Jonny Goldstein interviewed me back in August 2007 on his show Jonny’s Par-Tay [link]. Looking at the countdown timer to the end of the show, around -18:00 he asks me “So… Did you feel a little lonely before you got into all the social media stuff?” to which my response was that I’m actually LESS social NOW than I was before…

Jonny’s response was that it CAN lead to socializing, and he mentioned an instance of an IRL event, Vloggercue, hosted by Wreck and Salvage’s Adam Quirk that he was going to attend BECAUSE of the people that he met and knew because of social media.

While I agree that it CAN… How often *DOES* social media lead to actual social inteaction, for YOU? My point was that I became less social instead of more social because of the fact that my friends are always at my fingertips. For the sake of this post, I’m defining “social” as actually going somewhere to hang out with friends of mine, IRL.

Everyone sitting at that table (Grace, Rachel, Charles, Obreahny, Sandra & Mike), I’m only *seconds* away from interacting with, via social media, wherever I am. Instant messaging, status updates, texting, email, sites, forums, groups. I did a shoot in Central Park with Obreahny and uploaded it to my server sitting out in Central Park, using the park’s wireless access. I get footage from clients overseas via FTP, talk to them on skype or iChat and send them quicktime files for approval/changes. I watched a live stream of PodCamp Philly from NYC and appeared on-screen @ PodCamp Boston while I was sitting in a living room in Maryland.

There’s no reason for me to physically go ANYWHERE unless physically interacting with that person is the reason I’m going. You can’t go snowboarding together unless you actually go snowboarding. Other than that, the current state of communications enables you to be AS in-touch with someone as you want to be. I talk to my friend @CaliNative all day, every day. We’re both MIT Graduates, but we live 3,000 miles apart from each other and never met each other IRL. Meanwhile, there are people that have given me business cards, right here in NYC, that I never spoke to again after that particular day that we met.

Social media allows you to define your enviroment. You can create and maintain relationships that transcend physical and territorial boundaries. You can hold 5 completely separate instant message conversations at a time, which is absolutely impossible on the phone. Does that make you MORE social?… or LESS social? Is “social” being re-defined by technology enabling us to envision new directions?

I also say I’m less social because my tolerance for idiocy has plummeted. :) I didn’t have a lot of that to BEGIN with, but when you get to pick and choose the people you interact with on the basis of their intelligence, common sense and relevance relative to what YOU find interesting or important, it becomes really tough to tolerate people talking about ‘nothing’, or their own agenda which has nothing to do with what you find to be valuable in life.

Anil, Mike, Justin, Debbie, Grace, Bill, Kenyatta, Eric

Photo Credit: Jared Klett

So, yes. Social media DEFINITELY leads to situations where we all get together and have a good time, IRL. I think that more often, social media allows us to FEIGN getting together, which is actually *less* social than more so.

Bill Cammack • Cammack Media Group, LLC

Related Posts

• Are You A Tech Elitist?
• end of days…..
• Twitter Has “Ruined” My Life
• Connections (Passing it On)
• Dude… Where’s My Twitter Link?

Yes, I know I said “only date broke chicks”, but now, we’re talking about marriage! :D

If you’re going to get married to a chick, make *SURE* she’s got ‘mad ducats’! :D

Don’t put yourself in the screwed-up position of having to support some deadbeat chick. That went out of style with The Flintstones and The Honeymooners. Women’s Lib is in FULL EFFECT… YA HEARD? Chicks have their own jobs… Chicks have their own money…. They’re even allowed to own land now. There’s no reason why you can’t find yourself a *RICH* chick to get married to. None.

You may have to do a little bullshitting, because chicks like to hook up with guys that are more successful than they are. Go hang out at the country club. Order an overpriced water and act like you’re drinking vodka. Drop a lot of references to your yacht and the several homes you own around the world. You know the drill. ;)

Anyway…

Now, there are two types of rich chicks you can go for. There’s the self-made rich chick that is educated and has her own career and has done what she’s needed to do to elevate her lifestyle to the lap of luxury. All props and credit to those women! :D … Then, there’s the type that’s rich because either her father or her ex-husband worked A LOT, and she’s become the beneficiary of their labor. It all depends on what you plan to do with her money, which kind of rich chick you want to go for….

If you want to keep her money to yourself, marry the rich, self-made chick. The higher she gets in her career, the more hours she’s going to have to spend working. This means you get to drive her fancy luxury car back and forth to the store to pick up the latest video games on her credit card. In this case, you’re basically the butler, Jeeves. It’s your job to pick her up from work after you chilled all day, drive her to the restaurant for dinner, since your ass probably can’t cook worth a damn, drive her back home and pamper her for about an hour before she falls asleep since she needs to get up early to go make you some more money in the morning. So, basically, by ‘working’ between 6 and 10pm every day, the equivalent of a part-time job, you enjoy all the luxuries she’s working so hard to make available to you. This works best with chicks you have no intention of having sex with.

OTOH… >:D … If you actually ENJOY her company and want to hang out with her and hit it, etc… then make sure you get one of those beneficiary-chicks. The bad thing about trust fund chicks and divorcees is that they’re spending their money faster than YOU’RE spending their money! :O The good thing about them is that they don’t actually have to waste time going to GET that money, so you have loads of time to hang out with them all day, every day! :D Paris on a Tuesday? No problem! :D Tavern On The Green on Thursday afternoon? No problem! :D

Fortunately, even though the divorce/cheating rates hover around 50% to 60%, there are still a bunch of dummies that get married without prenuptial agreements, so there are tons of divorcees around. um…. And don’t think I’m talking about old-ass chicks, either! :D Check out what Wikipedia has to say about Marriageable Age in Utah! :O

Utah: 18 generally for first marriage, 16 with parental consent, 14 with court approval or previous marriage.

… um…. Previous marriage *BEFORE* 14? :/ …. Anyway, you see what I’m getting at. By the time those chicks are divorced, they’ll just be turning legal age. By the time they’re divorced for the second or third time, they’ll be the age they would have been if they had graduated college…. *IF* they had gone to school past the 4th grade, when they got married the first time :/ So that’s two alimony checks, and the chick’s dumb as a box of rocks!…..

SWEET!!! :D

DatingGenius

Related Posts

• Only Date People Better Than YOU! :D
• Married Life = Life Over?
• The Lab – Episode 02: Response To Randolfe
• Does it matter what women think?
• Life Isn’t Fair

My excellent friend ActionGirl hung out with me today. We did a dual-channel livecast using ustream.tv.

Livecasting, if you’re not familiar, is one of the newest internet fads, but it’s also NOT new. Technology has advanced to the point that the average joe has the ability to broadcast his or her life effortlessly and without cost (except for the obvious costs of computer, webcam, broadband connection, etc).

Similar to quasi-scripted MSM shows like MTV’s “The Real World”, people now have the ability to leave a camera running and pointed at them as they go about their daily business. Some people livecast from work. Some people livecast from home. Some people livecast on the move with EV-DO modem cards and laptops, like Sarah and Lisa do on justin.tv.

I became intersted in livecasting after watching Drew Olanoff‘s feed from PodCamp Philly. It was fun watching Drew roam the hallways and run into conference attendees and presenters. There was something cool about interacting with this live show that was going on, NOW. :) It was different because you could actually affect the course of the show, assuming the host was monitoring the text chat room. It was different because you could call your friends that you saw in the background and have them come over and talk to you on camera. It was cool because you were receiving information RIGHT NOW, just like everyone that was actually in Philadelphia for the conference.

So I wanted to check it out, and ActionGirl was down to experiment with me….. um…. was down to join me in my livecasting experiment. :)

We started out outdoors, utilizing free WiFi in the area. We were streaming about one frame per five seconds. Our video was choppy and our audio wasn’t much better. Some glitch occurred where ActionGirl had bars of wireless signal, yet was unable to connect to the internet at all. Strange. Next, I tried receiving signal via my EV-DO modem card and sharing my internet connection with ActionGirl via airport. That was really slow, but I’ve never tried that before, and I think it was due to my card not connecting properly. I didn’t have this diagnostics entry in my taskbar that I should have had, so I don’t figure the card was functioning optimally at that point.

We retired indoors and used WiFi connections to stream from each of our macbooks. Connection was quick, and I was able to embed both of our streams plus a text chat on one page and run that from my site. I later added our friend Chris’ stream, so we had three simultaneous live streams on the page.

Livecasting is tough to do properly, IMO, without monitoring your chat room(s). I suppose there IS no ‘proper’ way to livecast, since it’s really “anything goes”, but in order to interact with your audience, you have to read what they’re typing to you. If you’re not planning to interact with them, clearly, you don’t have to bother with that. I found myself responding late to comments because while we were saying something, the text chat was scrolling up and I’d have to read up to notice what people said minutes before.

I think the audience is as important as the host… Meaning that if you have the right audience, even if that’s ‘only’ one or two people who actually know you or are genuinely interested in what you do, livecasting can be a fun and rewarding experience. The best times today were when our friends were on, even just for a few minutes, and we got to interact with them and answer their questions. OTOH, when the audience isn’t prime, it’s tough, if not impossible to get revved up to deliver your best ‘performance’.

For me, *teamwork* is key. I’m not interested in doing my own solo livecast. If I know I’m going to be around interesting people or at an event that would be of interest to people I know, then I’m glad to broadcast it. It also helps if you actually like and enjoy the person you’re livecasting with so you know that even if NOBODY shows up, you’re going to have a good time that day. :)

Eventually, we called it a night. I felt pretty exhausted by then, actually. When we shut our feeds down, it actually felt strange to me to NOT be on camera. Once we came inside, we were on from around 6pm to 9pm, and even that felt like an eternity. I’m not sure how (or why) people do that during their every waking hour. I guess you have to be the type of person that enjoys random people interacting with you. I suppose some people do it for the fame or notoriety.

I don’t know that there’s going to be a way to monetize lifecasting. I experimented with product placement, including beverages and t-shirts. It’s tough to do well, live, trying to get products in front of a tiny webcam lens in the optimal size, focus and location. Still… A lot of people like to broadcast their lives, and a lot of people like to watch those broadcasts, so we’ll see where this fad takes us next. :)

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack