Hype - The Greatest Blog Entry Of All Time

So....

Here on the east coast, I'm supposed to be under a foot of snow by now(7:30 pm Saturday December 19th) and there's not a snowflake in sight. It's now barely gotten started way downstate, so it'll be a while before it even gets here at all.

This got me thinking about hype, since they've been pushing what's not here as 15-20 inches, the storm that defines storms for the next however many years. We may get that much yet, but the last several hours have been fun to watch.

Did this storm really need the hype? People around here freaked out like we were getting ten times what the estimate was. Storms seem to get overhyped a lot, but they're not the only things.

There has been overhyped events since the first time someone realized that more people would come to something if it was promoted. Hype doesn't give an event more if it doesn't live up to it. Overhype makes people more apt to think twice next time.

How many fights of the century have there been? Game of the decade, the biggest gathering of some sort in the last X years, it's all the same.

Next time, just say it's an event, let the quality speak for itself. Prebranding yourself as the best or the most or the least, or whatever - just makes you look foolish in the end.

What kind of overhyped balogna did you fall for? We've all done it, admit to it below, it'll make you feel better, I promise.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

AntiSocial Media

No, this post is not against social media. In fact, it's in favor of it.

Here's the deal...

I LOVE social media. You never know who you may run in to, talk to, what you might learn. It instantly connects me with whomever is out there, from a friend in high school on facebook, to the CEO of a worldwide company on Twitter...and everything in between.

There's a lot out there, just waiting for you to find it. Therein lies the rub. It's all there.

See, when I was younger, I always had trouble meeting new people. I got nervous and quiet, and would often keep to myself. As it turns out, I would later find that I had/have a slight case of generalized anxiety, and my big trigger was new people and such.

Needless to say, I wasn't too enthusiastic about social media at first, figuring that it would be just as awkward as meeting new people or going new places had been in the past.

But it wasn't. I am the same person online and offline, no more true to myself or less true to myself either place. I have actually found that the people that are the best in taking to social media ARE the people who are like me. A little awkward, maybe just nervous.

We know what it's like. Not to be reached out to, not to be friends with everyone. We understand social media. It's for learning and growing and understanding.

It's what we've been trying to do all along.

Go talk to the quiet kid in the corner. Give the slightly nervous kid a moment to collect himself. You never know who they may become, or who they might know someday...or today, even.

Everybody knows something...and social media makes a person able to teach the world....

What have you taught someone lately?