“Bros Before Hoes” essentially means that when a guy has to make a decision between a guy he knows and a girl he knows, he should side with the guy by default or general principle.

This is based on the often-accurate assumption that the guy is actually your friend, while the girl ISN’T your friend, but instead someone you’re currently hooking up with or trying to hook up with.

A lot of women mistake the fact that a guy kicks it to them or asks them out or even dates them for a long time to mean that they’re automatically friends with a guy as well. It doesn’t work like that.

This is what gals find out when their romantic relationship to a guy ends and then he never speaks to her ever again in life. Your value to him was hooking up, NOT being his friend.

However, this does NOT apply to females across the board. There are some gals that actually ARE your friends, which qualifies them as Bros instead of Hoes.

The division isn’t so much gender-based as it is functionality-based. If you lose a friend, male or female, that’s an actual loss. If you lose a chick you’re messing with, you just get another one and keep it movin’. I guess it’s kind of like when your car doesn’t work anymore, you don’t sit there on the curb wondering what you’re gonna do.. you get another car. \o/

So this is a very important consideration, which side of the line your female acquaintances fall on. They might be Bros or they might be Hoes, depending on their functionality. In fact, you might be tighter with certain females than you are with the majority of your male acquaintances, essentially rendering those guys Hoes in comparison, should a decision be required.

A lot of guys don’t think about this and a lot of guys don’t have ANY female friends at all. The only reason to have a female as a friend is that she’s actually USEFUL as a friend, meaning that you can do stuff with her that you would have done with your real friends.. guys.

Ladies: It doesn’t qualify you as someone’s friend because you’re not hooking up with him. Everybody knows that “Just Friends” merely means that you’re denying physical involvement with a guy. It doesn’t mean that he’ll pick you up out of the garbage when you get drunk at the bar. We’re talking about ACTUAL friends here.

So anyway.. The intelligent man bases his hierarchy of friends on each guy or gal’s way of being and demonstrated usefulness & qualifications as a friend. This is normally relatively easy to do. The MTV show “The Real World” makes this tougher, because you don’t get to separate yourself from people, which sets up a fascinating matrix of alliances that people enter and exit at will as the need arises.

Real World Examples

“The Real World” Episode 2309 (which was REALLY good, I must say.. It seems like they had been saving up for this one, because the previous two episodes were booooooooooooring) had this really great exchange which shows how tough it is to make decisions when you’re dealing with people that you’re aligned with for different reasons in an environment where you can’t escape from either set.

Here are the important players:

• Ty – Used to be screwing Emily until she shut him down a few episodes back and he ended up crying about it on national televison.. Not crying meaning complaining.. Actually crying.
• Emily – Something happened to her back in the day and now she does all she can to make women FEEL independent and strong whether they actually are or not.
• Josh – Had a girlfriend that he didn’t want messing with other guys, but he hypocritically felt fine messing with other girls in the meantime.
• RandomChick – Didn’t catch her name. Some girl Josh was making out with at the bar that he brought home to hook up with behind his girlfriend’s back.

So Josh brings home RandomChick with the intention of taking her downstairs to lay around with her in seclusion from the rest of the people in the house. RandomChick runs her mouth to one of the girls in the house, causing Emily to get upset at her and want to confront her AND throw her out of the house.

Somehow, Josh escapes with RandomChick to the basement and gets down to the reason she was brought over in the first place. Emily, who along with the rest of the girls in the house has already proven herself to be a cockblocker heads for the only set of stairs going to the basement to interrupt Josh’s action. (To be fair to Emily, she wasn’t going down there specifically to block Josh, but that was going to be the effect of her arrival & behavior.)

Ty gets in front of the steps and blocks Emily from going downstairs, TELLING HER that she’s not going downstairs and she’s not going to interrupt Josh from hooking up = BROS BEFORE HOES! :D

Problematic Implementation

This caused a major disturbance for several reasons.. Ty and Emily used to mess before she dumped him. Emily thought she had control over Ty because he still wants to **** her some more. That’s absolutely true, except a) Ty was drunk, and b) Ty is a guy. He had to think to himself “What would *I* want a BRO (male or female) to do if I were hooking up and somebody tried to cockblock me?” and then he hopped into action to defend his boy’s hookup!.. A righteous call, in my book. :)

It was also a problem because Emily thought she could push her way past a bigger, stronger person (male or female), which she can not. When Ty informed her that she wouldn’t be going downstairs, she was thinking he was a ***** and she’d just go on downstairs via Elfin Magic. When he pushed her off of his position, she got mad at him for pushing her instead of being mad at HERSELF for not respecting what he told her.

Of course, this gets into the question of WHO gets to tell anybody ANYTHING in the first place, such as “You’re not going downstairs”. You have to realize that on reality television shows, you sign an agreement not to hit other people. This means that once Ty had position blocking the steps, the only way Emily was going downstairs was if she kicked Ty’s ass, which a) she can’t do, and b) she would have been thrown off the show and wouldn’t have gotten to block Josh anyway.

So, in the world of reality television, whomever has position gets to make the rules. Ty successfully fulfilled his duties as wingman for Josh (as he should have for ANYONE in the house that brought someone home, including the chicks). Emily got mad because she realized that all this time that she had thought she was a physical equal to Ty, she was wrong and he had only been playing with her. She was mad that Ty chose Josh over her and the other chicks in the house. She was mad that she didn’t get to throw a chick out of “Their” house that someone else invited her to. Josh did his thing, all was right with the world, everyone went to sleep and sobered up.

Different Day, Different Team

In the morning, however, it was a completely different story. :/ The dynamic had switched back from Emergency Status of needing to protect Josh’s hookup back to Ty trying to get some from Emily. This is why it’s important to properly assess your hierarchy of Bros. :D

By siding with Josh, telling Emily what she wasn’t allowed to do, enforcing that fact by physically disallowing her to go downstairs, and making it clear that a guy’s opportunity to get on is way more important than a bunch of chicks running their mouths because they feel disrespected in the house they all share, Ty dug a probably-insurmountable hole for his rap and hopped right into it.

The cat’s out of the proverbial bag. He can’t go back to playing nice with Emily, because she knows that when push comes to shove, might makes right and she has no wins against Ty. Anything she has with him, he’s letting her have until he decides to take it away. Anything she wants to do to him, he can physically veto it, which belies all his begging and crying which had led her to believe she actually had power in their relationship. The only power she has is to NOT give him sex, and watch her make the most out of THAT ONE! :D

Also, Ty can’t appeal anymore to the other girls in the house to put in a good word for him with Emily. He alienated all the chicks in the house at the same time. He even apologized to Emily for pushing her, when he SHOULD have been pointing out to her that if she had respected the fact that he had position over the steps and WAS. NOT. going to let her go downstairs, she wouldn’t have gotten pushed in the first place. If she would have RESPECTED Josh’s attempt to hook up and WAITED until he was finished to tell RandomChick off and kick her out of the house, none of this would have happened at all.

On a side note, this happens all the time. All you little 5′4″, 110-pound girls.. Guys are PLAYING. WITH. YOU. when they let you tell them you’re going to smack them or beat them up or whatever. It’s not that you’re some tough chick and he’s “respecting your gangsta”. It’s the he knows that by letting you feel yourself, it’s easier for him to get laid. On top of that, he knows he’s going to become a pariah if you actually hit him and he has to Chris Brown you up, so he’s hoping you keep your hands to yourself and just talk all that good **** without ever actually doing anything.

Do The Right Thing

So, my personal assessment is that Ty did ABSOLUTELY the right thing for men in general by selecting Bros Before Hoes, except he did the absolutely WRONG thing for HIMSELF. Bros Before Hoes is one of those joints like Daffy Duck says.. “I can only do this trick once!” :D You can’t inform a chick that she’s a ho in the middle of the night and then try to shake her hand and pat her on the back like a bro in the morning. Once you let her know what time it is, the jig is up.

Also, if Ty and Emily actually WERE bros, instead of a guy and a girl he’s trying to have sex with, there would have been a discussion at the top of the steps instead of an argument. Ty would have told Emily he wasn’t going to let her go downstairs and cockblock (which he DID, actually) and Emily would have understood the concept and respected what Ty said. Emily would have told Ty she wanted to tell that ***** off and he would have understood and respected THAT, but informed her that she was going to have to wait until Josh finished hooking up and then RandomChick was all hers. Since they’re *NOT* actually FRIENDS and certainly not bros, that’s not what happened.

A side note to all this is that this was entirely Josh’s fault. :D He knew the chicks in the house are perpetual cockblockers.. Actually, this seems to be a running theme in reality shows like this. The chicks never pull any guys to come to the house and mess with them and then get their kicks trying to watch and giggle together when one of the guys brings a girl home. They had already demonstrated this when Andrew was trying to hook up, which was part of the reason Ty knew he had to stop them this time.

Anyway… Josh knew he was going into a situation with nosey chicks that felt like they had authority in the house because guys are too ***** to tell it like it really is. He SHOULD have told the chick that was coming home with him not to interact with the live-in chicks at all. I know the video was edited, but I honestly don’t know how he made it downstairs with the chick without Emily screaming on her right there.

So here’s the assessment.. If you’re faking being a bro with a chick in order to hook up with her, you don’t get to be a wingman AGAINST her. Inform your boy that you have his back *UNLESS* this particular chick gets involved because you’re not going to screw up YOUR action to save his.

Keep It Real

I just remembered another reason this situation was Josh’s fault. Josh had a girlfriend at the time that he brought home RandomChick. Josh had invited his girlfriend to come to the house to visit, during which time, she inevitably met and bonded with the other girls in the house. Even if RandomChick hadn’t talked ****, Josh essentially slapped them all in the face by showing up with a girl he was cheating on their homegirl with.

The female counter-statement is “Chicks Before Dicks”. By introducing his girlfriend to the girls in the house, she was initiated into their sorority. Even though they knew him for way longer than her, she’s a chick and Josh isn’t, making her a BRO of theirs, rendering Josh the HO in this situation.

Josh is lucky the gals didn’t rat him out. IN FACT, when his girlfriend called up later, Emily picked up the phone AND. COVERED. FOR. JOSH. by saying she’d check to see if he was awake as opposed to saying she’d check to see if he was finished with the girl he took downstairs with him. So, *PROPS* to Emily for lookin’ out! :D

So, Yeah… Fellaz!… “Bros Before Hoes!” is fun to say and all, but you’re really better off making a hierarchical list of the people (guys AND girls) that have demonstrated the desire and ability to be DOWN for you and make your decisions from there.

If a chick has put in the time and demonstrated the value to you whereby she qualifies as a bro, show her the respect she deserves. Look out for HER and wing for HER if she’s trying to get a rap. Extend her all the perks of.. bron-ess? bro-dom? bro-ism?…

Anyway, you know what I’m saying. Keep it Real… Don’t leave her ass in the garbage outside the club.

Related Posts

• Does He Trust You? [RW:DC, Part 03]
• I’m Only A Man [RW:DC, Part 01]
• 10 Reasons He Wants To Be “Just Friends”
• Guilt By Association / Social Media Connections
• Frenemies or Frienemies

As we move forward into 2010, Guilt By Association is going to become a major issue. This year, the civilians found out about Twitter and flooded it with new connections. Sites like Facebook have seen dramatic increases in membership, bringing increases in connections and shared media. If you’re involved in “the game”, sooner or later, you’re going to be associated with someone controversial either on a local scale or an international scale. When/if that time comes, you’re going to have to decide how you’re going to deal with people’s new perception of you based on something you had nothing to do with, whatsoever.

I Wasn’t Even There! :/

TMZ reports that Tiger Woods’ caddie caught beef from his wife behind this 10-chick fiasco, even though the caddie hasn’t even been MENTIONED this whole time since the car crash. This could be for several reasons. It could be “Birds of a feather flock together” reasoning, where she feels that only people who agree with Tiger’s behavior spend time together. It could be that she feels he enabled Tiger to get raps behind his wife’s back. It could be that she feels he was receiving benefits from the trickle-down chicks that didn’t get to hook up with Tiger. It could be that she thought he knew about all the extra chicks and didn’t share that information with her [which, a) he's saying he didn't know about because he doesn't hang out with Tiger other than when he's competing, and b) it's none of her *GOT*-DAMNED business anyway, which is something Larry David should have learned like three seasons ago! hahaha]. It could be that she’s getting pressure from HER friends to exert some sort of influence over her husband to get back at Tiger…… Whatever it is, because he happened to be “the man next to the man”, dude caught grief from his wife due to Guilt By Association.

Cliques & “Transparency”

I spoke about this issue a little over a year ago, when I was experiencing fallout from some NYC Social Media community infighting. I know so many people that invariably, I’m going to know people that consider themselves rivals or enemies. I also know people who were friends or even DATING when I met them and now they’re either not speaking to each other or they’re “Frenemies” at best. That’s not my problem.. However, it seeps in every now and then, when I interact IRL with someone that knows I’m a friend of their enemy and decides to bring that sourness to our personal relationship.

The same thing happens with ideas. This is why transparency is mostly a farce, as I was discussing with my friends Peter & Michele one evening. Everybody knows what the accepted opinions are, so they either say they agree with those opinions or they keep their ideas to themselves. That’s NOT transparency. :) That’s being as transparent as you can AFFORD to be. So even writing my blog, I get people catchin’ feelin’s and feeling like The Kid’s a controversial character merely for telling more of the truth than most people will tell you. It’s not A LOT of people, as evidenced by my 1,776 Facebook Friends and 991 pictures on Facebook, which are probably 90% of me with AT LEAST one other person, but every once in a blue, I get that “There goes that guy that calls chicks ‘CHICKS’ :/” vibe! :D

Bad For Business

I had a couple of Guilt By Association situations this year, myself..

One friend of mine supposedly said some stuff she shouldn’t have said (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what actually happened in order to form an opinion of the situation).

Another friend of mine made this raunchy, corny, unfunny video with some dude that she got TOTALLY TRASHED for in her comment section before she took the video down entirely.

The first response to situations like this is “EEK!!! :O”. The next response is “whatchagonnado? \o/”. I’m not going to enact REVISIONIST HISTORY (a.k.a. Historical Revisionism or Negationism) and try to act *NOW* like I wasn’t friends with them IN THE PAST. It was definitely suggested to me “for business reasons”, but, sorry.. It’s all in the game. I do business to get money. I hang out with my friends to enjoy the one life I’m going to have. I’m not going to systematically remove and erase friends of mine as they get caught up in situations or do stupid or ill-advised things. If I have to drive a truck, that’s what I’m gonna do (not that that could ever happen.. I’m just sayin’! :D hahaha).

On top of that, you look like an IDIOT because everybody already knows who you hang out with. By the time someone screws up, it’s already too late. You can try to sweep them under the rug, but you’re still going to be standing there with the broom and dustpan in your hands.

Lots of people don’t have the same luxury that I have of being a freelancer and not beholding to any one client, thus needing to hide my opinions from people lest I lose my job. They also don’t have the luxury that every time I lose one Facebook friend I gain at least twenty. Therefore, they have to minimize their Guilt By Association in order to assure that they continue forward progression in the rat race.

If that’s the case for you, you might want to carefully consider your Social Media connections for this new year. You might decide to craft your connections for ease of Damage Control instead of openness to the community. You might decide to make your friends list on Facebook look like your business list on Linkedin. You might decide to only friend people you know and trust IRL (in real life). You might decide to do a fan page instead of a regular page and act like everyone has a connection to you, but you have no connection to them.

Regardless of what you select, I just saw an ad about how the new iPod Nano records video. Add this to the fact that my gPhone not only records video but will stream live to the internet via Qik and that iPhones will stream live to the internet via Ustream and there are all other sorts of photo and video options and in a minute, EVERYONE will be making media whether you’re aware of it or not. This means that your actual ACTIONS are going to have to be congruent with what you’d like to project to the world. If you don’t want people to think that you curse (which I *do* IRL, but don’t in print, unless I need to in order to make my point), then don’t curse in public while some fool’s live-streaming the conference you’re at from his iPhone. :D If you don’t want people to think you hang out with a lot of chicks, don’t hang out with a lot of chicks.

Welcome To The Show! :D

What Tiger Woods found out this year, you will find out next year. It’s becoming increasingly tough to craft your own image with zero input from outside sources. Back in the day, you could leave voice messages for your side-piece and they’d never see the light of day. NOW?.. That same gal’s using your message as a ringtone on her cell phone. Back in the day, there WAS no such thing as text messaging or Facebook pictures or Twitter… haha All you need is for someone to type “Hangin’ at the bar with @BillCammack” when I called in sick that day (Ah-CHOO!, Ah-CHOO!) :D I *just* watched a video where some kid got in trouble for posting a picture on the internet of himself with a beer can in his hand when he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. :)

On a separate but related topic, because of things like Google Profiles, it’s becoming increasingly obvious who said what. The days of screen names like Jazzy0123 instead of “Bill Cammack” or at least “BillCammack” are over. Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Disqus and OpenID are being used more and more, to the point that eventually, if you want to run your mouth about something, you’re going to have to own your words. Everything you type is going to be added to your Online Presence resume. Google’s even indexing real-time status updates from Twitter at this point….

So what’s your 2010 plan as far as Social Media connections? I’m already too far gone with thousands of “Friends” on several sites. I’m gonna have to continue to hide in plain sight, with my excuse being “I know literally HUNDREDS of people.. *SOMEBODY’S* gonna do something stupid now and then. \o/” There’s nothing much I can do about that. If you’re just starting out with Social Media, however, you have the opportunity to select how you build your roster. You can build it for business, build it from people you already know personally, build it of people that you want to be fans of yours because you’re a musician or an actor…

Just be prepared! :D because sooner or later, *YOU’RE* gonna be “the man (or woman) next to the man”, and YOU’RE gonna get pressured by someone over something someone associated to you has been accused of doing, and then you’re gonna have to decide for yourself whether to fold to that pressure and disassociate yourself from the accused or stand on your own two and tell the nosey party to MIND. THEIR. *******. BUSINESS!!! :D

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

Related Posts

• Frenemies or Frienemies
• How To Throw A Party
• Google Your Date?
• Bros Before Hoes? [RW:DC, Part 02]
• 10 Reasons He Wants To Be “Just Friends”

Lindsey Chen (@LindseyChen) & Bill Cammack (@BillCammack)

Lindz & Bill present 10 Reasons He Wants To Be “Just Friends”

Related Posts
Lindsey & Bill: Does He Want To Be Friends?
Top 10 Reasons to Date a Geek
Top Ten Valentine’s Day DON’Ts!
Top 10 Mistakes Girls Make When Trying To Get A Guy
Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl
10 Warning Signs That You Should Dump His Ass

Every once in a while, a gal will meet a guy that she knows likes her as a person as well as romantically, however, he refuses to make it happen… He refuses to take that extra step to start something up between them and see how it goes. This is when a gal finds herself trapped in the dreaded Friends Zone!!! :O

As usual, it’s Lindz & Bill to the rescue, with ten reasons why you might be receiving this kind of treatment. Let us know what you think in the comments section, below…

Lindz

1. He Wants to Keep His Options Open

Ladies, he would never put himself on a diet just in case he got hungry and wanted a cheeseburger and fries. The same with this situation. Tying himself down to you or any one person at all completely eliminates all the rest of the girls out there and to be honest, there are many fish in the sea. Many FINE fish in the sea that are looking for the perfect King Salmon or King Crab to go home with.

2. He’d Rather Hang Out With His Guy Friends Than Be Obligated To You

By not dating you or any other woman, he has the right to say, “No I don’t want to go to your sister’s Bat Mitzvah with you. I’d rather stay home and play Fantasy Football. Really it doesn’t matter what he is doing because if he’s not tied down to you, he has no obligation. Guys are lazy and they don’t like to commit. Maybe one night he would rather sit at home and watch porn than go to your Mom’s 60th birthday with you. Can you blame him?

3. The Holidays Are Coming Up And He’s Broke.

Having a significant other generally means that you have to get them a gift for their birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day. If he’s broke and legitimately cannot afford a gift for you, he may hold off on the boyfriend/girlfriend status because not getting you a gift will make him seem cheap and embarassing, and he would rather be single than be called cheap.

4. You’re Way Hotter Than Him and He’s Insecure That You’ll Leave Him

Guys really do think that way. He would rather not date you than date you and be dumped by you. Because then he would be that douchebag that got dumped by the hot girl. And it would hurt his self esteem and image for longer than you would probably be dating. He’s gotta look out for himself in this situation. That’s why you see so many good looking guys with not so good looking girls. They are confident that she’ll stick around. It’s hard being hot. I know…

5. You’re Damaged Goods (Bros Before Hoes)

Well you brought this upon yourself, what can I say? If you’re trying to hook up with a guy or date him, DO NOT.. I repeat.. DO NOT hook up, date, sleep around, flirt, text, his friends. Contrary to what you may think, guys DO talk and they will talk about that girl (YOU) who is trying to play them like they were born yesterday. So be wise and most importantly, choose wisely. One stupid drunken hook up could curse your future forever.
You’re damaged goods (Bros before Hoes)

Bill

6. He Doesn’t Want To Hit It

He thinks you’re fantastic as a person and all that, but he just doesn’t see having sex with you as being a good time. This might be because he’s not physically turned on by your body or he’s not mentally aroused by your mentality or your way of being. You might be too kinky for him or not kinky enough.. too chunky or too skinny… too prudish or too horny… you might have too much junk in the trunk or not enough bounce to the ounce! HAHA Who Knows? :D

7. You Can’t Handle It

“I’ve seen the future… I can’t afford it…” Sometimes, it becomes apparent that getting out is going to be tougher than getting in. Being that he has ZERO intentions of having sex with only you for the rest of his life, as much as he’d love to hook up with you, it’s ultimately more trouble than it’s worth. He’ll just have to be content to fantasize about it and keep it movin’! :D

8. HE Can’t Handle It

A brotha stands to potentially lose some Cool Points if he hooks up with a chick that’s TOO FOYINE and then all that “King Of My Castle” trash he’s been talking about women for YEARS suddenly evaporates into thin air. He might have to take a pass on this one in order to maintain his Social Cred.

9. Your Friendship or Business Is More Important

Keep your eyes on the prize!!! :D You don’t want to jack you career advancement because your now-ex-girlfriend doesn’t want to see your grill around the office. Bite the bullet on this one and get PizAID!!! You can pull a lot more chicks with the money you’ll be getting from this one. ;)

Also, if you expect a certain level of coolness and mental compatibility, close homegirls are hard to find. Beleedat! It’s TOTALLY not worth it to alienate a great gal because she’s sour that y’all aren’t hooking up anymore. But hey… I mean if she begs you, you might just have to do her that solid and hit her off, NAH MEEN? :D

10. You Have Lots Of Attractive Girlfriends

If he’s friends with you, you’ll introduce him to all your foyine-ass girlfriends that are always crowded around you at the parties! :D If he’s messing with you, you’re gonna hog The Kid all to yourself, and what’s the point of being SELFISH??? :D

Remember… Ain’t no fun ‘less’n your HOMEGIRLS could get some!!! :D

Lindz|@LindseyChen & Bill|@BillCammack

Related Posts

• 10 Warning Signs That You Should Dump His Ass
• Top 10 Reasons to Date a Geek
• Lindsey & Bill: Does He Want To Be Friends?
• Top Ten Valentine’s Day DON’Ts!
• Bros Before Hoes? [RW:DC, Part 02]

Bill & Flo

A while back, my friend Flo typed either “Frenemies” or “Frienemies” to me in a conversation and I was like “um.. What’s that?”. Once she explained it to me, as a combination of the words Friend and Enemy, I was like :/

As corny as the term is, it really DOES accurately describe the relationship that many people have with other people. According to Wikipedia:

“Frenemy” (sometimes spelled “frienemy”) is a portmanteau of “friend” and “enemy” which can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a partner who is simultaneously a competitor.[1] The latter can describe personal, geopolitical, and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions. The word may have appeared in print as early as 1953.[2]

Before I got involved with Social Media, most people that I knew don’t have time or energy for this type of relationship. They also weren’t interested in it. We were on the same team or we weren’t. We felt positively, neutrally or negatively about each other or we don’t know or care that each other exists.

There are, apparently, some people that either enjoy living this kind of life or find it to be necessary because of what they do to get money. An example would be the film industry. Everybody wants to be selected to act in something, or direct something, or film something, or work on the crew. What’chagonnado when someone tells you they got a job YOU wanted? You can either congratulate them and sulk behind their backs (if that’s how you feel), or you can tell them how you really feel and risk alienating them.

The Tabloids

Going the direct route doesn’t work so well in Social Media. People aren’t so quick to tell people with 40,000 Twitter Followers what they really think of them. So, bedsides IRL pressures, there are online pressures not to make yourself a pariah on the back-channel.

Jill & Flo

The back-channel is where authentic conversation goes on between people that know each other online, except it’s private. It’s where true opinions of people are passed around and propagated, which never end up “in print”.

You can’t find these opinions on Twitter or Facebook or in blog comments, but they’re commonly-known positions and a lot of people have discussed them and agree with them. As a video game player, I find it quite interesting to go to parties and see the different factions hanging out together, commiserating about the other team(s).

I’ve also been the victim of ‘guilt by association’, where people know that I’m friends with someone they don’t like and automatically place me on the opposite team, when, in fact, I’m absolutely neutral, and the issues they have with each other have nothing to do with me, whatsoever.

Usually, I don’t say anything about this and just let it slide. When you know a bunch of people, there’s always going to be someone that has a problem with someone else that you know. Trying to be involved is like keeping several plates spinning on several sticks… You’ll never finish maintaining the situation, there’s no value to it, and in the end you’ll have wasted a bunch of time.

One time, I decided to get involved. I have a friend that I was a fan of way before we became IRL friends. At some point, I felt that she had become “meh” towards me, which is perfectly fine… ish happens. I can’t possibly count the number of people that I used to hang out with throughout the years that I’ve lost contact with. The issue was that due to the fact that we have a bunch of mutual friends and see each other on the circuit now and then, I wasn’t sure she’d tell me if I had been annoying her or she just wasn’t interested in socializing with me.

Instead of jumping to conclusions, I decided to ask her directly whether we were cool or not. She was like “yeah.”, naturally, hahaha what else is someone going to say to a question like that? :D I explained my position to her, that I don’t do the Frenemies thing and it was cool with me if she didn’t want to socialize. She insisted she didn’t have a problem with me, so I accepted that and that was the end of it.

Fear & Loathing

People in general have become scared to death of voicing their opinions about personality conflicts. Back in the day, when there was no such thing as Social Media, there were people that liked each other, people that disliked each other and people that didn’t care about each other or know each other existed. The system works very well that way. Everyone knows where everyone stands. You know which crowds not to mix when you’re planning events. You know which people not to recommend to work together on business projects.

I wrote this article weeks ago, and since then, we’ve seen the perfect example of what happens to you when you say what you REALLY think about people. Some guy decided he was going to shout “YOU LIE” at The President of The United States of America while he was trying to speak. There was an IMMEDIATE verbal reaction from a lot of people in the crowd. According to Keith Olbermann’s comments about the situation, the guy wasn’t even RIGHT about what he was screaming about, on top of being rude and disrespectful to President Obama as a person and to the office of the POTUS as well.

Regardless of how many people agree with what the guy said, HE was the one that interrupted The President, so he gets to be the poster-boy for the situation. This is what people attempt to avoid by keeping their opinions flowing on the back-channel and not airing them in blogs or in audio or video clips where people are going to share the media with everyone they know. This is what I call a transparency loop, or probably more accurately, a transparency SPIRAL, because the more people you know, the more people you have an opportunity to offend with your media and the less honest you’re willing to be when you’re creating media. Everyone loves to claim that they’re transparent, but in fact, they’re 100% transparent about whatever way-smaller-percentage of the facts they’re willing to talk about.

Anyway, politics is an excellent example of frenemies, because people have to pretend they like and respect each other in order to come to agreements about policies. Meanwhile, every time it’s time for someone to get elected, they come up with all kinds of GARBAGE to talk about the other candidate. Then, when it’s all over and somebody won, people want to act like “heh heh… Nah man… That was all business, heh heh. We’re COOL! We’re COOL!” :/

Keeping Up Appearances

The problem with Frenemies is that everyone appears to be friends.. at least to those people that aren’t connected on the back-channel and don’t know the actual scoop about what person X and person Y have been saying about each other.

This means that it’s really tough to tell who’s serious and who isn’t about being someone important in your life. The people who are trying to USE YOU act exactly the same way as your actual friends. On top of that, when people know who you know, they try their best not to speak honestly about you when any of those people are present, which leads to even more dilution.

I liked the good old days… Agree, Disagree or Agree To Disagree. Period. If you have a beef… Settle it… Or Don’t. Make the teams. Decide which team you’re on or decide to remain a free agent. Some people are going to hate you for choosing sides. Other people are going to hate you for NOT choosing sides. There’s nothing you can do about this.

It’s a much easier life and you can socialize and do business way more efficiently when you have friends, enemies and people that don’t care about you one way or the other instead of a bunch of people that you just can’t figure out who the hell they are or what the hell they want.

~ Bill Cammack

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Back in September 2007, I wrote “Friends, Acquaintances & Contacts” about the lack of the ability to differentiate between levels of acquaintance we have with people we connect to via Social Media.

It’s been rumored that Facebook is going to add a “Fan” distinction to regular pages. Currently, you’re a “Friend” of someone or you’re not. If they add Fans, that’ll make “Facebook Fan Pages” obsolete, IMO. It will also make people more likely to add other people to their regular page that they don’t consider to be Friends to the degree that they would add them at all.

I think this is a good idea, as it would centralize the database of people that are connected to one person instead of having at least two databases for at least two pages and most of the people being redundant anyway. I have 1492 Friends on my regular page and 109 Fans on my fan page, which are, AFAIK, *ALL* Friends of mine on my regular page. There’s no need for this redundancy, whatsoever.

Also, I would feel more comfortable, personally, adding myself as a Fan to someone’s regular page than as a Fan on their fan page. For some reason, that feels more representative of the facts to me, as it pertains to Social Media. For instance, I’ve Omar Epps & Michael Beach, but I *certainly* don’t qualify as a “Friend” of theirs. OTOH, I would appreciate a distinction that’s ‘more’ than “That’s someone I’ve seen on television and I respect their work”. Similarly, there’s a band that I’m a fan of, and I’ve actually hung out with them several times.. however we don’t have ANYTHING in common, and I’d feel more authentic demoting myself to being a Fan of theirs, assuming Facebook offers you the opportunity to change your relationship to someone when/if they add this Fan status option to their regular pages.

Since this whole thing is about data collection anyway, I think it’s in Facebook’s best interest to add the Fan distinction. They’ve already made groups, and you’re able to assign different qualifications and qualities to each group, however, it still doesn’t allow you to properly define yourself in relation to the people in the groups.

If I raise glasses with Joe C., Jim L. and Rox D. whenever we end up in the same place at the same time, I’d like to be able to mark that down separately from someone whom I saw in a web series that I enjoyed and respected that I’ve Friended and they accepted, but we’re not IRL friends. I’d also like to be able to accept Fan Requests from people whom I’d like to acknowledge for “Following” me on Facebook, but I have no connection to and no reason to add as Friends. Flickr has this capability and so does XFN (“friend, met, colleague”, etc). Arguably, you can create these distinctions using multiple groups, but it would be better to be able to do it off the bat… Better for the users and better for Facebook’s data collection and utilization efforts.

~ Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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