

This is where the “Special Case” kicks in. :)

It just so happens that what I do for fun and self-expression is the same thing I do for business. The media that I put on the net stands as a consistently-updating resume of what I can do for you or your company. I’m constantly demonstrating to people that I can film, edit, compress, upload, tag and blog videos in a quality fashion. When someone sees this and wants that same quality for their business or personal site, I receive an email from a new potential client.

This is why it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to my friend how I make money from Social Media. I use my sites as loss leaders:

Loss Lead describes the concept that an item offered for sale at a reduced price and is intended to lead to the subsequent sale of other items, the sales of which will be made in greater numbers, or greater profits, or both.

So, What my sites do is a) demonstrate personality and b) demonstrate proficiency.

What my sites do *not* do is attempt to hook people into buying something in return for whatever entertainment or education they received from watching my videos or reading my blog posts. This is why my friend was confused. He couldn’t figure out how I convert people coming to my site or how I convert any of my other Social Media interactions into $,$$$.

My game is *awareness*. If you google Emmy Award Editor, you get *me*. If you google Video Editor Resume, you get *me*. If you google He Doesn’t Care, you get *me*. If you google Avoid Pregnancy, you get *me*. on and on and on and on and on. So what happens if you come to my site? My video editing demo reel is in my sidebar in an embedded flash player as well as a clickable link directly to an .mp4 file you can watch on your iPhone or gPhone right now. :D There’s also a direct link to my resume, if anyone felt interested in checking it out.

Is there a high rate of conversion to this situation? No. :) The thing is, there doesn’t have to be. It’s passively-generated attention. I go to sleep and people visit my website. I go out partying and people visit my website. I’m working, making money, and people are visiting my website. I put out ZERO EFFORT other than site maintenance, which I have to do anyway, and I’m advertising myself all day and all night, which my quantcast badge in my sidebar will attest to, which currently reads “7,687 Monthly People”. ==>

So, if only one person out of a thousand plays my demo reel or checks out my resume or watches videos I’ve filmed, edited or participated in, that’s seven people per month or 84 people a year that become aware of Bill Cammack without my ever having to go knock on their door and attempt to sell them an encyclopedia.. Capisce? ;)

oh….. And that’s assuming that that one person out of a thousand doesn’t tell AAAAAAAAAANYBODY they know about me or my site. Once you consider that someone might post a link to your content on their favorite Social Media site and start an entire conversation about it, where everyone they talk to can come back to the same site and see the same content they mentioned, you start to see how the viral nature of the internet works in the favor of he or she who makes his or her own site and populates it with quality content…. Who comes up FIRST when you google Dating Women NYC ?… Facebook? Twitter? FriendFeed?… Nope. *I* do. :D

So, if sidebar content is low-percentage for conversion, where does the real action take place?….. On the back-channel…

The Back-Channel

In Social Media, there are interactions that go on in front of everyone’s eyes and then there are interactions that only occur privately, which I refer to as “The Back-Channel”. As much time as I devote to public media output, I devote way more to back-channel conversation. On any given day, I’m doing 16-20 hours of private online interactions with people, which really translates more to ~35 hours a day, because, since I don’t use the telephone, I get to hold several conversations simultaneously.

This is why I don’t have to do my wheeling & dealing in public. The public side is for me to explain to people what I can do for them. The private side is for people to contact me about their projects, and for us to decide whether we want to work together.

This also occurs IRL. You might see me standing in a bar, having a brew with someone, but what you don’t know is that we’re talking business. When you walk over, the conversation suddenly changes, because *YOU* aren’t involved in our business dealings. This gives you the impression that I’m always frivolously socializing, when, meanwhile, I currently have 431 Linkedin connections and almost four times as many Facebook connections (1589).

So the blogging, which I do for my own entertainment, satisfaction & socialization, serves to populate the back-channel and also to give people an idea of who I am, what I’m about and the level of quality I can bring to their productions. I don’t have to make money directly from my sites. In fact.. Other than clients I already had before I got involved with Social Media in 2006,*EVERYONE* I currently do work for found out about me on the internet or was introduced to me by someone I was connected to online.

Could I make a few dollars with Google Ads? Probably… A Few…. I found that it wasn’t worth it (to me) to have random ads incessantly littering my pages. I’d rather endorse companies that I believe in or that I’m affiliated with or that are clients of mine. I’ve run ads in the past and I’m not saying I’ll never do it again. I’m saying I’d rather offer my audience a quality reading experience, which IME causes them to read more and feel like finding out more about who Bill Cammack is, which adds more people to my back-channel and eventually more $,$$$ to my bottom line.

What If I Don’t Have A Marketable Skill?

A lot of people that have websites don’t actually *DO* anything… They just REPORT about stuff that other people did. If that’s your game, and you can’t put the attention you garner from the internet to work for yourself, you need to put it to work for someone else. The best way to do that, IMO, is sponsorships. Look for people that believe in what you’re doing, believe in your content and believe in you as a person and find out from them what they would like to receive in return for funding you to do your site.

Let’s say for instance that your game is aggregating information you read on Twitter & Facebook and regurgitating that to your viewers/listeners/readers. You may very well be able to get someone (or several “someone”s) to sponsor you, because they would rather read what you selected than search for it themselves. It might be worth a couple of dollars to them to enable you to do what you already do, except better and more often. I you didn’t have to go to work so much, you could spend more time aggregating content and repackaging it for your fans & followers.

Other options are affiliate ads or Google ads.

Another route you can go is to align yourself with blogs that will pay you to blog for them. Dunno how lucrative that is, but it might be better than flippin’ burgers @ McDonalds…. Maybe.

Shilling

The opposite of what I do is what I refer to as shilling. This would be when every time someone contacts you, there’s something they’re hoping to get out of it. To the uninitiated and uninformed, this seems to be the way to go, which is why everyone’s trying to figure out how to get more Twitter followers. They think that having more people supposedly reading their twitter posts gives them more influence, when, in reality, it’s as low-percentage as my sidebar-game.

I have 2,595 Twitter followers. I’ve seen people with TEN TIMES AS MANY followers host live streams and have exactly the same amount of people in it that I can pull, if not WAY FEWER. Twitter is not some kind of walkie-talkie. People aren’t waiting for your post so they can jump into action. Unfortunately, a lot of people act like that’s the best utilization of their “voice”, and turn their “channel” into 100% infomercials and advertisements.

What do *I* do with these people? Ignore them. If I see an email from them, it gets skipped. If I see a twitter post from them, I don’t bother to read it so I can have something advertised to me again. They’re like television commercials in the age of DVRs (digital video recorders), easily fast-forwarded.

This is what people expect to see when they come to your site. They expect you to try to SQUEEEEZE some money out of them for what you’re offering. Don’t play yourself. If what you’re offering has value which you can demonstrate to them, that’s all you need.

Why Bill Cammack Gets Pizaid

Ultimately.. I get paid because I can do things other people can’t do. Period. I do it better. I do it faster. I’ve spent time learning things that people don’t know, so if they don’t want to pay me to do it for them, they can pay someone else or take the time (if they have enough time) to learn it for themselves, buy the proper equipment and DO IT FOR FREE (minus equipment purchase costs) on their own.

Most people don’t have time to waste, learning skills that they’re never going to be able to use again. If they teach themselves how to edit, they’re never going to get a steady job editing. Also, the time they’re spending learning what I already know is time they’re *not* spending making money for themselves. This is why I don’t need to convince or persuade people that they should hire me. The reasons are obvious and there are more reasons every single day.

This is why I don’t need to directly advertise myself to people. I don’t get PAID from my websites. I get ATTENTION from my websites, and then I do whatever I want with my Social Capital. I’ve also built a foundation for any business endeavors I choose to become involved in. Whatever I want someone to pay me to do, I have at least two years’ worth of examples of my being involved in internet website and content creation. I have over TEN YEARS of experience editing videos, including several years of being an Emmy judge and an International Emmy judge.

I don’t have to convince anyone of anything. I don’t have to sell anybody anything. I don’t need to monetize my websites. I don’t need to get money for the hours that I spend writing articles like this. I build my community through Social Media so that when I come up with an idea for business, I have THOUSANDS of people that I can inform about my idea RIGHT. NOW… TODAY!, and if someone’s interested, we can definitely make this happen.

Interestingly enough… NOT SELLING THINGS TO PEOPLE works so well for me that I often have to AVOID business conversations with people, because I really, HONESTLY didn’t approach them to try to get some money from them. :) I have to actively steer the conversation away from what I do so I’m not associated with the people that only walk up to you, shake your hand and give you a hug because they’re trying to get paid. Let’s have fun when it’s time to have fun and do business when it’s time to do business. ;)

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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Today, May 06, 2009, is the eighth annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. As the world-renowned DatingGenius (not to mention, the author of “How To Avoid Pregnancy” and “Don’t Try The Rhythm Method!”), I feel it’s my duty to inform you how to keep your kids out of the Teen Pregnancy zone.

Boredom -> Pregnancy

Teens are BORED. Teens have nothing to do with their time. GIVE your kids something to do, or they will FIND something to do. Enroll them in Karate or Piano Lessons or a Dance Company.

Make them play Football or Softball or SOMETHING! This way, they’re having fun, they’re spending their time learning things and achieving goals and hopefully, at the end of the day, they’ll be too tired from all that physical and mental exercise to have sex! :D

Give Your Kids Money

There are lots of things that teenagers WOULD do IF they could afford it. Last I checked, going to the movies in NYC costs around $12 for each person, and that’s if you want to sit there without popcorn, soda, etc the entire time.

This is why you need to give your kids money. If teens have money, they’ll go DO THINGS. They’ll go to a restaurant to eat. They’ll go to museums and learn about King Tut. They’ll go skating in a roller rink instead of in the street. Besides… In case none of these distractions work, they’ll have money to spend on condoms.

If you think I’m kidding, make sure you consider these two things:

1. Going to the movies costs money
2. Girls are free

If you ask your daughter how much that guy paid her to get some, (not like she’d tell you to begin with, but) she’s going to say “NOTHING”. If you ask that same teenager how much he paid to see Terminator Salvation, he’s going to say $12. Get the picture?

Same thing for the arcade. Same thing for the batting cages. Same thing for that video game he wants that costs $60 and he could play in his house ad infinitum. Same thing for going snowboarding. Same thing for buying roller hockey equipment. EVERYTHING costs money, except for chicks.. so if you don’t want your son out there in the streets scrambling to get on, make sure he has some ducats so he can do something PRODUCTIVE with his time.

Don’t Be Such A Jerk

We all know you need to ‘put your foot down’ as a parent in order for your kids to respect/fear you, but don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be so much of a JERK that your kids don’t want to talk to you when they have problems or issues. What you need is for them to see you as someone smarter and with more experience that can guide them if they can’t figure out something for themselves, or at least point them in what you think is the right direction.

What you DON’T want is for them to feel like telling you ANYTHING is going to get them punished, in which case you will experience a Media Blackout. You won’t find out ANYTHING about your son or daughter until the school, the cops or the clinic contacts you, and by then, it’s too late.

Make sure they know that you’re THE LAW, but also that you’re willing to hear them out and be fair about things. How many kids would have avoided teen pregnancy if they could have come to their parents honestly instead of getting their advice from other kids on the street? You have to be an ally. You need to be on their side of things, although you’re clearly in command. You need to be a General and not a Warden.

Be Nice To Your Kids

A lot of teens are out in the streets looking for affection they never got at home. While you’re so busy playing tough-guy and king-of-the-castle, your kids are spending time with people they actually LIKE and who act like they like THEM.

Figure out stuff you can do with your kids. Figure out ways to let them know they’re loved and build their self-esteem. Don’t send them out in the world looking for codependent relationships to “complete” themselves. Send them out the door knowing who they are and that they’re fantastic people and have a support system behind them and they’re not on their own in this world. Don’t have them running around trying to have kids so they have someone that will love them unconditionally. That’s YOUR job.

Handle your business before some teenager handles it for you.

~Bill

Twitter: BillCammack
Facebook Fan Page: Bill Cammack
DatingGenius Category: billcammack.com/category/datinggenius
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I like lesbians. I mean, who cares? They’re still attractive chicks. That’s what matters! :D There’s no difference between hanging out with a lesbian that doesn’t want to give you some and hanging out with a non-lesbian that doesn’t want to give you some.

So I stumbled upon this Jezebel post, “The Double-Glazed Ceiling:” Is It Harder For Women To Come Out At Work?, and one of the commenters said that they felt that lesbianism is often fetishized.

I didn’t think much of that statement, but then, for some odd reason, I started thinking about WHY I didn’t think much of that statement. What I very quickly understood is that it’s part of my personal brainwashing that lesbians are a fetish.

Before you illiterates start protesting, :D I’m not saying lesbianISM is a fetish for the women involved in it. I’m saying that lesbiANS are a fetish to guys in general.

You can pretty much thank the porno industry for this brainwashing, but, IRL, the more hot chicks involved in something, the merrier. This is why you see SEVERAL booth-babes at car shows instead of just one. As a matter of fact, if you see ONE female at a car show booth, she’s usually in a suit, actually KNOWS about the cars and is an actual EMPLOYEE and REPRESENTATIVE of the company. When you hire booth-babes, OTOH, you have to get more than one, because guys like multiple chicks, regardless of what they tell their wives.

There’s also a biological reason for guys liking multiple chicks. If you have multiple kids with the same woman, they all have the same genetic makeup and carry the same benefits and flaws into the next generation. You’re gambling that your genes and hers create viable children that will thrive and succeed. If you have kids with multiple women, you mix it up, so there’s actually a better chance that one of your combinations will be better, smarter, stronger or faster than the others.

So anyway… Since we live in a society of Pair Bonders, guys can’t normally get their hands on multiple women. This is where the porno industry helps out… oh, and strip clubs.

I don’t really count strip clubs as of equal importance with porno as far as creating & maintaining the lesbian fetish. You can argue that in both instances, women are given money to do sexual acts. In the strip club, though, it’s clear that the women will do “whatever” for money… and, believe you me… I mean WHATEVER, hahaha, you’d actually be surprised what you can….. The point is that face to face (or face to, whatever) in the strip club, you’re completely aware that the ONLY reason this chick’s doing what she’s doing is because somebody handed her money. Before they handed her the money, she wasn’t doing JACK. Now that she’s been paid, she’s all over you. *YAWN*

Porno’s different, because at least they TRY to act. Porno attempts to be the fly on the wall, and you just happen to be there when several gals are hanging out together and decide to try out all these sex toys they just happen to have laying around. (Tip for the fellaz… If your woman says she’s going to a Tupperware party, I don’t even think they SELL Tupperware anymore, haha Get It? ;) )

So anyway, pornography bridges the gap between what guys were thinking already, and them actually seeing it with their eyes instead of making it up in their heads about the two chicks that are standing over by the water cooler in their skirt-suits. hahaha They don’t make these porno scenarios up out of nowhere. There’s not some “porno writers’ guild” that oversees production. Guys think up scenarios about chicks all day and all night, so the plotlines are obvious and plentiful. All you need is two attractive chicks… well, all you need is ONE attractive chick for guys to think about having sex with her, but for the purpose of this post, you need TWO to kick off the guy’s mental lesbian fantasy production.

I think this is partially why lesbianism is fetishized also, actually. Guys don’t care whether chicks are lesbians or not. They just want the gals to DO STUFF to each other. Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever asked a chick if she was a lesbian. :) Like I said at the beginning… who cares? It doesn’t make any difference. But I guess my point is that women are going to be perceived sexually and fantasized about REGARDLESS of what they claim to be into, so for a woman to state that she’s a lesbian, it’s like “oh. pass me a brew”.

Then again, I live in NYC, so we have tons of lesbians here. I would imagine that a woman declaring herself a lesbian to someone who lives in the sticks might actually raise an eyebrow, similar to people that are used to seeing brown-skinned people only on television finally seeing one with their own eyes.

On top of that… “IRL Girl on Girl action” became a fad at some point. I don’t know if there’s an official term for this charade, but if anybody knows, post it in the comments.

As we all know, women love attention. At some point, they figured out that if they kissed other girls at the bar, all of a sudden the attention they were getting skyrocketed… as did the drinks they were being bought and the offers they were receiving to hang out with the guys that were loving the show. Perhaps this was the natural evolution of the Coyote Ugly style of random girls from the crowd getting up and dancing on the bar. I did find it interesting how girls that were being basically ignored BEFORE dancing on the bar became hot property afterwards and received tons of compliments and accolades. I can see that being an addiction and gals wanting to know how they could create the same experience for themselves at bars that didn’t have that type of DiY entertainment.

Next thing you know, you’re hanging out and two chicks that were just standing around drinking beers or whatever start grinding on each other and then if they get a crowd, they start making out. It’s actually kind of funny. It’s like a free strip club. If the chicks were smart, they’d be getting paid to put on their shows. :) But their payment is attention from guys, compliments and free drinks, so that’s better than what they were getting before they started “akkin a fool”!

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, THIS may be even more of a detriment to the situation than porno or actual strip clubs where you know what you can get chicks to do for money. You have so many chicks CRYING WOLF about being lesbians that they’re diluting the actual lesbian population. Those same chicks that grind on each other and make out in the bar hook up with guys on a regular basis. They’re not ACTUAL lesbians.

Similarly, lots of gals CLAIM that they’re lesbians as a defensive statement against guys trying to have sex with them (as if we cared or asked them if they were lesbians in the first place). And save the “maybe it’s *YOU* that they’re telling they’re lesbians to get rid of you!” hahaha I hear that all the time. :D Regardless, you see the problem here. Women are claiming that they don’t have sex with guys and then they turn around and have sex with guys, so these fakers and impostors add to the fetish because guys think they “converted” a lesbian when all they really did was have sex with a liar.

Yeah, this DEFINITELY makes matters worse, because the squeaky wheel gets the oil. All these chicks are parading around claiming lesbianism to get attention, so they’re really visible. Meanwhile, ACTUAL lesbians are invisible. Go ahead and ask someone how a lesbian acts. :) It’s like [blink... blink...]. There aren’t any characteristics. Unless you’re just a nosey person, you’re not going to know a chick’s a lesbian until you invite her to have sex with you.

What does a lesbian couple look like at the bar? That’s right. Two chicks standing around. So what?… Oh, look, she hugged her. So what? Women hug women all the time. Oh, look, she kissed her. So what? Women kiss women all the time. Women like to hold each other’s hands or arms walking down the street as well without being lesbians, so the women misrepresenting lesbianism (IRL fakers, porno girls and strip club chicks) add to the fetish and nothing subtracts from it. I won’t even go for the cheap stats I could rack up by naming celebrities that run that attention game while they think it’ll be good for their careers. You know who they are. Meanwhile, AFAIK, there are fewer lesbian characters in American television shows than there are Asians…….. Asians, PERIOD. Not Asian lesbians.

Like I said, I can’t imagine someone actually ASKING a chick if she’s a lesbian, so for the most part, I receive my information via a third party. My personal reaction is “Good! That means she knows more chicks! :D ” A lot of guys feel negatively about her declaration, because they feel like it’s an affront to their attractiveness or ability to get on… as if she would have given them some in the first place, had she been into guys. A lot of women, lesbian and non, hide their significant others on social media sites in order to avoid said negativity or so that their “taken” status doesn’t decrease their number of twitter followers or whatever. Of course, again, this skews the perception of existence of and interaction with lesbians in the favor of the squeaky wheels, who enjoy broadcasting their exploits on the internet (or anywhere else they possibly can).

So.. Yes… I definitely believe that lesbianism has been fetishized in American society (and probably everywhere else). Time will tell if that ever changes. I suppose I should bring this topic up next time I run into my lesbian friends…. um…. except I’ll probably be too busy trying to meet their girlfriends! :D

~Bill

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For a couple of months, I billed myself as a “Social Media Expert”, which I am. :D

I removed that title because in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t say anything specific or useful about me. It was mostly “Keeping up with the Joneses”. I would look at people billing themselves as SMEs and go “um… if THAT PERSON’S an expert, I’m FOR DAMNED SURE an expert!” hahahaha :D

I stopped thinking about it a long time ago, but today, I read an interesting article by Jeremy Pepper, entitled “Taking Stock – Can Social Media Do What It Claims?” that’s briefly rekindled my interest in the topic. Amongst some other interesting things, Jeremy writes:

“JP: … While people are glomming onto social media, there seems to be very little being done in the circular nature of the social media consultants.

You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are helping change the world. You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are being done with the large agencies or consultants that are trying to help make the world a better place.

You read social media people talking about social media … and that seems to be it. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy of Valleywag’s 250. And, I have written about this before, and nothing much changes.”

Jeremy then goes on to name a few Echo Chamber Bigwigs and he gives some suggestions for useful things they might do with their massive numbers of followers on various social media sites.

As I looked at his list and what he was suggesting that these people do, I was reminded of my post from four months ago, entitled “Content / Production Value / Popularity”. As a content creator, I’ve been very interested in how people acquire followings and what they utilize their fan base for. By March 2008, when I wrote C/Pv/P it was clear to me “what’s going on around here”. :D

And, yes…. This is getting back to the point of what this has to do with Jeremy’s post. :D

What’s going on around here is that people are trying to sell stuff. Period. There are two ways to do this, but they end up at the same destination. The first way is to create content that people like and enjoy and pass on to their friends, who then become viewers and hopefully PASSIONATE viewers and carry the flag for you to their towns, cities and countries all over the world. If you look at the videos from when DiggNation came to NYC and there were lines all up, down and around the block of nothing but excited FANS, FANS, and more FANS, that’s a prime example.

The other way to “sell stuff” is to base your show or site around someone that comes with a pre-fab fan base. If you don’t understand this, it’s often confusing when you see people with LESS TALENT brought on board when there are people with obviously WAY MORE TALENT available for the project. For instance, let’s say someone’s a way better musician/producer than I am, but they don’t have any social media props. If you put the two of us up for the same project (read “selling stuff” inside the Echo Chamber), you can either HOPE that people will like his/her music, and it will catch on, OR you can go with what you know, which is that I currently have 993 Twitter followers, 734 Facebook “friends”, 636 Myspace friends, etc, etc, and Google loves to Nom Nom on everything that I do, so you can find me at the top of the search results for Bill (#5 of 388,000,000), NYC dating (#7 of 309,000), video editor resume (#2 of 802,000) and Emmy Award Editor (#1 for my resume and #2 for my Indy Mogul episode, out of 612,000 English pages).

So when you look at it for what it is, what counts inside the Echo Chamber (aka the Fishbowl) is “reach”, or perhaps how much of a built-in marketing machine the person brings to the table and *NOT*…. I repeat… *NOT* their ability to make anything that remotely resembles a professionally produced or edited video. You do NOT have to have ANY talent as an on-air personality… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to have a track record of well-done videos… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to look good COUGHunlessyou’reafemaleCOUGH… you have to have a fan base.

This is one of the reasons the term “famous for nothing” is tossed around so much. If you ask “do you know XYZ?” or “have you heard of XYZ”, the answer will be “yes”. If you ask what that person does, you’ll see perplexed facial expressions and the scratching of heads. :D Basically, these people are popular NOW, and unless you were around back in the day when they initially developed their fan base, you can’t figure out WHY anybody would care what they said about ANYTHING outside of whatever their ultra-narrow niche of expertise is…. whatever that might be. This leads me to my point about Jeremy’s article…

There is a difference between the ability to attract attention and the ability to influence those whose attention you’ve attracted.

Lindsey Chen and I dropped a post two days ago, and two hours after I pressed “publish”, the visitor map for that one article looked like this:

Map for Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl

What this means is that we wrote something that people were interested in reading.
What this does NOT mean is that we have any influence over anyone who read it.

Is it POSSIBLE that people might listen to what we have to say on topics other than dating? Yes. However, the fact that we have X amount of “eyeballs” doesn’t necessarily translate to the ability to mobilize ANY of those people in the direction of a cause. This is what makes it seem like social media is full of hot air. :D

What we’re developing is “cred”. The important question is “what area/field are we developing ‘cred’ IN?” If you’re famous for asking people questions, why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous for being attractive… why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous because your parents are famous? If you’re famous because you did a cool video one time? If you’re famous because you have a lot of subscribers or video views on YouTube?

Who cares?

That’s what happens when people aren’t following you for YOU, and they’re following you because of what they’re getting out of following you. If you get advance information about gadgets, people are going to follow you… Not because they LIKE you, but because THEY want to find out what YOU found out. If you made a bunch of money and sold a startup, that’s great for you! :D and congrats!… but people are going to follow you to see if THEY can learn what YOU learned and do the same thing YOU did. It doesn’t mean they like you or care what you have to say. I’m sure that most people that hit my site for dating advice don’t even read the poster’s name, or if they read it, even remember it. :)

Having said that… Along the lines of Jeremy’s question and request: “show that social media can change the world”, I do remember a situation where Chris Brogan rallied people to support Amanda Gravel in an event she put on to support someone. I’ve also seen musicians publicized and supported via social media. Very recently, Whitney Hess wrote a heartfelt post about someone she knew who died. Jay & Ryanne have traveled to REMOTE PARTS OF THE WORLD to teach people who never would have found out about it about blogging, internet connectivity and videoblogging.

So.. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s definitely worth a try to utilize social media for something other than publicizing ourselves, :) However, the “cred” necessary for becoming known as an authority that people can look up to to point out worthwhile causes is NOT being built up through demonstrating one’s proficiency at Public Relations. You can talk about business and social media ALL DAY, and if you turn around and don’t pay people WHAT YOU OWE THEM and ON TIME, your “cred” is ZERO. You can get interviews with “important people” ALL DAY, and if the word in the street is that you treat your fans and followers like garbage, your “cred” is ZERO. You can sell as many businesses as you want, and if nothing you have to say RIGHT NOW is original, current and relevant… your “cred” is ZERO.

So, if you’re looking for people to announce when they finally make an iPhone with the camera on the correct side so we can do video iChat with it, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for people that can tell you what tools and sites to use to enhance the productivity of your company… you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for what Jeremy calls “a higher value to social media, where we can make people’s lives better and really rally people to help others”, I’m sure there are people that are using social media for exactly that purpose, like maybe Roxanne Darling, but for the most part… “Ain’t that type of party”.

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