Buying into plotlines
Your brand is your user experience
Merry Amex-mas (Augmented Fun From Down Un)
Where do you stand on SOPA and PIPA?
At the end of last summer, my friend Nick and I went deep-woods canoe camping. We packed our gear and headed for Killarney Provincial Park about 20 minutes south of Sudbury. Just two GTA guys portaging in the Canadian Shield – it was us against the wilderness and technology wasn’t invited.
It wasn’t so much that technology wasn’t welcome as it just was simply impossible because of the very NATURE (see what I did there?) of where we were. So the phones, usually our lifeline to anyone not within 20 feet of us, were left in the car for the four-day, three-night excursion.
In the end I left the park with a clearer and more relaxed state of mind than I can remember enjoying in a long, long time. But nothing could prepare me for the backlash we would encounter from friends when we got back to the car and recharged our phones.
I was inundated with over two-dozen missed calls and even more texts, and when I got home I had people looking for me on Facebook and Twitter whom I hadn’t talked to in weeks! Turns out that when you don’t share with people in your network that you’re going to disappear off the grid for a few days (a huge social gaffe on our parts in the first place), rumours like the recent ones surrounding Gordon Lightfoot’s “death” start surfacing everywhere.
Our personal “brands” live and die by the technology we’re wired into 24/7 through the radio, the web, TV, newspapers and magazines, and most of all, our cell phones. Taking a couple of days off is akin to dead air for a TV station – unthinkable.
It’s staggering when one stops to contemplate how immersed we consumers are in the gadgets and gizmos we’ve created just to stay connected to the media mainframe. And whether those means are used for entertainment, news, buying or selling, staying connected to one another, or just spreading rumours, it’s worth stepping back every once in a while to get some perspective.
But not for too long, or people might just start thinking you’re dead.
Jim Monteath
March 5, 2010 @ 4:57 pm
Good story, Keagan. Fortunately, your “digital death” wasn’t as dramatic as this one:
“Girlfriend Doesn’t Realize Boyfriend is on Vacation in Europe”
(Caution: contains language encountered outside a monastery)