Modern technology is amazing. The power of social media is changing everything we know about communication and information dissemination, but even more than that, it’s actually convinced me to get a Twitter account.
I’ve had the thing for a couple of weeks now, and while I can’t say it’s changed my life at all, I’m sure it’s made a huge difference to the ten or so people who now eagerly follow the occasional deranged overflow of my overcrowded mind. Mind you, the ten people who follow me on Twitter appear, broadly, to be the same ten people who follow this blog. So I guess you already knew what you were in for.
Meanwhile, as we’re all well aware, the real point of social media is to make money out of people’s lives. The whole point of having a massive audience is, ultimately, to sell that audience as a commodity to advertisers. And if you have access to the personal data of millions of people in order to target that market to the desired demographic, well now you’re cooking with someone else’s gas.
I like to keep an eye on the targeted ads that Facebook sticks on the side of my news feed. I never click them on principle, but it’s interesting to keep an eye on what the algorithms in Facebook’s advertising database can determine about me based on the content of my profile. When it advertises local music or theatre events, I’m impressed, but not surprised. When it advertises protest events for left-wing political causes, I laugh and congratulate myself for having such a diverse and socially active group of friends.
This week it gave me a targeted ad informing me that ASIO (Australia’s intelligence agency) had job vacancies for linguists. I broke my rule and clicked the link, not so much out of a desire to be a secret agent, but more out of professional interest in career opportunities for academically qualif…
Yeah, okay. I totally want to be a secret agent.
It doesn’t take Q to realise that Facebook knows I’m a linguist because of my listed education and the groups I’m a member of. It’s possible it even knows I’m in the market for a new job because I work for the NT Government. Nonetheless, I was touched that Facebook thought of me when the opportunity came up.
It turns out that ASIO wasn’t after linguists so much as interpreters, which I’m not. So I closed the ASIO website and went back to Facebook. The ASIO ad had been replaced with a new ad.
Engagement rings.
A few weeks ago I informed the world (and Facebook) that my relationship status had gone from “It’s complicated” to “It’s even more complicated with Kirribilli Kim”. And to demonstrate how proud we were of the fact that we’d kept it a secret (not very well) for nearly six months, I even listed the not-uncontroversial start date of the relationship. And apparently the Facebook advertising algorithm has decided that eight months is quite long enough, thank you very much.
It’s possible the Algorithm came to this conclusion by first checking my religion, which is also listed. And I suppose that’s fair enough. Eight months is getting up there for a Christian couple these days. Fair play. I may have to add a note in the personal description field saying something like “frequently gets in trouble for not doing what the other Christians are doing”. That’ll sort it all out, I’m sure.
In related news, the humans in my life who seem to be arriving at the same conclusion, and asking similarly inappropriate questions can go jump in a very deep lake. But that’s a different post, which I’m probably not going to write.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll leave the sociological commentary on targeted ads to one side for now. Otherwise I’ll have to come to some uncomfortable conclusions about what the ads for Fitness First are trying to tell me.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
25 March 2013
18 March 2013
As Raw As It Gets
About nine months ago I started doing stand-up comedy with my friends at Happy Yess. We started out small and token, but this year we’ve launched a re-vamped and rejuvenated version with themes and headliners and organisation and everything. I’m really excited to be a part of it, and putting some time and energy into developing my own stand-up stuff. Having tried a few different ways to stand up on a stage and make an exhibition of myself, I can confidently assert that comedy is both the most challenging and the most instantly gratifying of all the theatrical arts.
On Friday night I took it to the next level. I decided to enter the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy, which is a national amateur comedy competition. It was a significant step up for me, having only tried out comedy in the comfortable shelter of Happy Yess, and it was certainly a much larger audience than I’ve ever tried to be funny for before. Apparently there were about 400 people in the audience. Not that I could see any of them for the bright stage lights.
A few of my fellow contestants were trying out comedy for the very first time. And I was surprised at how many of the others had never been backstage at the Darwin Entertainment Centre before. These days I’m as at home backstage as I am in a bar or a church, but I suppose not everyone has had the same theatrical background as me, or lived in Darwin for as long.
There were about a dozen contestants, all of whom did a pretty good job, and the crowd were, for the most part, really good and generous with the laughs. There were only a couple of instances of heckling, and they were reserved for those who could obviously handle it. And at one point a little girl jumped on stage and asked if we had any fish for her.
Phil had assured me that the best strategy with Raw Comedy was to do a musical number, so that was what I did. I’ve been writing little musical numbers for Happy Yes for a few months now, so it wasn’t a big stretch to write full song for the competitions. And it went over pretty well.
I really hadn’t been too fazed by the whole process, but when the winner was announced and it wasn’t me, I discovered I had wanted it a little bit more than I realised. I was a little disappointed, but no so much as to harbour any ill feelings.
In the wash-up, Phil asked me why I had done a song. “I’ve spoken to the organisers,” he said (apparently this is still the sort of thing that just happens to him), “and they told me they’re really not looking for musical numbers these days.” I don’t know… one of these days.
I think I’ll probably give it another go next year. We’ll see what happens.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
On Friday night I took it to the next level. I decided to enter the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy, which is a national amateur comedy competition. It was a significant step up for me, having only tried out comedy in the comfortable shelter of Happy Yess, and it was certainly a much larger audience than I’ve ever tried to be funny for before. Apparently there were about 400 people in the audience. Not that I could see any of them for the bright stage lights.
A few of my fellow contestants were trying out comedy for the very first time. And I was surprised at how many of the others had never been backstage at the Darwin Entertainment Centre before. These days I’m as at home backstage as I am in a bar or a church, but I suppose not everyone has had the same theatrical background as me, or lived in Darwin for as long.
There were about a dozen contestants, all of whom did a pretty good job, and the crowd were, for the most part, really good and generous with the laughs. There were only a couple of instances of heckling, and they were reserved for those who could obviously handle it. And at one point a little girl jumped on stage and asked if we had any fish for her.
Phil had assured me that the best strategy with Raw Comedy was to do a musical number, so that was what I did. I’ve been writing little musical numbers for Happy Yes for a few months now, so it wasn’t a big stretch to write full song for the competitions. And it went over pretty well.
I really hadn’t been too fazed by the whole process, but when the winner was announced and it wasn’t me, I discovered I had wanted it a little bit more than I realised. I was a little disappointed, but no so much as to harbour any ill feelings.
In the wash-up, Phil asked me why I had done a song. “I’ve spoken to the organisers,” he said (apparently this is still the sort of thing that just happens to him), “and they told me they’re really not looking for musical numbers these days.” I don’t know… one of these days.
I think I’ll probably give it another go next year. We’ll see what happens.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
11 March 2013
Anti-Social Media
Following on from last month’s theme of 'ridiculous things people expect Garry to be good at,’ on Friday my boss sent me to a Social Media Marketing conference, with a view to improving the office’s presence on online social media. I’m not sure why they sent me specifically. I’ve no qualifications in marketing and I’m not especially sociable. It’s got absolutely nothing in common with anything else I do at work.
It might just be because I’m male and under 30 (just) and am therefore naturally assumed to be good with computers. This is foolishness, but I didn’t mind a day away from the office where I’m assumed to be good at project management, which is also foolishness.
It was more a training event than a conference, run by a crew from America called SkillPath. It was a two person team who were in town as part of a whirlwind tour of Australia, shining the light of social media into the deepest depths of cultural cynicism, represented ably by me in the back row.
It didn’t start well. I had to give the Americans points for trying to contextualise their data for the locals, but pointing out that some people were likely to be following Julia Gillard on Twitter, while others were following Tom Abbott (sic) didn’t quite have the desired effect. And the presenter’s revelation that she thought she was in Queensland, and didn’t actually have any idea where Darwin was, was just downright hilarious.
However, the obligatory mocking of visitors from America having been indulged, the content they presented was quite interesting at times. And some of the examples of how not to use social media were fascinating.
Possibly the most cataclysmic outcome of the conference for me was that I’ve finally been convinced of – if not the virtues – then certainly the utility of Twitter. I’m only ten years late. You can follow me @GarryCondoseres, but I can’t promise I’ll lead you anywhere useful. Next thing you know I’ll be posting pictures of other peoples’ cakes to my Pinterest board.
I don’t have a Pinterest board. One step at a time.
#MakeOfThatWhatYouWill.
@GarryWith2Rs
It might just be because I’m male and under 30 (just) and am therefore naturally assumed to be good with computers. This is foolishness, but I didn’t mind a day away from the office where I’m assumed to be good at project management, which is also foolishness.
It was more a training event than a conference, run by a crew from America called SkillPath. It was a two person team who were in town as part of a whirlwind tour of Australia, shining the light of social media into the deepest depths of cultural cynicism, represented ably by me in the back row.
It didn’t start well. I had to give the Americans points for trying to contextualise their data for the locals, but pointing out that some people were likely to be following Julia Gillard on Twitter, while others were following Tom Abbott (sic) didn’t quite have the desired effect. And the presenter’s revelation that she thought she was in Queensland, and didn’t actually have any idea where Darwin was, was just downright hilarious.
However, the obligatory mocking of visitors from America having been indulged, the content they presented was quite interesting at times. And some of the examples of how not to use social media were fascinating.
Possibly the most cataclysmic outcome of the conference for me was that I’ve finally been convinced of – if not the virtues – then certainly the utility of Twitter. I’m only ten years late. You can follow me @GarryCondoseres, but I can’t promise I’ll lead you anywhere useful. Next thing you know I’ll be posting pictures of other peoples’ cakes to my Pinterest board.
I don’t have a Pinterest board. One step at a time.
#MakeOfThatWhatYouWill.
@GarryWith2Rs
04 March 2013
This is How it Starts
I’ve always had a rather strange relationship with prayer meetings. I’ve grown up in the Church, and I’ve acknowledged how important prayer is for people who claim to be in relationship with God, but special corporate prayer services have always struck me as being a bit like health food: I know it’s a good idea, but I don’t really get excited about it until someone guilts me into it.
I’m kind of a rubbish Christian when you look at it. Don’t get me started on my diet either.
I think part of the reason is that I’ve been to too many prayer meetings that are just opportunities for people to stand up in public and demonstrate how super-spiritual they are, not just by the fact that they like to go to prayer meetings, but by showing us all how fluent they are in the use of whatever spiritual buzzwords happen to be fashionable at the moment.
I don’t care what the dictionary says: “Prideful” is not a word! And even if it is I don’t think God is going to be impressed by how many times we can fit it into a paragraph.
But let’s be honest, I can babble on just as self-righteously as the next guy. I just do it on my blog instead of in a church service. The real reason I don’t go to prayer events is because I’m lazy and complacent.
But recently a bunch of people who run One Body with me have started calling random prayer and praise get-togethers. I went along mainly for solidarity, but I’ve been really struck by the power of what’s going on here.
This is no inner circle talk fest. This is a small group of young people who are quite passionate and committed to meeting together to seek the Lord. And we’re already seeing signs of a response. We met together at ten o’clock on Saturday night (because we’re all young and reckless like that. It’s absolutely a logical time to get together) and kept praying through to midnight, when we decided we’d better head home because we all had church in the morning.
My sister posted an article on Facebook this morning about something called Poe’s law, so now I’m all concerned that you’re not going to understand how sincerely excited I am (see my last post) to find more people in Darwin who are sick of the division and disunity that’s been crippling us for the last decade or so. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure this post makes for excellent satire if that’s how you want to read it.
If, on the other hand, you’ve decided that I’m dead serious, then keep an eye on the right sidebar. I’ll keep it as up to date as I can with news of the next get together. It’s on.
Make of that what you will. Unless you can’t tell whether I’m serious or not. In that case, make of that something else. If you will.
Will you?
Garry with 2 Rs
I’m kind of a rubbish Christian when you look at it. Don’t get me started on my diet either.
I think part of the reason is that I’ve been to too many prayer meetings that are just opportunities for people to stand up in public and demonstrate how super-spiritual they are, not just by the fact that they like to go to prayer meetings, but by showing us all how fluent they are in the use of whatever spiritual buzzwords happen to be fashionable at the moment.
I don’t care what the dictionary says: “Prideful” is not a word! And even if it is I don’t think God is going to be impressed by how many times we can fit it into a paragraph.
But let’s be honest, I can babble on just as self-righteously as the next guy. I just do it on my blog instead of in a church service. The real reason I don’t go to prayer events is because I’m lazy and complacent.
But recently a bunch of people who run One Body with me have started calling random prayer and praise get-togethers. I went along mainly for solidarity, but I’ve been really struck by the power of what’s going on here.
This is no inner circle talk fest. This is a small group of young people who are quite passionate and committed to meeting together to seek the Lord. And we’re already seeing signs of a response. We met together at ten o’clock on Saturday night (because we’re all young and reckless like that. It’s absolutely a logical time to get together) and kept praying through to midnight, when we decided we’d better head home because we all had church in the morning.
My sister posted an article on Facebook this morning about something called Poe’s law, so now I’m all concerned that you’re not going to understand how sincerely excited I am (see my last post) to find more people in Darwin who are sick of the division and disunity that’s been crippling us for the last decade or so. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure this post makes for excellent satire if that’s how you want to read it.
If, on the other hand, you’ve decided that I’m dead serious, then keep an eye on the right sidebar. I’ll keep it as up to date as I can with news of the next get together. It’s on.
Make of that what you will. Unless you can’t tell whether I’m serious or not. In that case, make of that something else. If you will.
Will you?
Garry with 2 Rs
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