OK, this isn't a shocking realization. I've always been a little odd. Even though I do normal things, like prefer Coke over Pepsi, drive a German auto, and work out an average of 3.34 times per week; I also have ambitions to be the Pope, I love Alcoa, and Worship music gets me hot.
In a creative profession like product management, "weird" translates into "creative" which can yield non-boring results. Unfortunately, if it isn't solving some kind of consumer issue, then it's probably not worthwhile. For example, though I'd love to receive my Cato Daily Dispatch in Latin, I doubt it would be a profitable venture for the Cato Institute. The old Cathedral and the Bazaar
adage to scratch your own itch doesn't work so well in product
management, unless you and your target market have all been stung by
the same, pesky mosquito. Reminder to self: always check assumptions about the consumer with a consumer other than me.
My weirdness surfaced on Friday during a focus group in which we were talking about our photo taking/sharing habits. Out of the group of 25-35 year olds, I was the lone person who shares every photo, no matter how inappropriate, boring, offensive, or personal. Most people seemed to have nebulous worries about sharing their life online. Worried about their mother seeing bad pictures. About something offensive surfacing before an interview. Or just worried about "them" out "there" who might do "something" "bad."
I've heard some real concerns from people about not wanting to put pictures of their children online, but even these I question. We live in a world in which we can't choose our privacy levels. There are yearbooks for Sally Jo's kindergarden class. There are phone books, public streets, cameras, K-12 homepages, and *shudder* the Internet. Let's face it people: we're not going to be able to keep our lives or the lives of our children [entirely] private anymore. Any privacy you enjoy today is going to slip away as information exchange friction decreases. And, as far as I can tell, it's on a hockey stick curve towards zero.
What I find most interesting is that people aren't worried about putting the juicy, dirty details of their life online, they're worried about the mundane crap. For example, there are two people in the world who care about my pictures from Veteran's Day weekend last year. What's the problem in sharing the pictures with the world?
My guess is that most people are terrified of a world in which the personal/private boundary has been eliminated. Everyone has their fetishes, quirks, kinks, embarrassments, humbling moments, mistakes, gaffes, misunderstandings, goofs, etc. Heck, there are plenty of things about me that I don't want to share with a wider audience, but usually because of the social pressures. If everyone were to share more of their private side, things that once seemed weird in isolation would suddenly become commonplace and no big deal. Urban legends like hairy palms are dispelled when you realize that every boy in 8th grade isn't wearing gloves to conceal his furry phalanges.
Lest you think that I share everything about myself, I can assure you that I go through a rigorous process of censorship. I try to be as liberal as possible, given the current framework of the world. If we, the technologically enlightened, don't push the envelope, who will?
So, blog away! Flickr away! Share everything that you're comfortable with and others will follow naturally. Maybe.
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