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Kurt Vonnegut

How Kurt Vonnegut defined social media:
connection precedes communication*

by Bill on February 26, 2010

Image of Lonesome no more! button

There are loads of books and gazillions of web sites and blogs on social media. You could spend the rest of your life reading about it – the data, the theories, the what-have-you.

But if you really want to understand social media you can cut to the chase and read just one guy: Kurt Vonnegut.

I recommend Slapstick. He defines and explains it there.

I’m sure Vonnegut had no idea he was writing about social media but, as it turns out, that is what he was doing. The story he was telling in Slapstick explains why social media is so popular. He speaks of the need it fills.

Much of the discussion about social media focuses on utility. It allows us to do this or that. It can be leveraged in a certain way. We can exchange information, relate and develop it, expand and share ideas, promote brands and so on.

A lot of this assumes a base of users – often a consumer base. Because we see a usefulness to it in terms of business and other organizations, we tend to neglect the most fundamental reason people are on the various social media platforms. It fills a need, especially for that large consumer base. Connection.

Vonnegut talks about this directly.

Slapstick book coverOne of themes Vonnegut kept going back to in his books, and especially in Slapstick, was the idea of extended families. The reason is expressed in the book’s subtitle, “Lonesome No More!” In the book, through a kind of lottery system, people are given additional names. For example, my name might be Bill Diamond-10 Wren. I’m arbitrarily connected to everyone else named Diamond, and particularly those named Diamond-10. We’re an extended family.

Yes, it’s very silly but Vonnegut’s books usually were silly. But they were serious too. (They were also very funny. I remember coming home years ago and finding my father, who had stayed home with the flu and picked up the book to pass the time, laughing so hard he was crying. He yelled at me, “This is the craziest damned thing I’ve ever read!”)

But what has that got to do with social media? Well, it lies in the reason for giving people those names, which was to create extended families – create more people to connect with, more groups to feel a part of.

They were excuses for people to get together and feel they had something in common, something to share with each other. People are crazy for it – perhaps now more than ever given the huge numbers concentrated in cities and the tremendous anonymity we feel exists. People want a sense of connection.

We tend to speak of communication quite a bit but connection precedes communication and is often the only reason people communicate. Hence, we often see tweets we consider noise, status updates that seem irrelevant. The point isn’t what is communicated; it is simply that something is communicated in order to establish connection.

While we discuss the technology, the apps and speculate on the marketing potential and how best to use social media, it’s a good idea to keep in mind what Vonnegut describes, the raison d’être of social media. (I want to say as far as consumers go but while the business world often wears a more serious, practical face, this is often the same reason for their use.)

Connection. Community. Shared values and beliefs, ideas and debates. Groups of people we belong with.

It’s extended families we connect with online, a world described and defined by Kurt Vonnegut.

(*Strictly speaking, you could say connection is a form of communication. But it’s of a particular and limited – though necessary – kind.)

Note: I found a name-generator online based on Vonnegut’s Slapstick. It’s a site called The Surrealist. I know nothing about this site, so I can’t recommend it one way or another. I can’t say whether it is safe or not. It is, however, where I got the name Bill Diamond-10 Wren.

Related posts:

(Some of the older posts have some character (as in text) flaws due to one of the many software updates a few years and those errors have yet to be fully corrected.)

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Fifteen books that come to mind

by Bill on August 10, 2009

I did one of those meme things on Facebook and thought, “Why not post them on the blog too?” The list is simply the fifteen books I’ve read that have stuck with me, which I take as the ones that immediately come to mind. Here they are:

  1. Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
  2. The Sot-weed Factor – John Barth
  3. Memoir from Antproof Case – Mark Helprin
  4. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  5. Foundation (Foundation Trilogy) – Isaac Asimov
  6. The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun) – Gene Wolfe
  7. Ulysses – James Joyce
  8. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
  9. Slapstick – Kurt Vonnegut
  10. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
  11. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
  12. They Shall Have Stars  (Cities in Flight) – James Blish
  13. Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy) – Robertson Davies
  14. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
  15. Odes to Common Things/Odes to Opposites – Pablo Neruda

In a number of cases I’ve given an arbitrary novel title but it’s actually the collection (as in trilogy) that “sticks” with me. And the last, “Odes,” is actually two companion books which I think of as one.

By the way, most of these are favourite books but not necessarily all. In some cases (like Cormac McCarthy), it’s the first book of the author that I read but not my favourite of their work. It does, however, stick me – probably because it was first.

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You don’t need an MBA, you need OCD

by Bill on June 17, 2009

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. – Kurt Vonnegut

It amazes me that so many organizations don’t understand branding. They think branding is their logo, their TV ads, mailouts and handshakes for the cameras. Your brand is everything associated with you.

Like the websites you don’t maintain. Like the information you don’t update. Like the branding that is actually unbranding.

There are lots of examples but I’m not going to say or link to specific organizations because they are simply examples of what too many others are also doing – or, rather, not doing.

One site currently has a mention on its home page about a “planned maintenance period.” There are no dates referred to and, to make matters worse, it has been up there for about a year. That’s some long maintenance period!

I’ve tried contacting some organizations (using contact page information that is online). Very few respond, even with an auto-response. I wonder what impact that has on your brand?

One site spoke of a being in the running for 2009 award then linked to a page with information about the 2008 award. Again, what does that tell your customers about you?

I know of a newsletter that had major issues (meaning it was a waste of time and money) but at least had the benefit of taking only about an hour or less to set up and send. Now that it has been “rebranded” it takes eight or more hours to set up, has all kinds of special links to track usage and so on (which replicate a system already in place that does it more easily and quickly) and is primarily made up of old news content and products, products, products.

Utterly useless as an effective newsletter for either the business or its customers, it requires even more work and money than before and it all goes into the digital garbage because the branding is all about looks without substance.

In other words, the branding is really unbranding. It makes the company look bad.

Who dreams up this stuff? Who thinks their web presence isn’t important?

Why do they think that spending oodles of money on revamps and other marketing ventures is more important than maintaining the areas where customers actually go and try to use?

Myself, I would pour the money into anal-retentive people – the kind with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) – and let them be as nit-picky has they can be about what is out there representing me and making sure it’s accurate, updated and, most important, useful for my customers.

And I’m pretty sure if I did, I’d cut my marketing budget in half.

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Art, people and personal brands

by Bill on April 5, 2009

People are like art in a number of ways. I’m currently thinking of one way in particular. (Please forgive the pseudo-egghead moment and indulge me.) A work of art exists in three states simultaneously.

  • What the artist perceives it to be
  • What it objectively is
  • What people other than the artist perceive it to be

That’s also how people exist. There is what we think we are, there is what we are objectively and there is what others perceive us to be. The second, whether it be a work of art or a person, that objective existence, is more or less irrelevant practically speaking since no one can ever truly see something (or someone) objectively. It’s always conditioned by who we are and where we view something from.

When we start talking about personal brands, we are primarily talking about the third state: how others perceive us. But when we use the term brand, especially in this sense, we’re really talking about who we are, our identity. When we concentrate on, and try to develop, a “personal brand” what we are really doing is trying to fashion who others perceive us to be. As Kurt Vonnegut has said, “We are what we pretend to be.” He adds, given that, you better be careful about what you pretend you are.*

I prefer not to talk about a personal brand because the term is divorced from any human quality. It’s like seeing yourself as a product, which some people think is fine and that’s fine for them, I guess. But I’d rather think of my “identity,” though even that may not be the best terminology. (I would say “human being” but when I do I sense the earnestness of the original Star Trek and Doctor McCoy’s, “But dammit, Jim, we’re human!”)

It’s a bit odd that we talk about ourselves as brands when, at the same time, we also talk about conversations, a personal voice and community. Those are all very human but “brand” is a box of soap. I know some will disagree but that’s how I see it and I don’t want to be a soap, a cereal, a line of cars. I want to be a human being. I want to be who I am, for good or ill.

That’s why there are posts in my blogs that, were I thinking in terms of a personal brand, I would not have published or, having published, would have deleted them.  (Example? See my silly post, Forget newspapers – everything is dead!) But it’s who I am, even if that’s an idiot. I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything salacious or rude (like pictures of a frat party or something) and I think I’ve avoided ever mentioning employers I’ve had, though I certainly would have liked to rant every now and again.

There is thinking that says you need to be careful of what you post in a blog and usually extreme examples are given. A potential employer could Google you and find out who you really are. Well, if you’re posting nude pictures of yourself or others, or using constant profanity, or ranting against current employers, the world’s better off not hiring you anyway. Keep posting.

In my case I’ve posted some self-indulgent rants – maybe about music, or a film, a story in the news or an election. But I don’t mind that a potential employer sees them because, if the employer is worth working for, they’ve also seen my other posts and will see that I’ve a passion for what I do and, as with any passionate human being, sometimes I write something moronic. I’m a human being.

Would you really want to work for an employer who is only looking for a perfect automaton? Someone who has a “brand” but no personal identity? A cog to fit in their wheel?

The best employers look for the best people and the best people have quirks, off the map moments, and a passion for what they do. You get ideas from people like that. From a personal brand, you get whatever rubbish maintains the status quo.

I’m not saying you should rant and rave in your blog. I’m just saying don’t hide who you are.

Don’t be a brand. Be a person.

* In Vonnegut’s book Mother Night an American spy, during World War II, pretends to be a Nazi, acting as a propagandist, spewing hate about Jews and others. But after the war, on trial for war crimes,  he realizes he was so good at pretending to be a Nazi that, for all intents and purposes, he was a Nazi.

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Kurt Vonnegut on books

by Bill on July 19, 2008

From his book Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut on books:

At the time of their invention, books were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, albeit fabricated from scarcely modified substances found in forest and field and animals, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

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