social media Archives - TheTranscendenceDiaries

Facebook Versus Twitter In An Existential Ethical Battle

October 31, 2019

If life were fair, we’d all be using Twitter instead of Facebook. But life is only fair in our imagination and the stories we tell ourselves through our movies and religions. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in the ethically challenged world of Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg just returned from a speaking tour to promote Facebook’s official policy to allow political advertising on FB that blatantly lies or promotes untruths, a fact the Trump re-election campaign had already been taking advantage of, which is what prompted the formal public announcement. Zuckerberg also reiterated they will not be fact-checking political ads, claiming that lying in political ads “is an issue of freedom of speech”. (Since lying and spreading fallacious statements is a constitutional right.) But no one is buying it. Facebook employees reacted by sending the CEO a petition of protest stating they don’t agree with the policy. A few well known money managers liquidated Facebook’s stock from their portfolios stating they couldn’t own the company in good conscience because “Facebook’s blatant lack of integrity and constant assault on truth is disgusting”. Even longtime FB haters have been shocked by this latest policy decision. Analysts on yesterday’s earnings call threw Zuck plenty of life preservers hoping he would adjust or clarify the decision. But before he could say anything, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey beat him to the punch by Tweeting and issuing a press release (at the exact start time of FB’s earnings call) to announce it would no longer allow any political advertising on its platform globally due to the proliferation of fallacious and misleading statements, stating “political message influence should be earned, not bought.” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff went on record saying that “Facebook is the most dangerous company in the world today” (though he may have temporarily forgotten about Lockheed Martin et al.) calling them “the Big Tobacco of our time”. (Mark is a good guy but has always been prone to hyperbole.)

So… all around bad news right? Wrong. For us, yes. For the world, sure. But not for Facebook. Facebook reported yet another stellar earnings report last night. Advertising revenue has not decelerated, but continues to grow. Monthly and daily average user numbers are still growing. Facebook is one of the largest countries on planet earth, for perspective, with DAUs of 1.6 billion. Compared to only 150 million for TWTR. The companies aren’t comparable on any metric. Some on Main Street have voiced their concern by stopping using FB and switching to Instagram. The joke is obviously on them since Insta is FB.

For some, yesterday was an existential line in the sand, the ethical battle lines clearly drawn between the good and the bad, the heroic and villainous, the helpful versus harmful. Dorsey didn’t just abstain from making a judgment call that harms the world community for a profit, he took a bold step for conscious capitalism knowing it would negatively affect profits. Likewise Zuckerberg didn’t just not take an action that could have helped the world, he made a decision to generate more profits knowing it would be harmful.

But does anyone care? That’s the real question. In a world where evils like nuclear weapons, royalty, the Catholic Church, big tobacco, big oil, big Pharma, political lobbying, live organ harvesting in China, etc. have been traditionally routinely ignored and allowed to exist, it is hard to imagine that humanity’s good conscience is what’s going to stop Facebook from doing whatever it wants to despite how harmful it might be. But that may be the cynical viewpoint. Or the realistic one. One thing is certain though: Facebook exists for one reason only, to generate money. If it’s user base started to decline and it started losing money because people didn’t agree with its policies, it would change said policies overnight. I personally don’t enjoy Twitter but find it useful if not essential for certain things. Though I wholeheartedly respect and admire the company and it’s executive team. On the other hand i thoroughly enjoy Facebook and Insta as a user. Though I loathe the company and it’s executives. It’s tricky for all of us I’m sure. I would love to see us as a community collectively take FB down or force them to grow a conscience. Just thinking out loud.

The Problem With Social

April 30, 2015

A caveat: for those more accustomed to, and more interested in, the usually more philosophical, theological or sociological nature of The Diaries, you may want to skip this post. It’s about finance and economics and more technical than usual. Just a heads up. If you do decide to venture in, I will clarify a bit more than usual regarding the economy and investing world to give context — so another caveat, this one for those who are already well versed in all things finance and investing: you may find the first few paragraphs a bit elementary… feel free to skip ahead, but hang on and stay in. This one’s for you and there are worthy takeaways to be had.

The investing world is abuzz with Silicon Valley again and it has been for a number of years now. It feels like 1999 all over again. Both the American and European stock markets have been on a tear — in what is commonly called a “secular bull market” — for almost six straight years. People who are active or even passive investors in “the markets” have been making money hand over fist from doing absolutely nothing but just staying invested. It’s an odd paradoxical dichotomy — and it truly is — that as the American economy continues to drag and sputter, making financial abundance, or even stability, seem increasingly unreachable for the majority of Americans still, the top 1% have been doing incredibly well in “the markets”. This paradox is well known amongst the wealthiest in the country. It’s not a mystery or an unknown. It’s very well known, sad as it is, amongst the people who are making all the money. It’s a given. And there are very specific reasons for it.

One might remember investment guru Warren Buffet commenting a few year ago how ridiculous he thought it was that he pays less tax annually than his secretary does. This surprising statistic is simply due to the fact that the common bread earner in the United States pays a much higher tax on their “income” i.e. the money they earn from their job, than an investor does on the profits he or she makes in any kind of investment. That tax — known as the Capital Gains Tax — is capped at 15%. What this means is that whether you made $100 from your stock market investments last year or $1,000,000, you’re still only required to pay 15% tax on it. With the right kind of finagling — owning a few corporations that make big money — enough to fund even the most lavish lifestyles — but somehow mange to “not make a profit” but instead make a loss (and this is more common than the average person realizes…) and you can even reduce that measly 15% capital gains tax further down and come out paying Uncle Sam next to nothing, as in ZERO. You just have to know the game and how it’s played.

But this post isn’t about that. Perhaps one day we’ll go into further details about this sad but true paradox, because I must admit I do receive a fair share of requests from folks begging me to explain to them how on earth one is capable of making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and paying next to no tax on it. It’s not as hard as most people think. In fact it’s quite easy. Again, you just have to understand how the system works. So yes… perhaps we will get into it one day… But today is not that day.

Another reason for this strange upside down economy is due to Federal Reserve policy. “The Fed” as it is commonly referred to is a large private cabal of banking cartels who control the monetary policy and the money supply of the United States. The funny thing is that the Federal reserve is NOT “federal”; they are not a branch of the U.S. government. They don’t work for the U.S. government. They answer to no one. But they make all the rules. (This is truly a whole book unto itself, let alone too much for even a series of posts — so one is encouraged to take some time to research this incredibly vexing scam…) In a nutshell this organization that controls all things monetary — think the economy — is the primary entity that loans the United States the money it needs to continue to operate. When you hear terms like the national debt or national deficit, this debt is owed to this company known as The Federal Reserve; they being a private bank who exist solely to make money charges the U.S. interest on the money it lends the country, just as any bank does; thus in a way one could say that the Fed has a vested interest in seeing the United States economy do well — at the moment the U.S. owes a staggering amount of money to this organization, something to the tune of 17 TRILLION dollars.

In exchange for all the money The Fed loans the United States to stay “in business” so to speak, the United States government allows the Fed to do just about anything it wants to — including for example keeping it’s books private and sealed. One might have a recollection of a few years ago when then-presidential candidate Ron Paul (remember him?) tried to pass a Bill in Congress to force The Fed to allow the U.S. government to see it’s books — as in take a look at its accounting records. This would seem to be rather a no-brainer, right? All public companies are obligated to make their accounting records open and available to the public — how much money they have, how much debt they have, how much money they are making in gross revenues and net profits, etc. etc. But The Fed is no regular “public company”. It’s ironic if not downright terrifying that 99% of Americans do not even realize that The Federal Reserve is not only NOT part of the federal government, but they are so private that no one in the United States government is even allowed to look at it’s books. The word shocking comes to mind. But terrifying fits the bill even more appropriately considering how much power this private group of banks has over the health and wealth of the whole country.

So how much power DOES this private group of banks have over the United States? Put it this way: The Fed has the ability to say yes or no to the United States government regarding how much money it loans them or doesn’t — as in any day they can collapse the American economy or continue to allow it to wrack up more debt. It’s all in THEIR hands and truly no one else’s. They also of course have the power to set monetary policy in general — this is why it is a fool-hearty idea to ever blame a good or bad economy on any American president, for they simply don’t have much power in regards to the economy, but that doesn’t stop most people from still doing this. The primary thing the Fed does in regards to “setting monetary policy” is they decide what the lending rate is at any given time in the American economy. At the moment it is set roughly around -0-. This is the rate of interest that banks can charge each other to borrow money from one another. This “prime lending rate” has a great influence on all the other interest rates in a healthy first-world society such as mortgage rates or car loan financing interest rates or the interest one receives from investing bonds or savings accounts or bank CDs.

You might have heard the term QE bandied about over the last few years. QE stands for Quantitative Easing, which was the Fed’s fancy term for lowering the prime lending rate down to a record low AND at the same time temporarily loaning the U.S. billions of dollars by buying various bonds from the United States and various other banks — they did this in order to “stimulate the economy”, as a means to get people spending again and to get banks loaning money to people again. So far it hasn’t worked out as well as many hoped it would. BUT to be fair it did at least according to general agreement amongst most experts save the country from sinking into another Great Depression from our recent Great Recession (the recent economic crisis we experienced in 2007 and 2008).

What this policy did do though was stimulate the hell out of the American stock markets. By lowering interest rates down to near -0-, people with money had no other choice but to invest their money in the stock markets — simply because they couldn’t make any money with their money from investing in anything else. Savings accounts, bonds and CDs offered zero to almost zero return, i.e. interest. If you add in even a small amount of inflation — the price of goods increasing compared to the value of the Dollar, and one would actually LOSE money if they had invested their money in a savings account, bond or bank CD due to how low the interest received was. So people with money jumped into the stock market.

This is what has created one of the strongest and longest running bull markets in American history. More and more money has poured into the markets and as long as this mysterious organization called The Fed continues to keep interest rates LOW, then people assume that the stock market will continue to go up. From the outside, from the view of the average American who doesn’t bother to pay attention to monthly and quarterly economic data, things still seem rather bleak to be sure. Unemployment has supposedly declined, though many doubt this claim. Jobs still seem few and far between and raise and promotions seem a fantasy of days long gone by for most.

Except in the world of finance that is. You see, every time we have economic data — the investing world holds its breath: if the data is GOOD, the markets tank, as an improving economy would compel the Fed to start raising rates again which could signal the end of the bull market. So instead people who are heavily invested hope that the data is BAD. In the world of investing this is known as the “bad news is good news” paradigm and without fail every time any economic data comes in that is “bad” for the average American, you can hear and see high fives flying around Wall Street like wild fire. It’s an upside down situation to be sure. Instead of the stock markets flying high due to a healthy economy, it continues to fly high due to hopes that the economy stays bad. This will keep rates low and insure that more and more money will continue to flow into the markets. Again this may sound shocking to the average person, but it’s not exactly “news” to those who invest their money for a living rather than work a regular salaried job. Frankly yes it’s easy to see why anyone first learning of this closely guarded bit of data would claim that it’s fucked up. It is.

In a nutshell there’s your lesson in finance and econ for the day. Now on to the main point of this post.

Today we are going to focus our attention on the Social Media sector of the investment world. [Again just for those who may not know this: the investment world is divided into sectors FYI. There are many of them and savvy investors are familiar with them all. For example there’s the Semi-Conductor sector (what we refer to as “the Semis”), the Consumer Discretionary sector (Tiffany, Coach, Whirlpool — basically anything that is not essential to the consumer but is purchased when the consumer has discretionary money laying around…), there’s the Oil sector — which is further split between the Refiners and the Oil Services companies, and on and on it goes. Believe it or not, once you enter this world — as with any — it becomes very easy to memorize all the various data points, statistics and acronyms.]

Two sectors that have been red-hot over the last few years have been the Technology sector (usually referred to as “Tech”) and the Social Media sector (often just referred to as simply “Social”). Companies like Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG), Twitter (TWTR) and Yelp (YELP) are all part of the Social Media sector and even the most distanced individuals have surely heard the stories over the years about the ridiculous amount of cash people have been making from investing in these “hot companies”. Silicon Valley is on fire at the moment, with venture capital spending reaching all time highs once more pouring money into the latest start-ups hoping that they can eventually turn them into the next Facebook or YouTube.

The word on the street for these companies is Unicorn. You may have even heard the word bouncing around lately as it is one of the many newest trending in the social media world. A Unicorn is any super hot start up company that is raising a ton of investment capital — usually to the tune of one billion or more — in the Valley with the intention of eventually going “public” — all long before the company starts actually making money. The companies just have to show growth in their user base and their “potential” to make money and people will throw millions upon millions of dollars at them. A few of the hottest Unicorns at the moment are Uber, AirBNB, and Pinterest. Yes from the inside it all appears just as blatantly stupid as it does from the outside. But this is just how the markets work. They are completely irrational, as they always have been.

At this very moment analysts and traders on CNBC’s midday show Halftime Report are all discussing the Social Media sector. Primarily because during this latest earnings season social media companies have been getting clobbered. After running up to more than $85 a share Facebook is now trading below $79. Twitter dropped from $55 a share to $38 in one day — you have to imagine having say a million dollars of your clients’ money invested TWTR and having that figure lose almost half of it in less than 24 hours to really understand the ramifications of such a dramatic drop. YELP not to be left behind performed the worst out of all of them so far, dropping from a high of $85 earlier this year to a measly $39 as of today’s trading session — losing 22% of it’s value in just one day and more than 50% from its highs of the year. When you contemplate the insane amount of money invested in these companies by hedge funds, money managers and investment banks — in the case of YELP, a smaller player, we’re talking billions of dollars invested, you begin to fathom just how much money that is to lose in such a short period of time. LinkedIn was the latest social player to kick the bucket: In one day their stock fell from $250 to $203, a 20% loss in less than an hour.

But why? WHY are social media companies taking such a beating? All the talking puppets on CNBC, Bloomberg and FOX Business News continue to talk about these companies with big smiles on their faces as if they are viable investment vehicles — no one ever saying what would be clearly obvious to even the least educated in business and finance: the American consumer is sick and tired of being advertised to, and social media companies make their money, or at least they’re supposed to, from collecting advertising revenue. You see, once upon a time Facebook made mention that it might start charging for it’s services — charging the everyday user to have a Facebook profile and communicate with their friends and family on a regular basis. The backlash could be heard in places as remote as the Himalayas! The week they made this announcement, as ironic as it may seem, the FB newsfeed was filled with posts advertising that the BAN FACEBOOK DAY was soon upon us as everyone and their brother announced that they would not stand to pay a single penny to use Facebook and they would immediately jump ship if such a fee was ever initiated. And that was the end of that idea. Facebook learned a valuable lesson from that stunt — people may love you if you’re free, but that doesn’t mean they have any intention of giving you any of their hard earned money. They don’t love you like THAT.

It turned out that Facebook was not as essential as it thought it might have been and thus they had to go back to the drawing board to figure out just how they were going to actually generate MONEY. See, Facebook WAS hugely successful in terms of it’s popularity amongst users. At one point it reached one BILLION users globally. That’s a phenomenal figure when you consider it for a moment: it translates to almost 20% of every single person on planet earth having a Facebook account of some kind. But the company didn’t make any money. The average person on the street, struggling to just pay their monthly bills always has a tough time understanding concepts like this: how can a company be as big as Facebook (or Amazon or Yelp or Twitter for that matter…) but not actually make any money?!? It seems illogical. And in reality it is. The truth is that these companies BORROW the money they have from what you commonly hear referred to as “angel investors” or venture capitalists. They then use that money to grow their business with the hope that one day they WILL make money… Some do. Many never make it. Amazon — one of the largest companies in the free world still operates at a loss every year. Yep. It’s true. They bring in billions of dollars a year in revenue. But every year they report not a profit but a LOSS, meaning that they spent more than they made. How is this even possible? Simple. They borrow more money and go further into debt based on the idea that one day they actually will make a profit. It’s a funny business. One that just about any average American would love to be able to take advantage of in their own personal finances to be sure. Problem is, banks and venture capitalists aren’t interested in you or me and our ability to pay our bills or even have enough money to eat for that matter. Instead they are interested in future profit potential. That’s life in a nutshell. As unfair as it is, that’s just how it is. You’d have a better chance at borrowing money from a bank — millions even — if you presented them with some dumb idea that showed that you could have half a million “users” by year end 2016 than you would just asking them for money to put food on the table or pay your mortgage. It’s capitalism.

So where were we? Ah yes, Facebook. So here’s Facebook, a simple idea, a dumb idea, at best a rip off of MySpace (remember them?) who was a rip off of Friendster (remember THEM?) showing tremendous growth in “users” but no way to make money from these users. So how to monetize all these users? That was the question…. This was back in the days when Facebook had swept Wall Street by storm by going public and seeing it’s stock price go from $16 to $45 in one day and then having it quickly fall back to $17 where it stayed for a few years, leaving many investors sorry they ever heard of the name. Imagine that kind of a loss in your retirement portfolio. Eventually Facebook got smart and created a very simple advertising vehicle for any and every one to use — a way for users to advertise to each other. “Here’s my Page. Like it!” It didn’t cost that much, you could set the amount you wanted to spend each day, and you could actually see your little ads pop up on the side bar of your Facebook screen now and then. It felt good. And it seemed to generate actual results. It was similar to buying an ad from Google to get more traffic to your website. And we all know how well Google had done… Facebook is presently worth about $178 BILLION dollars. Google is worth roughly TWICE that.

So began the great social media company frenzy. It was 1999 all over again. All a company had to do was show that it could grow its user base, forget about making money or generating a profit, and the investment dollars poured in. Twitter soon leaped onto the scene and ran up to $55 on it’s first day going public from a starting price of around $16. This valued Twitter at about 35 billion dollars overnight. For a company that wasn’t even making a billion dollars a year, nor anything close to it. But it was all about the user growth. Twitter still operates at a loss — meaning that it loses money every year rather than makes it. How would you like that kind of job? TO get paid for losing money? But the pundits had valid points: Twitter WAS popular. People did seem to have a valid interest in and excitement about it. The problem was and still is that that excitement is fleeting. Today’s Twitter is tomorrow’s Snapchat or Tumblr. Remember them? Yahoo purchased Tumblr — and what exactly was Tumblr in the first place? a blog for kids? — for some FIVE BILLION dollars. There’s money they’ll never get back. And Tomorrow’s Snapchat or Tumblr is next week’s Meercat or Periscope. The landscape is constantly changing in the hands of the ever-fickle American consumer. The truth is that they really just don’t CARE.

And that’s the big disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. The average person on Main Street has a life. Family problems, car problems, job worries, relationship woes… They could care less about Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or Tumblr in the grand scheme of things. When’s the last time you heard anyone even mention Tumblr? But the folks on Wall Street don’t recognize this simple fact of life. These are minor trivialities in the hearts and minds of the average consumer, these “fancy websites” they call social media. They don’t put food on the table. They don’t even offer anything relatively substantial or of value that cannot be had elsewhere. NEW is much more exciting to the consumer than been there done that. It doesn’t mean that mom still won’t keep trying to Message you on Facebook this year. She probably will. But are you really even paying attention anymore?

Environments like Facebook and Twitter have continued to remain semi-entertaining and even useful at times when one has nothing better to do or when there’s big news we want instant access to… But when we’re in the mood for big news, we are NOT interested in ads clogging up our newsfeed. Nor are we interested in ads when we have nothing better to do than scroll through old friends’ attempts at wit or their latest selfie or cat photograph. Let’s face it, social media is fraught with meaningless drivel. Hence the shift back towards more meaningful content platforms like blogs or even texting.

Every social media company is reporting user growth increasing but revenues and profits shrinking. And the simple reason for it is because nobody likes being advertised to. The television world and Wall Street already recognizes this fact as more and more people shift away from traditional TV towards digital alternatives like Netflix or Hulu or flat out stealing online. This is the time of the great peregrination of the consumer away from advertising — why? Because we can. And in an environment like this, you better not have advertising revenue as your main means of generating cashflow or you’re going to be screwed. YELP is the perfect example. Yelp is actually a great tool. Nearly everyone has it loaded on their phone and loves it. The problem is that no one is willing to pay for it. (The music industry is going through a similar shift…) Yelp wants to generate revenue from selling advertising. But the users who use Yelp the most absolutely REFUSE to use Yelp if they believe that any of the data they are reading such as reviews are being influenced in any way by advertising dollars — in other words, people want to believe what they read on Yelp. They want to read ALL the reviews, not just the ones that some company has paid to place there, and they certainly don’t want to find out that companies are able to pay to have negative reviews removed from Yelp. What’s the point of the app then? See the problem? Yelp is basically fucked. A valuable tool with no viable way to make money.

Twitter god love it is in a similar position. I personally use Twitter all day as a means to receive notifications about subjects I am interested in ON MY PHONE. In other words, I set up notifications to come directly to my phone from Twitter about various different subjects or different individuals or even tweets that may mention me — the president of Iran will shoot out an interesting tweet now and then, and where else can one access such data but Twitter? But that doesn’t mean I ever scroll through the Twitter newsfeed or what they call their “Timeline”. The truth is I never do. The notifications come to my phone. I scroll through them. Get the basic gist of what was said. And I move on. All on Twitter’s dime. Or better put on the billions of dollars invested in Twitter by their investors. All without ever paying for Twitter and all without ever seeing an ad. Hell, like most people I’m downright annoyed and pissed off when I see an ad on Twitter. How dare they?!? And yet THIS is precisely how they intend on making their money! From advertising. It’s farcical when you really start thinking about it.

We have to begin to realize and acknowledge that we’ve reached a crossroads in the global economy. We’ve raised a whole generation on free usage based on the idea that we’d make our money from advertising — while at the same time weening them off of advertising on every other platform. There are hundreds of apps now on the market that REMOVE ads from Twitter and Facebook. And one would be right to believe that very soon there will be apps to somehow remove the ads from Pandora and Spotify as well — which is how those companies make the majority of their money as well since they’ve programmed whole generations to believe that music should be free — just about the dumbest thing one could think to do if MUSIC was the one and only product that you wanted to sell in your business. Again, we’re at this major crossroads where at some point soon, something has to give. Investors are going to learn sooner than later — just as they did in the dot com crash of 2000 — that they can’t keep pouring money into businesses who don’t actually make money. And businesses are going to eventually learn that you can’t run a business offering the main product you sell for zero dollars. It’s an illogical business model. And all it’s done is destroy more than one industry, the music business just being one of them. TV is next. Social media never really was in reality. And people are just starting to see that now as these once high flying stocks crash and burn.

As a sidenote with a potential solution, look at the companies who actually DO have a chance at making money. Out of the three Unicorns mentioned above, Pinterest is another Yelp waiting to happen. They’ll garner billions of dollars in investment capital and blow through it all in the hopes of turning all those bored moms and housewives into advertising clicking robots, only to realize that those bored moms and housewives aren’t any more interested in clicking on ads as the rest of us, and they’ll go belly up a year or two after going public IF Wall Street is dumb enough to take them there. But Uber and AIRBnB are different. Both of them actually SELL something besides advertising. Sure there’s a social aspect to both companies. That’s just the new normal — there has to be a social aspect to EVERYthing now. Eventually we’ll have apps where people post their latest and greatest bowel movements for others to see and rate. (If those already don’t exist, which I can’t with certainty…).

But the key is that the social aspect to both Uber and Air BnB is NOT the product itself. It’s a byproduct of the actual product. And that really is the key to this new environment. Social is key. But it can’t be THE key. There has to be an underlying product to be sold. And “to be sold” means to CHARGE MONEY FOR IT. Just as PayPal charges a few pennies on the dollar for every transaction, they’re offering a very valuable product — the ability to exchange money with freinds, family and business associates without ever leaving your home or office, or even your couch for that matter. All from the comfort and ease of your smart phone. That’s smart. Uber and Air BnB are doing the same thing. Small fees. Nothing fancy. But they’re actually making money. And isn’t that the reason to start and run a business in the first place? What companies like Yelp and Twitter are going to do is a mystery. They’ve screwed themselves from the outset with a faulty business model. As have companies like Spotify. The next few months and years are going to be ugly as this grand experiment fails and falls to pieces in rubble all around the feet of Wall Street and Main Street investors. People are already asking “are we in a bubble” everyday now… and truth be told, in the bigger picture of the investing world, no, not quite yet. But in the social media sector we’re beyond bubble territory. We’re in the sloppy frothy messy slime and sludge of a bubble already burst. Most just don’t see it yet. If you’re into shorting, now would be the time…

Facebook Is Here to Stay

September 28, 2014

Someone posted a TIME magazine article this weekend that claimed that scientists have been running computer models that showed that social media is similar to diseases and that Facebook will soon lose up to 80% of it’s users. I clicked. The article was from January. As in ten months ago.

Facebook of course has only continued to grow and immerse itself deeper into global society since January. These scientists were clearly wrong. As I wrote here in 2007, Facebook will eventually become so ubiquitous in our lives that it will come loaded on every phone and be the seamlessly integrated desktop on every new computer sold in the world. Every action we take on or off line will be recorded by it, many of them shared. Like it or not, Facebook is here to stay.

Twitter on the other hand MAY still potentially go the way of Yahoo or AOL. Most people still don’t use it regularly and very few find it indispensable. Twitter’s decision to enforce the 140 character limit greatly diminishes it’s ability to be an effective tool for much of anything except satire, a greatly appreciated and hot trend at the moment in western civilization but certainly not a necessary one.

Facebook on the other hand is more akin to Windows or Apple. Not only does it have more money and resources at its disposal, thus it can easily afford to reinvent itself as often as needed to supply the people with whatever changing needs they demand at the drop of a hat, it also has a complete monopoly on mainstream society — it possesses that very rare blessing of any product or service of being used by almost all demographic groups on planet earth; all races nationalities age groups income brackets social backgrounds and classes. Some may try to go without their Facebook account for a spell, only to realize, like TV 30 years ago, that to do so means they find themselves unable to keep up with their peers come Monday morning at the office. Facebook is not just the social barometer of society — it is also fast becoming the primary communication tool.

We may watch the latest hot viral video on YouTube, but we find out about through Facebook. We may tune in to the latest binge watching sensation on Netflix or Amazon or HBO, but we find out about them through Facebook. On and on this line goes. So deeply immersed is Facebook in human society at this point that it is more appropriate to compare it to the medium of television or the telephone than to other tech companies like Twitter or Yahoo.

In the end Apple, Google and Facebook stand tallest and win the dominance game.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone 8s Custom

Hype Is Dead

July 23, 2013

Scroll down below this post just to have a look at the email that was forwarded to me so you have a rough idea of what I am referring to in this post. What you’ll see is a very typical “2000s”-type ad that promises the moon and stars to prospective entrepreneurs looking for leads. What they’re selling is not important. In this case it is “new customers and leads”, primarily information and hype, in the form of a plugin for WordPress. It was forwarded to me by Infinito, who tends to keep up with these things. I rely on him and G2 and The Ex Norwegian along with a few other friends to keep me up to date with the latest and greatest in tech.

This is NOT the Diary entry I intended to post today. But it does act as an excellent illustration of yet another Signature of the Personal Expression Age, i.e. “You have to be ready (and willing) to change course on a dime, at a moment’s notice, in the Age of Personal Expression. So in that light, let us do just that. I can always post today’s originally intended Diary entry later this evening.

Infinito wanted to simply show me an example of what the new face of information marketing ads looks like. He wasn’t endorsing this style of adverts per se. I took a look at the ad below and did my best to attempt to get through it. About two-thirds of the way through I had had enough. A strange creeping yucky feeling came upon me as I tried to read it. And thus I replied to Infinito.

Wow. Yes I see these all the time. Used to anyway. I’m actually surprised that people are still trying to use them. I guess there is always that very last group of “Laggards” who we can always count on to bring in that last barrel full of revenue, despite how small it may be. [The term Laggards is based on that infamous “Roger’s Bell Curve” that shows a visual representation of a population divided by how quickly they tend to adopt new ideas and technologies or purchase and begin to use new things. At the front of the curve are the Innovators. It’s a very small percentage of the overall population. Next in line are the Early Adopters. Slightly bigger than the Innovators but still relatively small. Behind them are the average folk who jump on board once things have been proven and the prices go down. These percentage of people are called the Early Majority and is a much larger group. There is one more group after them who would represent the Mainstream or the Masses, The Late Majority. They only jump in once everyone around them believes it or owns it and they can pick it up for half price at Walmart. And then there are the Laggards. These are the people who wait, and wait, and then wait some more, for whatever reason, to accept new ideas to be true, or to make a purchase or begin using anything that is considered “new”. You can Google it. It’s a fascinating study if you’re into sociology science.]

Frankly I don’t like this type of advertising Infinito. It reeks of internet marketing circa-2001. I didn’t like it then and I still don’t. It may manage to eek out a few bucks from the pajama set, those home-bound individuals in boxer shorts sitting behind their computers trying to figure out how to get rich quick from not actually doing anything. But for our purposes I don’t see this type of ad as being effective in the least bit. In fact I would say it’s a downright turnoff. .

For one thing, these types of adverts are too hypey, damn near anxiety-inducing. I’m sure there are probably some people who like this kind of thing… Or else why would they still be creating and pitching them? Except only to each other perhaps? They litter the internet, like empty potato chip bags tossed out of a car on the highway. Wordy, bulky, clunky, chock full of meaningless tech jargon, giant blue hyperlinks and exclamation points everywhere, with big promises impossible to qualify. My Personal Expression Age (PEA) prediction is that we will be seeing less and less of these kinds of ads and that they’re going to continue to sink FAST in the coming year. I foresee a new way of gaining new customers, leads and additional sales is being heralded. Not quite a return to old-school, but close to it.

So far nearly every prediction we’ve made about the Personal Expression Age has come true over the last nine years. (It’s a source of both infinite pride and great sadness for me actually. We’ve yet to publish the actual book in full due to how busy we remain, hence the sadness; but pride in that so far we’ve been dead-on in predicting the path society as a whole would venture down in almost every industry). It’s downright uncanny how accurate we’ve been so far. Right down to the iReporters and hacktivists –as a means of Personal Expression — or the overthrow of nations right before our eyes — through and due to the increased need and acceptance for more Personal Expression.

In 2007 when we first started actively working on the book eight to ten hours a day, my partners and assistants in the project thought I was CRAZY when I said that we would start seeing peoples’ revolutions of entire countries in the next few years. After Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, now they think I’m some kind of prophet. When I said it would extend even to the United States and more stable European nations they looked at me as if I were some kind of mad anarchist speaking treason; warned me against writing it. Weather Girl flat out REFUSED to type what I was dictating to her, half out of fear and half out of patriotism I believe. The whole idea seems rather quaint now. But of course that’s because it’s a common rallying cry for both the far left and right. Though it still seems highly unlikely to most, I stick to my guns on this one. We’ve already seen it happen in Iceland. Nearly in Greece. In the coming few years it will only continue to grow to include larger more seemingly strong and stable countries like the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, and eventually yes, even China, Iran and Russia.

But that’s not what we are discussing here. Back to the point. Hear me now, believe me later: These kinds of ads as we see below are dead. Hype is dead. People just don’t have the time nor the temperament anymore to endure them. Hype is becoming nauseating. We can call this a new Signature of the Age. But I believe it is more of a sub-Signature of several of them. It’s an Outcome if anything, comprised of several different converging Signatures. There is The Backlash Against Hype Signature at play here. A longing and return to more authenticity. The It’s ALL Bullshit Signature. There is also the No Time to Read Signature playing a role as well.

The real point at the very bottom of the well is that hype in general is quickly dying. Society’s willingness to endure it. Across the board. I know what you’re thinking. “What? How can you say that? What about George Zimmerman and the so called royal baby? Or America’s Got Talent for God’s sake? You can’t get much more hype than all that.” Well this is true. But these are actually three very different subjects. One of them quite substantive. But closer to the point, how many people do we actually know who give a rat’s ass about America’s Got Talent or the so called royal baby? Sure it’s plastered all over the mainstream news, but WHO actually cares about it in our reality? Remember, mainstream news is PAID FOR. It’s not based on what’s important, nor newsworthy. Why is mainstream news dying? Well it’s not JUST because internet news is free as some people suggest. Nor is it simply because people can access ONLY the news they want to read about online, though that IS one of the major contributors to the slow crawling death of mainstream news.

More than anything though, it’s because people no longer trust that what they see and hear in the mainstream news is newsworthy. There have been too many revelations in the last five years, hell, in the last fifty years, that mainstream news is way too beholden to the governments and corporations of the world in what they report on and NOT to the people, nor the newsworthy. People long for REAL news. Not what the respective government in office at the time claims is news, nor what the corporation that owns the news outlet nor its subsidiaries WANT people to hear, but actual real news. Hype be damned. Regardless of how much fuss the mainstream news outlets make about this so called royal baby, how many people do WE know who actually care about it?

Hell, most people I know stopped falling for the whole claim of royalty over a century ago. And for good reason. There is NO such thing as royalty in the first place. They made it up. Called themselves “royal” one day and (yeah it’s sad fact that) a large majority of the common people around town fell for the scheme in the first place, but that was thousands of years ago. Not many thinking people in today’s age even believe in the myth of royalty or take it seriously. At least none that I know of. (just lucky?) So as far as this random British chick having a baby… Sure it’s hype, but it’s a non-issue to most. A novelty. And it’s quickly become ingratiating to many.

Don’t get me wrong. Hype may still be good for an entertainment click by the Masses, (Huff Post anyone?) that middle group in Rogers’ bell curve, but a click is all you’ll get. There’s not enough time for much more than that, unless something has true substance and/or is truly moving. Even those ideals are being greatly challenged in the Personal Expression Age; for a variety of reasons — which are expounded upon in much more detail in the book. That’s an unfortunate Signature of the age. But we’re working on it. Many around us are producing content that is just as if not more substantive and moving than ever before.

There is also the Return to Authenticity factor. All of us, but especially the younger generations, are accustomed to wearing strong bullshit and hype repelling armor now. No one believes YOU. No one believes ME. We no longer believe each other. We want to. We long to. But there is just way too much hype surrounding us. We’re drowning in it. Irony and cynicism are normal day to day outerwear. They have to be. In an age of America’s Got no Talent, we’ve trained ourselves to be this way. Everyone and their brother claims to be the next Michael Jackson or Madonna, or to have a son, sister, or cousin that is. Same with TV, film, books, music, literature, technology, apps… It’s a sea of endless hype. How we tread in it and sift through it all to find content of substance and import, products with true quality and functionality… that’s the Holy Grail.

So no. Ads like the below will not work. What we will see rise up in the place of these kinds of ads is more personalized one on one and localized service — even if you’re three-thousand miles away from your prospective customer — IF you want to gain new customers for a product or generate additional revenue from existing customers. What it will look like exactly… I’m not sure yet… I am just beginning to download and formulate the theory. But I can tell you one thing, ads like the below are history. Only the Laggards will click. And only the desperate among them will continue past that first click and pull out their virtual wallet.

As always more later.

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 8:17 AM, Infinito <infinito@xxxxx.us> wrote:

Hi Ambassador, See the below ad as an example of the latest in information marketing advertising…

Begin forwarded message:

From: “awdevine” <xxxxx@gmail.com>

Subject: [Online/Offline: Just Launched] Here’s The ONE Thing EVERY Marketer Wants AND NEEDS… Must-See NOW (fast-action bonus)

Date: July 22, 2013 11:05:16 AM EDT

To: “Fellow Marketer” <infinito@xxxxx.us>

Reply-To: xxxxxxxx@gmail.com

Hey Fellow Marketer,

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Why Promote Your Status Update? Exploring the Personal Expression Age

June 18, 2013

I now notice that Facebook is offering a Promote button on personal profiles, where for a few quid more you can advert your status updates to receive more attention/exposure. (I’ve promised a new blog entry to The Transcendence Diaries daily from now on, as in days of old, so if any status update goes beyond 4 lines I turn it into a blog btw. Standby and we’ll see what happens here…) Point being that this new trend compels one to realize that the world is quickly jumping to a “whoever has the most money gets the most attention” model, (in point of fact it is actually swerving damn fast towards “whoever has the most money gets ALL the attention” — but this jumps the gun a bit) even on traditionally free platforms such as social media. Of course there is the “whoever makes the biggest arse of themselves that day” model as there’s always been, but that’s usually just good for the requisite “fifteen minutes (now fifteen seconds) of fame” type of exposure; in one ear and out the other faster than that pregnant mom of eight sea-monkeys in Kenosha, Wisconsin can find a crack publicist who’ll take her on for a three month stint.

In general the prediction made in the book We Are the Revolution — Welcome to the Personal Expression Age about the coming trend of “the commoditization of the individual, of every individual” as a Signature of the age, is slowly inching toward becoming a very solidified reality in Western culture and thus globally. (Even the most ardent despisers of all things American still recognize that, one, in order to make a big splash financially one normally has to make it in the USA, and two, that in terms of cultural perception of mainstream success on a global scale, “making it in the US” is still the benchmark of how successful one is perceived to be). But that’s subtext.

The bigger picture point is that if regular everyday folk using social media to communicate mundane daily activities with friends, classmates, family and neighbors are now being encouraged to “Promote” their status updates for no obvious or immediate economic benefit, what’s next? [Okay so now this is where we switch to a cut and paste from this Facebook status update to a blog entry usually, which despite my aversion to the extra work involved and a deep seated though irrational longing to just stay right here and keep typing, I will now do. Here we go. That’s better.]

In order to answer this ‘what’s next’ question perhaps it would be helpful to remind ourselves of the primary driver, and trigger, of this new Age of Personal Expression, i.e. we’ve now entered an era where growing up moderately healthy and successful — doing well in school, graduating from college, getting married, buying a house of your own, having 2.5 kids, retiring by age 65 with a decent pension — is no longer enough to fulfill the average human being’s need for personal gratification, satisfaction or validation.

The need to be publicly acknowledged and/or recognized through Personal Expression (PE) of nearly any and all means necessary (or available) has replaced the more traditional forms of personal satisfaction. Becoming public, becoming a public sensation, even if for a brief moment, has become the new “got married, had a kid, just earned my Masters or bought my first house, etc.”; UNLESS any of those events happens to make it easier for someone to “draw a crowd” or gain more access to the plethora of perceived public attention that appears available now to anyone, i.e. if getting married can be perceived as being a unique form of Personal Expression that may garner one more attention than the average bear, then that event is still perceived by the person to be a major life moment worth investing in.

If not, then it feels plain, ordinary, pedestrian and therefore might not be as exciting as endeavoring to attempt something else that feels more authentically PE; at least and especially while one is young and still believes themselves to have plenty of good years left, (or old and feels like they’ve already “been there done that” with the more traditional vehicles of personal satisfaction mentioned above). [This is a deliberately short synopsis of a much larger paradigm explored fully in the book, but it should suffice in order to follow the main point(s) of this blog entry.]

From where we sit now — nine years into the research of this age and the book that explores it — the above summarizes both the primary continuous driver of the age AND the primary trigger that got us here in the first place. So, with the “commoditization of the individual” Signature now starting to trend in real time, e.g. “Promote your status update or Tweet to your friends to “let people know it’s important”” [a direct quote from Facebook June 18th, 2013], which costs money, it is clear that our global society as a whole is definitely heading toward a “whoever has the most money gets the most attention” or better put, “whoever has the most money gets all the attention” model of day to day life. And yet ordinary folks with no financial or career-goal gain to be had from going more public will still feel compelled to participate in such activities such as promoting their status updates or tweets or anything they can think of in order to garner more public attention, even if it just means among their local community or friends group.

The truth is that most people will never gain much of anything from such an action. One promoted status update or tweet in this overcrowded marketplace of pseudo-celebrities (another Signature of the Personal Expression Age) does not a celebrity make. And yet because of the two primary factors triggering, allowing and continuing this trend — the relatively new longing of the average individual to feel famous, and the corporate greed that creates the technological platforms to make the fulfillment of that desire or at least the perception of it available — people will still jump at the chance. Facebook will bring in tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue this year from regular everyday Joes being willing to pay for the perception that “more people saw their promoted status update”. No one is claiming that Facebook will not in some way “promote these paid status updates” to a larger target audience than if one didn’t pay to promote it. That isn’t the implication. Nor the point.

The intriguing takeaway is that people will do it in the first place; and the fact that someone who works at Facebook actually had the idea in the first place — and furthermore that someone else higher up actually thought it was a valid enough experiment to at least try. It is a clear indication that we have now passed the threshold in mass consciousness of understanding the undercurrent drivers of the Personal Expression Age — they are beginning to be taken for granted — AND have reached the first stage of a global trend toward the Commoditization of the Individual en masse.

More later. Much more. Just thoughts in the moment.

One Battle Out of Many Abated

January 20, 2013

It’s 3:30 am. Slightly more than the usual insomnia. [Note: One conflicting aspect of the Personal Expression Age in regards to social media is the tendency and temptation for us to head for the immediate gratification of posting to a public site such as Facebook or Tumblr rather than our own blog or website, which is obviously a more permanent, and financially lucrative, place to sit one’s deepest innermost thoughts and feelings. It’s a phenomenon that I’ve just recently been observing, having noticed that over the last four years — since the advent of social media gone mainstream — there is direct correlation between how little I post to these Diaries on a regular basis now, compared to the seven years prior, and how much more time I dedicate to being actively engaged on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr. This is something we should explore in more detail later….]

So rather than “writing” — that sacred act once studied and revered of sitting down to participate in the art and craft of honing one’s ideas with the written word into something potentially coherent, permanent and hopefully even beautiful and admired for all the world to see for an eternity, something that I’d made a daily habit out of for more than twenty-five years, I opted instead for the more ephemeral and much simpler and easier (though perhaps more immediately gratifying) act of a lazy status update on Facebook. This is a trend, perhaps even a habit now, that I fully intend to break in this new year. The point was a simple yet major one. A very recent and profound victory over and breakthrough in my battle with ADD.

[I do believe in sharing, that it’s important to “share”, which is one of the primary benefits of the Age of Personal Expression, this new loving embrace for public sharing…. but for artists a balance must still be found between the two: this temptation to share instantly through social media, and the more tasteful and permanent art of writing. One cannot suddenly abandon one’s occupation of the art and craft of fine writing and letters and replace it with social media posts that are not only inherently temporary but also obligated by necessity to be limited in scope and depth just because it happens to be easier and more instantly gratifying. Unless of course they want to and choose to. That’s their choice. I know many a fine writer who has drifted off into these uncharted shallow rocks never to be heard from again except in little blurps and bleeps on Facebook or Twitter, their wit and wisdom once preserved for the ages now reduced to mere one or two sentence anecdotes, sarcastic comments or the occasional angry rant. As a fan of fine writing I’ve found the trend to be saddening. …

Nonetheless, last night at least, I caved once more. There is something very appealing about that instant read that one feels they receive when posting to a social network that now feels lost even when posting to a popular blog, which theoretically and realistically is just as public as any social network. The irony is that feeling is the same feeling we used to get when we first started posting here over ten years ago. There were no social networks. So the idea of posting one’s innermost secrets online in general — knowing that within minutes or hours others would be reading them, was completely enticing, exciting and exhilarating. Just as posting to a social network like Facebook is today. And with instant links and feeds from one’s blog to every social network out there available, there really is no reason why we should feel so torn and tempted. Perhaps it’s the instantaneous part of it that is so tempting. Or perhaps it’s the more engaging aspect of it…. Depending on what one posts, one can literally almost guarantee themselves some kind of response if that’s what they’re after. Frankly my honest appraisal of this strange phenomenon is that it just comes down to pure laziness. Status updates on social networks are like blowing bubbles. Here now, gone tomorrow. Or like thoughts never revealed in our roaming mind… Here. Gone. What? So there exists no need to perfect them or hone them in. The growing trend in communication amongst ourselves as a society is to focus far less on how we say things and rather just on getting them out, regardless of merit, form or function. This may not necessarily be a good thing. Let’s end this train of thought now and venture out toward the open sea where we originally were headed.]

Where were we? Insomnia. Yes. In case that wasn’t already obvious. But perhaps this time of day or night is best for this type of post. For any other ADD/ADHD folk out there, I am happy and relieved to report that after decades of struggling, maddening frustration and trying everything out there and then some (including brain mapping and even low frequency electromagnetic brain zapping therapy) I believe we’ve finally found something that actually works. Lo and behold it turned out to be the oldest, most obvious and commonly used treatment. Just took a while to get the nerve to try it. Anyone else out there still challenged by it, just know that it is real, it’s not in your imagination, you’re not crazy, it is indeed physical /chemical /biological and not just “all in your mind” as many people try to get you to believe; AND better still there may be a chance there’s a solution out there for you out of the many that are becoming available. Keep trying. Don’t give up. Believe in yourself. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. -Fishy

And thus was the post. Which yielded a string of inquiries as to just what treatment was I referring to specifically. It wasn’t something I had planned on revealing publicly truth be told. But if the sharing aspect of the Personal Expression Age cannot be fully expressed and utilised as we originally predicted it would be to yield full-on democratic revolutions of entire nation-states then it really doesn’t hold much value at all. So privacy be damned we must at least attempt to embrace this growing trend honestly openly enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. So I replied.

OK peeps, I wasn’t going to actually mention what was working for me personally, because I think it’s such a physically personal thing, dependent on each individual’s own biology, that I don’t necessarily think what works for one person is guaranteed to work for another. Plus, there is so much controversy regarding meds for this condition, especially certain ones. But for me, it was Ritalin. But only 5mg doses. What they call “a children’s dose”. Old school. It’s only been a week, but the difference has been intensely noticeable. First recommended by doctors when I was diagnosed at 4, my parents absolutely refused to put me on it. And ever since I’ve tried every other med and therapy that exists in my refusal to try that one. What changed? A close family member, Beaver actually, I found out was going through the same exact search attempting to deal with the same symptoms. Granted he had never been diagnosed with ADD when we were children, but after relaying a series of symptoms to his doctor it was suggested that he take the standard ADHD written test and sure enough he scored something like an 87 out of 100 on it. Damn close to my 93. [Being an avid and proud skeptic, not only did I insist on taking the test several times in different versions, I also demanded that my wife and several other friends and family members take it as well to see if “everyone” would have the same score if given the same test. I was quite surprised to see that after taking the test on two different occasions, Princess Little Tree scored less than 10 both times. This strange fact helped verify for us that perhaps there was some validity to the test after all and it wasn’t just an over generalisation trap where all who took it would appear to have this popular new dis-ease.]

After a year of trying everything under the sun Beav’s doctor finally said “we could always go old school and try a children’s dose of Ritalin.” His desperate reply, “Well it can’t be worse than all the other things we’ve tried… fine.” After a few months of surprised success and regular use he suddenly remembered ME, thank you (what took you so long?), and realised “Holy crap I have to tell Fishy about this! He has this a lot worse than I do! I wonder if he’s ever tried this one.” I resisted at first, knowing all about it, what it is, what it does, knowing that like most other amphetimines it could make me pass out in ten minutes OR worse cause me massive anxiety…

(Though we’ve still not discovered the genetic abnormality nor even the chemical problem in the human brain of those with ADHD, one very strange characteristic of those who are challenged with it is that speed for lack of a better word, or stimulants of any kind, work in the reverse on them. Thus coffee or tea or diet pills or amphetamines of any kind will usually make someone with ADHD feel sleepy rather than wired. And sure enough any sort of downers such as barbiturates or tranquillisers will make an ADHD person feel more alert, talkative and motivated. I have personally suffered but also benefited from this weird reality since I can remember. If I drink a cup of tea I fall asleep. If I drink a cup of coffee I begin to yawn and feel tired. If i take a valium I feel like I just took speed. It’s crazy weird. But after a few years of dealing with it, one starts getting the hang of how to use it to one’s advantage or else I assume one would just off themselves. Because frankly it’s a terribly confusing and frustrating way to live. If you’ve ever noticed this about yourself there’s a good chance you’ve got either ADD or ADHD and it just hasn’t been diagnosed yet. Now you know.)

Regardless of all this, I have still always resisted taking uppers of any kind. But Beaver sounded so encouraged and relieved from the agonising ADD symptoms he was experiencing that I just decided I had to try it. For the last few years especially, life has been more than challenging. It’s been downright excruciating. I usually refrain from talking or writing about it publicly because number one it’s extremely personal, and number two I don’t wish to influence people in any way one way or another toward believing anything limiting about themselves. But yes if I was to be totally open and brutally honest with the world about this subject, I would admit that I took pain killers for years on a daily basis starting at the age of around 16 in order to manage my attention in order to just do the normal things in life that everyone else seems to have no problem with. This eventually led to a nearly fatal mental and physical breakdown in 2008 that was officially dubbed “exhaustion” to the public and I ended up in a rehab and then my parents’ home to slowly detox and rebuild my health.

The only problem was that I was then faced with having to deal with living daily life with a severely screwed up brain and nervous system (that’s in essence how ADHD feels) without pain killers, and as any doctor or patient will attest, nothing treats ADHD better than opiates. That particular combination of chemicals known as opioids just happens to work the best for people who struggle with the host of symptoms lodged under the ADHD mantle. Late 2008 early 2009 was the worst six months of my life. I was happy to not be always on the chase for pills, but the truth is that in this day and age with online pharmacies so prevalent it was never really a hassle finding or buying them. So it wasn’t like I ever labeled myself an addict. And strangely enough neither did any of the doctors who began treating me. They instead said that I was one of those rare cases of someone who lucked into finding the exact drug that worked best for what they had and I was self medicating with it. It just happened to be illegal to self medicate your ADHD with pain killers. At least now it is. This I predict, and so do many professionals in the psychiatric industry, is going to change sooner than later. There is after all a reason why so many tens of millions of people reach for pain killers and once found find themselves more adept, more efficient, more functional and more productive with even small doses.

There are details to the story that should stay private. For now. Let us agree that it is challenging to wake up one day and realise that the rest of your life you are going to spend with your chest on fire with anxiety, that you can’t focus your attention on anything for more than a second or two, that you are unable to finish anything that you start, that you feel a constant state of fear inside you that literally stings, so much so that you find it excruciating to do the simplest things like go out socially or even answer the phone, let alone have a job or take a shower, that you have a supernatural long term memory but you cannot remember why you entered a room or picked up your phone or a notebook, that you never know what day it is or what the date is, you don’t know your age or anyone’s age for that matter because there’s “that thing with numbers….” Worst of all, you’re always in pain. Life. Just. Seems. And feels. Unbearably painful. At least in the mind and body you are in. And God knows you’ve tried everything that exists or has ever existed on planet earth or anywhere else in the known universe to help or heal, but so far nothing has.

For me now it’s been more than four years of regular visits to psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, naturopaths, chiropractors, specialists, healers, gurus, psychics, mediums, soul readers, you name it. If it exists we’ve tried it. All in our quest to “find out how to fix Fishy.” Princess Little Tree often recounts how crazy, courageous and resilient I am all at the same time because I often appear more like a lab rat than a human in just the sheer amount of medications that have been shoved into my body over the last four years in our attempt to help find a solution. Doctors have been stymied but vigilant. And slowly we’ve found some even ground to rest on. Things have gotten increasingly better. Though I do long to help others, and I think most people would attest to agreeing with that statement, the exact combination of medications that they now use to treat my specific condition I would prefer to keep private except for what’s already been mentioned. It’s been a long and very hard road. Not just for me but for the entire family. I believe Princess Little Tree has probably suffered the most second only to me. She had no idea when we got engaged that it would be this difficult. Frankly neither did I. But that’s the negative spin. The positive spin is that it appears at least this week that we’ve turned a new corner and won a major victory here.

After hearing from Beav regarding his success with Ritalin, I talked to my doctor in New York and he was like “Hey, you’re talking about a very small nearly negligible dose there… It’s less than what we would usually give children. And you usually fall asleep with medications like that. Or they exacerbate your anxiety. But at this point I don’t know what else to do for you and I know you’re struggling bad right now Fishy. I’m willing to try it if you are.” So we did. Worry Fear Anxiety Nervousness all preceded that first morning about one week ago. “Here we go,” my wife’s and my own eyes said to one another as I took the first dose on the first morning, ready for the worst. What would it be this time? A freakout? A massive anxiety attack? I pass out for hours with her hovering over me checking to see if I’m still breathing? An emergency 911 call, paramedics gathered around my bed while I lay there with my hand on my chest gasping for air? All possibilities and former experiences since this adventure first began four years ago.

But instead I felt intensely focused, motivated, energised and in control of my attention for the first time since I used to use Vicodin for the same purpose. After a 30 year battle, including years of self-medicating with both natural and unnatural, legal and illegal substances, ingesting things, not ingesting things, fasting, cleansing, vegan, non-vegan, and every spiritual religious pseudo-spiritual new age practice or self help course ever invented for spies like us I finally know what it’s like to actually feel focused and not totally freaking distracted and unable to control my mind for more than two seconds. I’ve worked harder and smarter in the last five days than I have in years. The caveat: Ritalin IS speed. There’s no getting around that reality. There are side effects. Like last night’s insomnia. (I took my second dose too late in the day.) AND you are going to encounter the usual cadre of well-meaning but ignorant know-it-alls who for some reason misperceive that you’ve solicited their advice as they recount how unhealthy it is and how easy it would be for you to go au natural etc.

But the real message of this ramble is this: Only YOU know YOU and what you’ve been through. And only YOU know what’s worked for you and what hasn’t. It’s really nobody else’s business. And if they are all up on your shit for feeling better, it’s most likely they who need some healing of their own. God only knows you’ve already tried anything and everything they’ll good-naturedly offer you. I moved the majority of this post to the Transcendence Diaries in order to add more details and finish this just for the sake of privacy. Today I have tried to share more openly than I ever have before regarding my own personal experiences with these things, for I know how frustrating it can be for others after years of struggling with it myself. What has worked for me may not necessarily work for someone else. But it just might. You never know till you try. For now, I’m quite surprised that we found something that seems to help. It’s one battle out of many that we are currently facing for some reason slightly ameliorated for the time being. And that’s a damn good thing.

Learning Farsi

January 4, 2013

Farsi study time. Everyday now since about two weeks ago for at least an hour I’ve been diligently pursuing mastery over this damn language. With an alphabet that looks as beautiful as the world’s finest art, it is hard to fathom, ironically, just how utterly displeasing the sound of the Farsi language is. Worse yet, it is as displeasing to the mouth and tongue to speak as it is to listen to. It’s truly unlike any other language I have endeavored to learn. Not only is it extremely difficult to speak physically, in terms of forming the words properly — plenty of glottel stops and gutteral formations in the mouth and back of the throat, but it’s also completely grammatically confusing. More on that later.

We’re at the deep in point now and I have to note: attempting to learn a foreign language withOUT learning to read and write it’s alphabet may just be impossible. (UnLESS u just immerse yourself in that country for six months and r forced to that is.) Other than that this is getting harder by the day but I trudge onwards.
I make occasional updates to social media regarding this new endeavor. Freinds have offered a variety of potential solutions to this quandary. Everything from alternate language programs to memory improvement courses. Rosetta Stone is the best program for learning a foreign language out there second only to formal classes IMO. It’s just the first time I’ve attempted to master one with a totally different alphabet. And because I’m NOT in a class (as I’ve been in the prior four I’ve learned) and perhaps due to some slight laziness and fear on my part I am focusing on just speaking rather than reading. A side advantage of doing it this way is that you r forced to hone your listening and memory skills razor sharp. Because you can’t read the letters right in front of you — as one would with french or spanish for example. That’s a plus for the old brain for sure. But at this point where I’ve “milestoned” into Unit 2 and the sentences I’m learning are becoming longer and longer it is obviously becoming increasingly difficult to do it all by ear without being able to read even one letter that’s staring me in the face. Of course it would be the same if I were learning Japanese like James or Russian or any others… (I think u already know I took the easy road to start and learned all the “regular alphabet” languages first way back when (except Romanian — the secret-closet stepchild of the 5 romance languages, because I just feel no desire to learn it). But I’ve run out of those now. So… all that’s left are “different alphabet” languages for me.

As I’m writing all this to you (pardon it’s length) I’m just realizing that I’m really cutting myself short by having chosen this method. I can feel the limiting belief operating :: learning that alphabet is going to be too flipping hard! I’m going to seriously consider discreating this idea and perhaps go back to square one and take on learning to read and write. Sheesh these r just beliefs. Why struggle if you don’t have to right?

And I’ll tell you — on another note — two other things that have occurred to me, 1, connecting with others through social media like Facebook about what’s really going on as opposed to just jokes and links and pix an bs can be very helpful to us in a variety of different areas of our lives. You guys here have taught me plenty and inspired me. And 2, staying in touch w fellow Avatars has a similar effect on us but just amplified by a google. We create a no bs allowed zone so to speak. Because you and Dan and Annie r in this loop it’s forced me to really look at what’s going on. Not just w this but you know, all around I think it’s very helpful and beneficial to us all to be connected potentially on a daily basis.

Tag: social media

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