Working Man Gamer
Patience
The Working Man Gamer is posting an interesting
article and a few comments on it. The virtue of
patience is something that should be taught in
public schools. So without further introduction here
is the article.
COMMUNICATIONS OF AN A.D.D GENERATION
By Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5W Public Relations
Yesterday, from 5 PM until 8 AM the following
morning, I couldn’t reach one of my closest family
members; someone I communicate with multiple times a
day via email, SMS, and less often, by phone.
Contemplating a breaking and entering to her home
after five of each, emails, texts and unanswered
phone messages, and after a sleepless, worried
night, she called and woke me with a simple
explanation – “I didn’t feel well and turned off my
phone at 5 PM to rest;” simple and instant.
Yet in today’s age of communications within an
Attention Deficit Disorder generation, untypical and
scary.
Growing up in the Bronx in the mid-1980’s, there was
a corner public phone bank adjacent to the park
where all of the local kids took turns manning the
phones as our parents would call and demand us home
for dinner, or our friends would call to see who was
there and what was up. These calls were often
our only communication for hours at a time.
Today, walk into restaurants, meetings, movie
theaters or otherwise, and people are typing away,
blackberries in hand, on chatting on their cell
phones, too often oblivious to the person in front
of them with whom they can communicate without the
technology.
Owning a PR agency, I am perhaps more cognizant of,
and surely guilty of the instant communication bug.
I often explain and even offer semi apologies to
potential clients and new friends. I carry my
blackberry and like an addiction, must check it
every few minutes; not to do so can mean missed
media opportunities, or worse, a newswire quote
which reads “couldn’t be reached for comment,” -
which occurred recently when I didn’t call a
reporter back within an hour. The journalist
also expected instant gratification, and when I
finally did call back, it had already appeared on
more than 80 websites. Is this indeed life
today?
People update their Facebook or Myspace statuses
countless times a day instead of sitting face to
face with actual friends. We create identities
online and befriend people who in reality we may not
actually want to sit with, chat up or share anything
with. Is this authentic or flawed
communications?
Similarly, as much of today’s news originates from
the blogosphere, much of what we see on blogs today
is biased rant. The bloggers who make
headlines are the ones who fancy themselves as
progressive journalists, unbound from the
conventions of traditional journalism, such as
checked facts and arms-length objectivity.
This has become acceptable only because of this
A.D.D. communication generation. This
communications generation now jumps so fast, fearful
of being scooped or being behind the times; they
accept the blogs, often devoid of facts, but indeed
instant.
Along with those marketing-savvy bloggers come what
is usually a small host of commentators who use
pseudonyms, anonymous posts and the like without
accountability in the comments section of these
blogs. Some of these “followers” are not followers
at all, but actually the hosts themselves, or shills
planted by the host to say the things that, coming
from the host, would damage his or her credibility.
Yes, indeed it’s instant; but accurate or ideal? No!
However, that’s not required for an A.D.D.
generation.
In this Attention-Deficient world, it is much harder
to validate or check identifies. The guilt is
shared, whether it is the New York Times which last
week ran a Letter to the Editor falsely blasting
Carolyn Kennedy by someone thought to be the Mayor
of Paris, or the teenager who killed herself because
her teenage rivals’ mom mocked her endlessly
pretending to be a cute teenage boy.
While today’s instant communications of email, SMS,
Facebook and the like is instant, I believe it’s not
authentic. It’s raw but it’s not real, on so
many levels. It could be a husband texting a
wife a quick answer to a simple question, or a
client annoyed at an agency that doesn’t instantly
reply to an email.
In the earlier days of professional communications,
or PR, mail forced people to plan ahead with care.
It required thought, strategy and planning,
something which today often is not available. Today
it is hard to plan even a day, or an hour in
advance, for if you don’t reply instantly there can
be mass panic. Instant gratification has
become a double edged sword; what we do believing to
be cutting edge, can also dull the sharpest blades.
One of my earliest bosses taught me to use the draft
box for email when I was upset “Wait an hour or a
day before you send that message” – I try to use
that advice as much as I can. Perhaps one of
the lessons of the current recession is to be wary
of the uber-quick – There will be many false
messiahs in times such as this – Just as one cannot
“get rich quick”, perhaps we should all try and slow
down and be wary of anyone who requires instant
communications. While instant communication can seem
great, we must too be wary of only relying on
instant rather than building longer, real bonds.
Face-to-face, or extensive real phone calls are much
more real and valuable than blog commentating and
Facebook profiles.
Of course, had I heeded that message, or considered
for that someone else might be heeding it, I may
have slept last night. For tonight, I will
only check my Blackberry two times during dinner
instead of every five minutes – and dinner
will hopefully last longer than ten minutes.
Ronn Torossian is CEO of NYC based 5W Public
Relations (www.5wpr.com), one of the 25 largest
independent PR firms in the US.
The WMG is thankful that the level of technology addiction is avoided by this writer. Some of the best days are ones where the cell phone is turned off, there is no pager, no blackberry, and the computer is kept off. Appreciating God's Creation, and spending time with loved ones is done every single dinner. Unplug, unwire and spend time in the real world - with things of importance.
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