What I affectionately refer to as “Revisionist History” may actually be more accurately called Historical Revisionism. There are actually two types, one which has a positive connotation and implies that intelligent people took another look at the data that’s currently available to them and came up with a valid interpretation of that data that differs from what’s been widely accepted about that event up until now. The second type is when people decide they don’t like how the past looks and decide to reinterptet it for their own benefit. The latter is what I want to talk about right now.

Time goes forward… Not BACKWARD. Things happen and then they move from the present into the past. Once they’re in the past, there’s no way for you to affect them, being that nobody’s created a time machine yet. If you tell a story ONE WAY at the time, and then turn around and tell a DIFFERENT STORY later on.. Assuming you had your wits about you when you told the story the first time, you are attempting to revise history. Here’s an example:

Back in the day….. (right, Frank?) I used to hang out with this chick that had a boyfriend and she would lie to him all the time about what she had done or where she had been for the last several hours while she wasn’t answering her phone. I didn’t think anything of this becuase that’s what people do when they’re in a relationship and they don’t want to suffer the consequences of their SO knowing who they really are.. They lie. Fine. I get that.

So this same chick tells me a story one day about where she had been on a particular evening when her boyfriend had been looking for her. The story was that her cell phone had run out of batteries and she had decided to walk home and it took her about an hour. This is what she told me and this is also what she told me she told her boyfriend.

Weeks or months later, her boyfriend does something she doesn’t like and then she tells me that on the night that she told him she had walked home, she was actually hanging out with other guys at a bar and having a good time. The reason this information came up was that NOW she felt vindictive and wanted to mentally feel like she was hurting her boyfriend. I say “mentally feel” because she never told HIM this version of the story. She only told ME so that she could feel like she was being defiant and get it out of her system so that she wouldn’t get dumped by this guy and then feel like a JERK when she got over it and wanted to be with him again….. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. She got over it.

Now.. I couldn’t give a damn what some chick tells her boyfriend. What I *DO* care about is that she decided to lie TO ME about it as well because she wanted sympathy at the time. He had been rather upset that he couldn’t find her and had SCREAMED on her and she was scared that he might dump her so she told me the same story she told him in order for me to assure her that walking home with a non-working phone wasn’t a dumping offense.

When you attempt to revise history, you erode your credibility. There’s no way around this. As long as there are people around who remember what really happened, you’re going to either look like a jerk who’s trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes or you’re going to look like you are currently EMBARRASSED about your past. Being that it’s the year 2009 as I write this and Social Media has been in full effect for quite some time now, there are a. whole. hell. of. a. lot. of. people. that watched your PRESENT in real-time. Whatever you posted at the time, that’s what people remember. There’s no way around THIS EITHER, other than never posting anything to the internet and ‘keeping your business out the street’.

Relationships

Relationships change. I know LOTS of people that used to date each other in ‘06, ‘07, ‘08 and even ‘09 that aren’t dating each other now. That’s not my problem.

Friendships change. I know lots of people that used to be friends and at the time of this writing, they are not. That’s not my problem either.

I have pictures with couples that are no longer couples and friends that are no longer friends. Regardless of how they feel about each other NOW, they don’t get to change MY history, which includes ALL OF US sharing good times together.

Regardless of what you say NOW (and you may very well have perfectly legitimate problems with your former SO or friend), y’all were rather happy with each other at the time and that’s the spirit in which the pictures were posed for, taken and posted. Up until you achieved a problem with the other person, you derived as much pleasure from the pics as I did, if not MORE.

What about The Kid?

Ethically, Morally or however you want to categorize it, I don’t get to have special privileges when it comes to revisionist history simply because it’s my camera. COULD I? Certainly. DO I? No. It’s all in the game. If you’re not going to play it the “right” way, don’t play it at all.

I currently have 1,887 Facebook friends, about 900 of whom I’ve hung out with at some point IRL. This means that every once in a while, someone I’m visually associated with is at least accused of and at most proven to have deviated from the norm.

Let me make this perfectly clear…

I. Will. Not. Adjust. My. History. To. Fit. How. You. Feel. About. The. Present.

If someone that I’ve spent time with falls out of favor with you, that’s YOUR PROBLEM and not mine. I don’t care. I’m not interested. You’re a grown-ass-man or grown-ass-woman so act like it and deal with your own problems.

If you decide that you don’t want to do business with me because I’m friends with someone who’s been accused of doing something stupid or has been PROVEN to have done something stupid, good for you. Between my own freelance work, Tribe Nine Creative, and a company I’m about to go on retainer to, I don’t have any more work-hours to assign to people that *WANT* to work with me, much less people that are concerned about who I hang out with or what it would mean to their company’s image to be associated with me, being that I’ve been visually associated with someone else whose internet presence they don’t like.

In fact, the whole concept is RETARDED because other than for television credits,

my name doesn’t even APPEAR on people’s video projects. The people in my Client List are there because I PUT them there. There are lots of companies I’ve worked for that are NOT listed, such as News Corporation / Fox News. So, if you don’t want to do business with me because of people I socialize with, enjoy that life. :)

Porno Chicks

In an attempt to see how it would feel to be embarrassed to be Facebook Friends with someone, I sent a friends request to this porno chick chick that I HEARD was a porno chick, hehe :) Fortunately, she declined my “friendship”! HAHAHA because I regretted it almost as soon as I pressed “send”. :D Facebook doesn’t have any facility for you to retract friendship requests, so, similar to pregnancy, I knew that once it was in there, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I wanted to know how I would feel knowing people had some tangible evidence that I had associated myself with a porno chick. Pretty much, that was the only controversial-type person I could think of to add and since I know a few sex-bloggers, I actually have mutual friends with her. It was a weird feeling. I’m not sure it was sustainable. On the one hand, it’s clear that it’s not YOU that’s being a freakazoid and on camera, to boot. On the other hand, being “friends” with this person implies some sort of endorsement of her lifestyle. That shouldn’t be a connection that’s made, but it’s made all the time, whether people mention it transparently or on the back-channel.

I needed to go to this extent because being that I’m an independent person and not a drone, I’m not interested at all in what people do or get involved in that has nothing to do with me. I didn’t have anyone on my current roster of almost two thousand people that I felt like I might be able to say “Oh, that’s just the last straw!.. I can’t believe he/she did that! :O”. Meanwhile, I know chicks that are upset that I call chicks “chicks”. :D I just wanted to see how it felt to be SOOOO interested in someone else’s business that I would elect to terminate my social media contact with them because of something they did or said.. ESPECIALLY something they’ve been doing I was told that they’ve been doing for years.

AAAAAAAAAAND STAY OUT!!! :D

The bottom line is that media has now been removed from the hands of the newspapers and television stations and placed firmly in the hands of common folk. That chick pointing a phone in your direction on the subway is taking a picture or video of you. There are video cameras watching the streets and the sidewalks in front of places of business. People are shooting video with their smartphones or their video cameras or still cameras or even their iPods now. Your best bet, if you don’t want to be involved in the Social Media game is to STAY. OUT. OF. IT. ENTIRELY!

If you’re not the subject, you’re going to end up in the background of someone’s picture or video. It might be someone you know or someone you don’t. You might be tagged in the media and you might not. If you know damned well that you’re not supposed to go to a certain party, DON’T. GO. TO. THAT. PARTY. instead of going and HOPING you don’t get discovered. That ended in 2008.

Even if you don’t show up in images, you’re going to show up in text. Someone’s going to post your name on Twitter or mention that they were hanging out with you on Facebook and then Google’s going to pick up that mention of your name or your handle and you’re gonna get busted.

Even if they don’t type your name onto the net, they’re going to TELL PEOPLE who they hung out with at the party. Even if they don’t post a picture to the net, they’re going to show it to their friends. The only way for you to attempt to regulate your online presence is to hang out with people that don’t post media to the internet.

Same thing goes for relationships. If you think your relationship might EEEEEEEEVER break up and you might feel sour about that, don’t go all over creation in 2010 posing with your current girlfriend or boyfriend. Save yourself the anguish and keep your relationship(s) to yourself, stop announcing them on Facebook, stop making lovey-dovey videos that you’re going to have to tear down from the net as soon as y’all fall out of favor with each other. It’s way easier to deny information that was never published than to try to reel in media that people have been looking at for YEARS already and were privy to anyway because they were standing right there when y’all were very happily showing off your friendship or relationship by posing for pictures together.

Related Posts

• Is Sex Expected On The Fourth Date?
• Dating is like Asians on Television
• Why Women Are Better Liars Than Men
• Safe Sex Tutorial (Big Willie Pockets)
• Video Games & Dating, Part 01

Bill surrounded by Marisa & Melinda from uncensoredinterview.com

Asians In Manhattan

Please don’t ask me what’s going on in this picture. Thank you very much. Moving right along….. :D

There are A LOT of Asians in Manhattan, NYC. However, if your “understanding” of Manhattan comes from watching television or films, you’d probably assume that there weren’t any at all.

I don’t know anything about the casting industry, but it pretty much seems that unless someone writes elements specifically attributed to Asians (and we all know what THOSE are) into a show, you’re not going to see any Asian brothaz headlining American films unless they blow up large, like Chow Yun-Fat.

I was actually expecting to see another one of my favorites, Tony Leung show up on the scene, but that’s not really the point I wanted to make.

The Map Is Not The Territory

There are lots of things about dating that you’re never told. Sometimes, this is because people are hiding information from you. Other times, it’s because they were never privy to the information themselves. There are people that want to hand out dating advice that they derived ENTIRELY from films, television and reading. There are people that want to give dating advice that have kicked it to a grand total of ONE CHICK IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES, hooked up with her and are doing the family thing and think they have relevant information to share about doing things OTHER than that. There are people that want to tell you how to carry yourself in a bar when they don’t *GO* to bars! O_o People that want to tell you about juggling multiple chicks when they’ve NEVER DONE IT. People that want to talk about running simultaneous LTRS that have NEVER DONE IT. People that want to give you advice on pulling chicks that weren’t even interested in you when you walk in the door THAT HAVE NEVER ACHIEVED THAT!

This is why dating is like “Asians on television”. There’s so much information you DON’T HAVE, but you think you have the correct knowledge because most of the society’s agreed upon the brainwashing. You don’t see the Asians because they’re not being cast in the media. You don’t know the bar scene because you’re not in the trenches. Meanwhile, you’re trying to live into some Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales that people fed you when you were growing up and THOSE PEOPLE know damned well that THEIR LIVES DIDN’T GO THAT WAY! :D

When I was growing up, there was a card game called “OLD MAID”…… “Old Maid”? hahaha Seriously? :D They want to act like it’s an anomaly for women to remain single for their entire lives or become divorced at some point when the divorce statistics are, what? 40%-50% in America? That’s *HALF*, people.. Like Eddie Murphy’s money. HALF!.. Half of the people that even GOT married in the first place. Meanwhile, they’re steadily giving women complexes about “being alone” when they’re older, throwing them that “There’s someone for everyone” sap rap, when in reality, there’s a good chance that they won’t find anyone they’re willing to settle for and even if they do, there’s no guarantee that their relationship’s going to last until they croak.

I was sitting around with a homegirl of mine the other day, trading stories about how many kids our exes have had so far. She and I are STILL “together”, even though all of our exes are long gone. Meanwhile, someone will try to low-rate our relationship because she and I have never “dated” or been “an item”. I know who she is for me. She knows who I am for her. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I doubt that’s going to change.

Seeing & Believing

Derek, Holger, Pat & Bill

So.. Just because you don’t see the Asians doesn’t mean they’re not there. It means you don’t know where to look, they’re being omitted in the media you’re consuming or you’re deliberately being misguided.

Same thing goes for dating. To hear people tell it, it’s all sunshine & roses. Anything that deviates from that is…. well.. Deviant. :D

There’s no benefit to anyone to give you the advice that when your wife asks you why you came home late to tell her “Mind your own business” as well as potentially “I get here when I get here”.

There’s no benefit to telling you that the gal he introduced you to as his cousin ISN’T his cousin…

There’s no benefit to telling you that if you don’t keep your wife satisfied in the bedroom, someone else is going to hannle yo bidnezz FOR YOU. O_o

So what you need to do is take advantage of blogs, etc to OPEN your mind instead of CLOSING it. You can be wary without being suspicious. Recognizing that someone MIGHT do something doesn’t mean that they WILL do that or DID do that. What it does for you is puts you in a better mental position should the unthinkable occur. If you only focus on the potential POSITIVE of a relationship, you won’t be ready for the potential NEGATIVE and might not be able to respond to it until it’s too late. It’s too late to figure out on the fly what you’re going to do when you find out someone cheated on you. It’s too late to figure out what you’re going to say or do when a chick tells you she’s pregnant. It’s too late to figure it out when someone says it’s over.

Just because someone shows you a picture, don’t assume it’s the WHOLE picture, capisce? :) There’s lots of incentive to only tell you PART of the story.. as in “The part of the story that benefits the storyteller”. Don’t assume Asians can’t act because you don’t see any Asian actors. I’m not even going to get into how they elected to cast the movie “21″… People used to think blacks couldn’t QB because they only used to hire white quarterbacks for the NFL and you saw what happened to THAT.

So don’t get caught slippin’, listening to people that have never been in the trenches telling you about dating in particular or relating to people in general. Seek out alternate sources of information, much of which you might not even want to hear, if you want to have a proper grasp on The Game.

Ignorance Is Bliss……… Maybe

I stumbled onto some pictures the other day of a close homeboy of mine and this chick I had wanted to kick it to at the time. I had a conversation with him back in the day about her and he asked me specific questions that I remember chalking up to his uncanny natural wisdom about chicks from having so much experience with them. Looking at the pictures years later, I clearly recognize that she’s way too friendly with him in them for the level of interaction that I was privy to them having and thinking back to who he was and what our relationship was at the time, he most likely hit it and didn’t tell me he did.

I find that concept funny, interesting and tactically correct. I wouldn’t have appreciated it at the time if he had told me he had hooked up with her because he knew how interested in her I was and it was basically a violation of “the code”. It was better for all of us for him to do his thing and enjoy her and keep it under the hat. I’m not in contact with either of them at this point, so it’s all water under the bridge, but the point is that I related to them AS IF they didn’t mess with each other because that was my perception of the situation. I see now how my perception could have been 100% incorrect and I would have been better off if I could have opened my mind to the possibility of them hooking up instead of shutting that idea out because I didn’t want to think about it and would have felt betrayed. I would have preferred the bliss of ignorance to the potential belief that my rap was undermined by a close friend.

Unfortunately….. Sometimes, it’s good to feel betrayed……….. Because you actually WERE! :D

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

Related Posts

• That’s OK… My Dog Doesn’t Speak EITHER!
• Running Dogs
• Big City Dating (Meet The Parents)
• Making Friends vs. Getting Laid
• Disposable Pleasures vs Meaningful Pursuits

Requests For Action

I’m not sure what I think about Requests For Action (RFA)… What I mean by that is that for instance, I’m about to take part for the second year in a row in a videoblogging series that a few of my friends and I do called “New in November” (newinnov.tumblr.com).

Personally, what I would do regarding the site/series is INFORM people that it’s going on or that it’s available. What I would NOT do is request for them to do something about it, such as follow it, reblog it, RT it and DEFINITELY NOT “Please rate my video 5 stars!” :/

To me, that defeats the purpose of the viewer watching your material and deciding that your video actually DESERVED 5 stars and clicking on the meter to indicate that. If you tell people what to do, many times, they’ll do it because you asked them to, not because they give a damn or actually think your show, product or service is any good. Also, lots of times, it’s not even because you asked them to, but rather because they don’t want to be perceived as “not down with the program”. It’s like how I originally dealt with Twitter, following back everyone that followed me… out of “courtesy”. That’s something I picked up from friends of mine who were on Twitter for a full year before I found out about it two years ago. That didn’t work for me, so I don’t do that anymore. I follow whom I follow and whomever follows me follows me. Period.

OTOH..… There’s a very good reason to tell people what to do about your media. A lot of people aren’t aware that they can do things like click “like” on a Facebook post or leave a comment at the bottom of a blog post. A lot of people aren’t aware that they can rate YouTube videos or click the heart on Vimeo videos. It makes sense that you want to inform the uninformed about what they can do. I use a plugin for my site called “What Would Seth Godin Do?” which places a note at the top of my posts for the first five times someone comes to my site that says something like “You might want to subscribe blah blah blah” for that very reason. People come to my site and have no idea they can subscribe and get my posts in their email boxes or get my posts via RSS instead of having to check my site to see if I posted something new.

I also have “Share” links on my posts. That’s an opportunity, not a request. That saves people from having to go to actual websites like stumbleupon to add a post of mine. They can do it right from that link. I could also put “HEY! MAKE SURE YOU SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS SO I CAN HAVE MORE TRAFFIC TO MY SITE!!! :D” on every single post, which I think would be incredibly obnoxious as well as ineffective.

Fishing For Compliments

I have the same issue with RFAs that I have with people that fish for compliments. When you fish for compliments, you look corny and desperate. People are more likely to tell you what you want to hear out of PITY than actually honestly feeling whatever they say. Also, people feel put on the spot when you fish for compliments. If you don’t deserve the compliment, you’ve put them between a rock and a hard place.

Do you look fat in that dress? HELLS YEAH YOU LOOK FAT IN THAT DRESS! but who’s actually going to say that? “Nooo… Nooo… Not at all. You look great. Have you been working out? :D”.. You’re forcing people to be fake with you by requesting that they tell you something that they weren’t offering. Maybe you’re going to look fat regardless of what you wear, and the dress isn’t actually the issue. Maybe you also look GOOD to the person you’re asking, regardless of whether you’re slim and trim or not. Did you think about THAT?…

Having said that, I’m the type of person that doesn’t naturally say what I’m thinking. The question “How do you like my outfit?” may very well elicit a flood of natural comments an compliments that I was THINKING but not SAYING. However, that’s an open-ended question.. “How do you like X?” or even “DO you like X?”. It offers the listener the opportunity to give an honest opinion or no opinion at all. “This jacket looks Funky-Fresh, RIGHT???” puts the other person on the spot if they had just been thinking about how WACK your jacket looks and that they’re embarrassed to be seen with you right now.

Open-Ended References

So I guess I’m a fan of open-ended references. “Here’s this thing that’s going on” or “Here’s this new video or post I created” as opposed to “Go to my video, scroll down the page and click the meter to rate my video 5 stars”. For that, people may as well not watch your video at all, since all you want is the rating so your video can LOOK popular and appreciated when in reality it’s a bunch of your friends clicking 5-stars because you asked them to.

There are no ethics to this game, so I’m not suggesting what people should or shouldn’t do. If that’s how you get your props, by telling people what you want them to do and hoping they do it, good for you. How’s that workin’ for ya? ;) I personally wouldn’t be satisfied with telling people how I want them to react to my media. You lose the ability to separate the real compliments from what’s written by people that are simply following orders. If you can’t tell when someone honestly enjoys and appreciates your media, what do you actually have?…..

Then again, I do Social Media for fun. I enjoy expressing myself. I realize that other people are attempting to build businesses with this stuff and it’s important for them to appear to be popular and for their media to appear well-received, often-watched and usually rated “5 stars” in order to try to get a sponsorship or some kind of revenue-sharing deal or put affiliate links all over their sites or Google Ads or whatever they’re trying to do. Social Media for them is a means to an end instead of just being THE END. This is it. This is the expression. Tell me what you think about it VS Tell other people that you agree that my video is excellent. RATE THIS! vs RATE THIS 5 STARS! or maybe just Rate it if you feel like it…

I like pitches that offer the viewer/listener some kind of “value added” if they click on a link, such as “Click Here to learn how to make a Masquerade Mask! :D”

That kind of pitch tells people WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO RECEIVE if they click on the link. That’s different from telling them WHAT THEY CAN DO FOR YOU by clicking the same link. In the video, Corinne says “make sure to show us some love by subscribing”. That makes perfect sense. If you love the show, SUBSCRIBE, so you get automatic updates. Also, their show, TheadBanger is a business, so their goal is to amass viewers and create, sustain and grow a community. I’m sure a lot of their clips get passed around in emails, etc so it’s likely that there are a lot of people that see it that wouldn’t be aware that it’s an ongoing series as opposed to a one-off, so it’s a good idea to make people aware that they CAN subscribe if they want to.

Still.. The draw is the content, the hosts and their generous utilization of UGC (User-Generated Content). Their fans can actually be ON the show with them if they send in videos/pictures of their personally-created fashion items. It’s like “Here’s more of what you enjoyed in the past” as opposed to “Here’s another opportunity for you to do me a favor and click on my ratings bar”. It’s still too early in the game to figure out whether directly telling people what to do is effective at all. It’s also too early to tell whether people’s personal reputations are being sullied by their constant shilling for whatever company they work for. Maybe none of this matters at all and I’m oversensitive to the issue because I know so many people that create media and I watch so much media online every day. \o/

The way I see it, RFAs and fishing for compliments are both signs of desperation and they’re not pretty. :) If people think your video’s worth 5 stars, they’ll rate it. If people want to say something, they’ll comment. If people want to share your posts with their friends, they will. Make it as easy for them to do that if they feel like it and even though your community will be smaller, it’ll be much more passionate, dedicated and interested in what you have to say.

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

Related Posts

• Content is King, *NOW* (Eye Candy is Over)
• Freedom of Consequences
• Haiti Earthquake + Social Media = HaitiXchange.com
• T&A For Sale
• Social Media Responsibility and Ethics

OK, you males who make up 45% of my viewership, here’s your chance to get busy! :D

Debbie from CityLightsMedia.com sent me this email about a casting call for a new televison series they’re working on:

Casting outgoing men ages 25 to 40 for a cable television series

Seeking attractive, fit, charismatic, men, all ethnicities, 25-40.

Men will practice their pick up skills on our featured dynamic woman.
Dazzle and charm her with wit and personality.  Win her over.
Rate:  $100/half day shoot.
Filming begins end of April.
Interviews;  by appointment only, begin week of March 31st.

Please send a current headshot and resume to citycasting@gmail.com

So, if you think you have the look for the show, and the skillz to take this chick down, get in touch with Debbie and throw your hat in the ring! :D

~Bill

Twitter: BillCammack
Facebook Fan Page: Bill Cammack
DatingGenius Category: billcammack.com/category/datinggenius
Subscribe to DG!: feeds.feedburner.com/BillCammackDatingGenius
 

Related Posts

• Ladies: Flaunt Your Accomplishments!
• Dating is like Asians on Television
• Does He Trust You? [RW:DC, Part 03]
• Bros Before Hoes? [RW:DC, Part 02]
• Is Sex Expected On The Fourth Date?

Social Media Responsibility and Ethics

Leora & Bill

So the other day, I took some pictures (so what’s new?), except one of the chicks we were hanging out with wasn’t feeling confident about her looks.

There were some general shots that she happened to be in, but then when she was asked to specifically be in a pic (not with me, haha so let’s not start with the “Maybe it was YOU?” :D ), she declined, saying that she wasn’t photogenic.

* This actually happened to be incorrect, but that’s an image and self-esteem topic, having nothing to do with ethics…. *

Sharing

So I had told the group I was going to share the pictures with them. When I reviewed the set the next day, I realized that there were a couple of pictures that the non-photogenic chick (I guess I’ll call her NPC) hadn’t “signed off” on.

Now, these weren’t Social Media people. I’m sure they didn’t imagine they were hanging out with someone whose blog posts get literally world-wide coverage. 99% of the people that I hang out with know that if they see ME and they see flashes going off, that the pictures are going to be on the internet, practically immediately. Being that these people weren’t aware of this, it became MY RESPONSIBILITY to be clear on which pictures were authorized by which people for what. It’s like being a bus driver. You’re responsible for your passengers. You can’t go all buck-wild with the driving. So I ended up with three categories of pictures:

1. Pictures that were confirmed for personal use
2. Pictures that were confirmed for public use
3. Pictures that weren’t confirmed at all

Grace, Christine, Bill, Kathryn & Annie

This is one of the reasons I don’t take pictures of random people.

I don’t take pictures “to take pictures”. I’m not an “event photographer”. I’m not building a photography portfolio.

I take pictures to commemorate and broadcast good times that I have and the people that I share those good times with. Random pictures of random people mean absolutely nothing to me. Tagging the pics after the fact is probably 1/4 of the fun of the entire evening for me.

Distribution

So I’m looking through the pics and sorting them into the categories. When I had them together, I sent a specific subset to this good friend of mine, this guy who was there and part of the evening and the pictures. What I sent him was [Pictures with him in them, posing]+[Pictures that the girls had signed off on for public viewing]. The reason I specify “posing” is that some pictures feature people in the background, or unaware that a picture’s being taken. Other pictures are clearly posed and everyone in the foreground is aware of the picture and interested in being in it.

I use a digital camera, so right after I take the shot, everybody gets to see how cute they look and sign off or veto the pic. Therefore, by the time I’m working on my sets, I’m already aware that I’m working from a good set of pictures that everybody likes, except in the cases where there are things you can’t see on the small screen that become apparent in the full-size image.

So I send him the pics, and he calls me and we’re talking about the evening. At some point, he brings up the fact that more pictures were taken than I sent him. I verified that I had a couple of pictures that NPC was in. His predictable response was “Send them to me!”…

Responsibility

I took a few seconds to attempt to formulate a smooth response, but I couldn’t figure one out, so I just said “Nah. Leave her out of it.” Next came the appeals to friendship and appeals to personal trust. Of course, those met the same response and then the topic was dropped. I could hear his disappointment over the phone, but there was nothing I could do about that. Somebody was going to have to feel sad in this situation, and he was clearly the lesser of the evils.

What I didn’t have time to explain to him in the few seconds before I vetoed his request was that he has no idea how far-reaching media is these days and I do. I’m sure he feels like he can put a picture on his website or some Social Media site and nobody will ever see it, because nobody’s “checkin’ for him” like that. Well… Maybe Google’s checkin’ for ya behind your back. Maybe people are randomly looking through pictures, hoping to find people. Maybe someone that you know houses your picture from your site and puts it on their site… or puts it on MySpace… or puts it on Facebook and TAGS IT! How about that?

So, basically, the issue wasn’t whether I could trust him as a friend or not. The issue is that I had a particular design in mind for the pictures that I took, and I’m the only one that I can trust to enforce that plan. To sidetrack for a second, it’s like sex. If you don’t want to get a chick pregnant, make sure you don’t spill any liquid on her. Similarly, if you want to maintain your integrity in a situation and live up to your own word to yourself, make sure you retain control over your media that hasn’t been earmarked for general consumption.

So, do I trust him as a friend? Yes. Do I trust him to maintain MY word about something? No. I can’t. It’s just stupid. On top of that, how about the people that HE trusts? How about the people that THEY trust? Once the “NOC list” is in the open, you have ZERO control over what happens to your media and might put people in compromising situations. If you spill in the chick, you can’t shake her up and down like the cartoons to get it to come back out…..

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
Subscribe via RSS or Email
Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
 

Related Posts

• Freedom of Consequences
• Social Media Smoke & Mirrors
• Revisionist History
• Haiti Earthquake + Social Media = HaitiXchange.com
• Google Your Date?