A world of absolutes

I’ve noticed, as you may have too, that we love absolutes, especially online. On Wednesday there was an opinion piece on the Globe and Mail site that said bloggers are male. Women who blog must have struggled with their sexual identity upon learning this.

With trackable regularity, claims are made about this or that being dead: music, movies, newpapers, books … The mortality rate of “stuff” is worryingly high.

If you follow news reports or marketing surveys you may have learned that teens text. Period. Old people tweet. Period. Traditional advertising is kaput – all marketing is online. Period. Well, the only marketing that works is online. But only if you have a cause and a community.

You must have a brand. Even your dog must have a brand. And Grandma. If you don’t recognize this and build your brand you will go to the grave quickly and in cesspool of poverty, recriminations and self-loathing over your neglectfulness.

Not long ago the economy of the world collapsed and we were returned to the toil and turmoil of the Middle Ages – except with iPhones so we could talk, text, and tweet. And tell each other about it on Facebook.

By the way, you have to be on Facebook. If you are not, you do not exist.

A world of absolutes is a difficult one. More difficult still is keeping up with them all. We all look like hoarders now because as soon as we get something or do something we find out it is passé. We can’t keep up with the buildup of clutter of things that have died.

We are like hamsters on the proverbial wheel who never get to where we’re going because where we are going and how we get there changes every few minutes. And with such absolute certainty.

This may be the key to Internet success. This may explain why certain people, blogs and sites succeed and others do not. They make absolute statements. To be a writer, you must do this. To be a journalist, you must do that. To have successful startup, you must follow these rules.

In a sense, you need to affect simplemindedness and you must treat your potential audience as simpleminded. It is true that simplicity is usually best but I wonder if we don’t sometimes take it to extremes.

The only absolute in the world that I am aware of that actually is absolute is this: nothing is absolute.

Unfortunately, you won’t get much traffic with that one.

(I wonder if it really boils down to this: we want to be told what to do and what to think. I hope not.)