Billboards and Blogging: Nothing’s for Free

I’ve been wondering about free online-journal/blog services being so FREE, especially to us Joe Soaps. Here is my conspiracy theory:

There is a branch of organised crime called ‘Marketing’

Marketing would like us to believe that a giant photograph of a luxury all-terrain vehicle is better than the view of natural wonders which it is obscuring, and will go to great lengths, including chainsaws, dynamite and bribery of officials, to ensure that the view of the giant photograph itself is not obscured by any natural wonders, such as an annoying old tree, or a pesky rocky outcrop.

These are the people whose evangelistic mission is to get Stuff sold. They are fundamentalists, and their mantra goes, “Stuff is god, Stuff is happiness. Stuff is the measure of your success. In order to access god and happiness, and therefore to succeed, you must get more Stuff. Consumption is the key to your potential, which is as limitless as the happiness you will have access to, if you only consume.”

Now it’s all gone to seed…

‘Seeding’ is the big new thing in marketing circles. A Seed is nothing more and nothing less than a very carefully selected (and paid) peer. Someone who meets all the right criteria is inserted into a group, at school or in the workplace or anywhere else where peer acceptance might register on a success gauge. The Seed will do two things:
1) Hang out and become part of the group, then collect very subtle information from within, the type of information usually unavailable to those not in the group. He learns the group’s ‘code’, if you will, and brings it back to HQ (marketing company). HQ then uses this information to sort of re-encode the schpiel in order to sell Stuff to the group in ways it can positively identify with. The product now speaks the group’s language.
2) Bring ‘buzz’ back from HQ. This is word of mouth, viral chit-chat of the “look at this” or “have you tasted” kind, and if the Seed is worth his salt, ie cool enough in the group to be emulated, the product he’s buzzing about will show rocketing sales figures. Not very nice, but quite clever. Good old-fashioned espionage and propaganda. Yes, they are doing this to our kids and it isn’t illegal. And there we were, thinking the child actually needed this garment/beverage/gadget for some weird teenage reason.

It was only a matter of time before HQ found out about Blogs. What is a blogosphere if not a properly hierarchical peer group?

In 2000 there was an article that said something along the lines of “as Weblogging becomes more widespread among corporations, there's likely to be some resentment from the pioneers who see it as an anti-corporate concept.” Well I’m not exactly a pioneer but I can imagine...

So now there’s this explosion. Anyone can do it, you no longer have to know a hundred programming languages and be a member of Mensa. You don’t have to be the type of person who’d rather spend her spare cash on extra RAM than on that cute new pair of shoes anymore. Joe Soap can do this thing and what’s more, he can do it for FREE. Keep in touch with family and friends, have your say. And that’s not all! Engage with the global community, make new friends and influence people… All for free.

Well I’m not buying it. Which isn’t to say I’m not buying into it because, clearly, here I am. But when I put two and two together, based on my experience with marketing and on my observation of the metamorphosis - of the great worldwide web of shared information into Consumer Central - I get a definite four. Nothing’s for free.

I propose that there is a frenzy of excited marketing dogs sniffing around personal blogs at any given moment, pissing on tyres, picking up on hints people didn’t even know they’d dropped, all the better to target you with, my dear. Monsanto itself couldn’t make a herbicide apocalyptic enough to kill these weed Seeds before they sprout. You can be sure that those who offer free online journal type services (such as this one which is ‘ours’ to exploit) are not only in on this, but cashing in on it too. Mystery solved? Or conspiracy theory? You decide.

The only way to beat these Stuffing lunatics is to renounce life as we know it and find a cave somewhere. One without a billboard within a 50 kilometre radius, that is. If such a one still exists.


Meanwhile…

It turns out that this blog was hidden only to me. Thank you David, for the magic shift button! We all have one I’m sure, but I didn’t know that you could also use it to refresh stubborn webpages… of course, you have to hold it down for quite a while, which took me the best part of the past week to discover. It’s my new toy. I remind me of Eeyore, getting his Birthday Present from Pooh and Piglet, which amounts to a deflated balloon and an empty Hunny jar. Pooh and Piglet are concerned that something might have Gone Wrong with it all, but Eeyore just happily (as happily as Eeyore can at any rate) sits there putting the balloon in the jar and taking it out again.

:-)