Bill Cammack

BillCammack.com – Manhattan, NYC Fireworks on the 4th of July, 2009

Here’s a tip for the married guys and guys with relationships, girlfriends, what have you…
You really should have a pretty regular Date Night scheduled with your woman.

Bill Cammack – “Date Night”

Available Formats: Audio (.mp3)

Sponsor: Bill Cammack

Bill on NYC Pizza
Bill Cammack billcammack.com | @BillCammack

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So my blog, DatingGenius gets syndicated in a few places… mostly Lux & Blakeley’s Boinkology.

The other day, my blog was linked to by Alexis McKinnis, over @ vita.mn in a post called “Quick Links: Dude Edition”.

So today, I’m having a conversation with a friend where I’m discussing syndication, and I link to Alexis’ blog as an example and lo and behold, there are comments that had been made since the time I became aware of and read the post. One of those comments was from a reader of hers who calls himself “AlphaBean”, and here’s what he had to say, which pertained to my post, “Ladies: Why He Won’t Call You His Girlfriend”:

3) I don’t like that list. It sounds like it’s trying to be scientific, without actually delving into the psychology of men. People like manboys (AlphaBean) who can’t even say “I Love You” in private without feeling like a tool. That would be getting way too serious, wouldn’t it? But come on… if you’re not going to be serious, then at least be funny. Rachel Ray jacking off corn? A H2 Hummer stuck in a mud puddle? Hilarious. That list? Not so much.

Now… Putting aside the fact that this person clearly read my post and decided NOT to leave that comment on MY blog, but back on Alexis’… What jumped out at me was “The Psychology of Men”. I think that’s a FANTASTIC title, and it probably should have been the first post of this kind that I ever wrote. So now… Let’s talk about “The Psychology of Men”.

Ladies… Here is the male thought process……

Give. Me. What. I. Want.

That’s it.

Give your man what he wants, and you will remain. Deviate from the Prime Directive, and you will be replaced.

It’s that simple. There’s nothing else you need to know about guys. You can apply this Golden Rule in all situations:

He wants to have sex and you don’t… you will be replaced.
He wants to go to the club and you don’t… you will be replaced.
He wants breakfast and you don’t want to cook it… you will be replaced.
You don’t want to get out from in front of the television… you will be replaced.
He doesn’t want kids and you’re like “I’m having it anyway! :D “… you will be replaced.
You eat bon bons all day instead of going to the gym… you will be replaced.

etc etc etc ad infinitum. You are neither Spock nor McCoy nor Uhura. You do not resemble Nichelle Nichols:

You are a Redshirt. There is no guarantee that you will reprise your role in the next episode. If there are hostile forces on the planet y’all beam down to, *YOU* will be the first to go. Beleedat. :D

A redshirt is a stock character, used frequently in science fiction but also in other genres,[citation needed] whose primary purpose is to die soon after being introduced, thus demonstrating the dangerous circumstances faced by the main characters. The term originates from the science fiction television series Star Trek, in which security officers wear red shirts and are often killed on field missions under the aforementioned circumstances.[1]

Now that we’ve… delved into the psychology of men….. Let’s discuss why “AlphaBean” refers to himself as a “manboy” and “can’t even say ‘I Love You’ in private without feeling like a tool”.

By both of his statements, “AlphaBean” informs us that he’s been BRAINWASHED. I can only imagine what a “manboy” is supposed to be. It sounds like a character from “Land of the Lost”.

However, I’ll assume it’s a reference to someone whose age indicates that they’re a man, but whose behavior & mannerisms indicate that they’re a boy. *YAWN*. If that’s the case, WAKE UP, “ALPHABEAN”. There’s no blueprint to human development. You feel how you feel and that’s it. There’s no agreed-upon AGE where someone starts to feel differently than they felt before. Just because you’re 72 doesn’t mean you can’t pull 54-year-old chicks. Free your mind. Stop blaming yourself for not keeping up with the Joneses. Do You.

As far as “feeling like a tool” (whatever a “tool” is), for saying “I love you” in private… Why don’t you examine what that phrase means to you?….. Where did you learn it? What did it mean to you as a child? What did it mean to you when your parents said that to you? DID your parents say that to you? Is “I love you” merely a tool you use to get laid? Is “I love you” a term that you emotionally reserve to ONLY say to “The One”? If that’s the case, then you won’t feel comfortable saying “I love you” to a chick that you know damned well is NOT “The One”. Capisce?

On top of that, according to your profile, you live in the United States of America, which means that you will most likely be labeled a PUSSY for telling a chick you love her, even if you do, with your entire heart and soul. If it’s not that you’ll be less of a man, you might be worried that your relationship to her will change instantaneously by saying three bullshit words that anyone can say to anyone with no fear of getting struck by lightning. You’ll also be penalized by society for telling more than one chick that you love her, which is known as polyamory. You’ll also be penalized for telling a chick you love her if she’s already in a so-called relationship to someone else. The job of your Superego is to carry society’s brainwashing along with you to beat you over the head whenever you’re ready to do whatever comes naturally to you.

So, yeah… Being that I minored in Psych @ MIT (alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack), I can go on and on about “The Psychology of Men” all day and all night. That wasn’t my point, in “Ladies: Why He Won’t Call You His Girlfriend”, but I’m glad you brought it up! :D

Cheers! :D

DatingGenius

Late-night hot dog stand line in New York City.

This is what I have to deal with. New York City! hahaha :D

That’s the way I like it.

This is how we’re livin’.

Beledat! :D

New York City skyline w/ Empire State Building & New Yorker Hotel.

Bill Cammack – NYC

Bill Cammack

NYC

Christian Payne aka “Documentally” is a photographer and blogger who was commissioned by the UNHCR to photograph the plight of Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

I edited Christian’s work into a video that we’ve recently completed, and he posted this video, thanking me as well as others for what we’ve done:

Seesmic Member Link | Non-member Link
Initially, this post was going to be called “Thanks for the Thanks”, because I definitely appreciate Christian’s authenticity and heartfelt statements. :D “Cheers for that”, as they say over there in the U.K. :D

However, that’s really a private communication between Christian and myself that happened to be expressed on a public medium (both his video and my text, above). What I think would be more useful to my 40 readers, according to Technorati (minus however-many registered search engines :p) is to talk about the process of creation, in this case, dealing with video, and the difference that it makes when you’re actually emotionally invested in what you’re doing. Also, I wanted to give Christian some more background on how we ended up working together.

I’m a video blogger, which essentially means I film videos and put them on the internet. We have our own little “echo chamber” of friends and colleagues. I first became aware, sort of, of Phil Campbell on Dan McVicar’s social site “Late Nite Mash”.

Bill & Dan in NYCIn November, 2006, Dan collected music pieces from Phil and other members and made a “mash-up” with video footage I sent him of New York City nightlife:

I say “sort of” aware of Phil because at that time, social media wasn’t advanced enough for people to get to know more about each other than what they typed on a page or a picture or video they posted. At this point, we not only have the technology to do our own video shows, like Phil’s “The Gravity”, but there are more and more live services popping up… Ustream, BlogTV, Yahoo! Live, LiveVideo, new services all the time, where we get to see a lot more about people than we used to.

So anyway, I got to know Phil Campbell as a quality guy who STAYS on top of the game when it comes to social media and is simply a treasure trove of good ideas. :D

Next in order, Andrew Lipson gave me an invite to this (at the time, invite-only) video-messaging application called Seesmic while I was an audience member of the Jeff Pulver Show. I checked it out, but it really wasn’t my type of conversation going on between the beta-testers, so I just watched Seesmic like a television show instead of participating in the watercooleresque banter.

There were a couple of people there with strong personalities and methods to their madness. The most animated and volatile of them was this character named “Documentally”. :D Most people, once you’ve seen four videos of them, you know their range… or at least the range they’re willing to bring to the world-stage which is Seesmic or any other site where you post videos that people can watch from NYC to Zimbabwe. With Documentally, you never really know what was going to happen in one of his videos. He might say something intelligent and serious. He might say something batty and off the wall. He might say nothing at all. He might roll his truck and videotape the situation as if he’s the first reporter on the scene! :D It was clear from the “Documentally” character that Christian Payne had A LOT of range to his personality, and there was a lot of entertainment value in his videos.

So being a morning person, I tend to chat with the European folks (who are 5/6 hours ahead of us) before the Americans wake up. I’m chatting with Phil Campbell and he mentions that his friend Christian had a project he was working on. I let Phil know I was aware of Documentally and was willing to chat with him about the project. In skypeing with Christian, I got to meet the “hang out at the pub” version instead of the “Seesmic character” version. He’s a nice guy, and as he put it in the video, he’s “someone I’d like to call a friend”. :)

I really meant to talk about the actual project, but I’ll do that some other time. This ended up being a post about connections. One of the benefits of social media is that people get to learn about each other at their own pace and according to their own level of interest. Another benefit is that we have checks and balances inside our “echo chamber”. For example, Dina Kaplan and I have 102 “Facebook Friends” in common! :O … Even if you spit that into 50 friends and 50 acquaintances, that means there are *50* people that I can contact right this second and ask them a question about Dina. I’d probably get 15 responses back, and they’d all be approximately the same, because that’s how Dina carries herself. She’s consistent.

Liz Gannes, Bill Cammack & Dina Kaplan

Through social media, and also by meeting in person @ Adam Quirk’s event named Vloggercue in Brooklyn, I developed an impression of Phil Campbell as a stand-up guy and a good judge of character. For Phil to bring up Christian’s project to me, I’m automatically *infinitely* more inclined to hear more about it. Yes, it helped A LOT that Christian already had a strong social media presence. Yes, it helped A LOT that the photos he shot for the project are rich and full of emotion, intimacy and meaning. However, the *main* thing is connection… passing it on. Social media offers us the opportunity to get to know each other, asynchronously… and then follow up to find out how the real person matches up to his or her online persona.