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Foul, foul, foul way to approach your own life and existence. Which isn't to say it doesn't work. A "problem", you could say, with a lot of employed people is

Foul, foul, foul way to approach your own life and existence. Which isn't to say it doesn't work. A "problem", you could say, with a lot of employed people is that they insist on seeing themselves as human beings rather than shallow, flat marketing entities. So they are not ready to believe that people are viewing them as two-dimensional plusses-and-minuses. They are wrong, of course, because we are lazy people who are much more comfortable dismissing people than we are accepting them. But I wish they weren't so wrong. I know firsthand how easy it is to market yourself. Most people are awful at it, or unwilling to do it, or both. Treat life as a video game and high scores become easy to attain. Indeed, all of advertising is based on this system; we realized a century ago that if selling's the goal, you can sacrifice nearly everything else and make a killing. The cost is merely your soul. It's giving up that view of yourself as an autonomous human being with unique hopes and dreams, wants and needs. It's deciding that you value a certain society-accepted sort of "success" more than you value yourself. And if you really don't believe in yourself, then you find that everything is easy. You can get a job if you're a branded huckster. You can get laid if you're a pick-up artist. Maybe it won't mean anything but you can have it anyway. The real struggle, which this article doesn't mention, is this: What happens when you find the parts of yourself that you're unwilling to sell? When your own wants and needs contradict that optimal path? How do you manage the difficult dilemmas that come from your conscience? It's a question I feel some here don't value much. But I think it's the important one. And it's the one that provokes the really genius ideas. Curiously, focusing too much on the optimal path denies you a lot of opportunities to be ugly and unbranded and staggeringly brilliant. The real difference between the good and the great is that greatness almost invariably requires a sacrifice. As far as informing the uninformed goes, good article. The more self-aware people are, the harder this branding bullshit is to pull off. But I dislike that you present this without any warnings of the sacrifice you make when you start looking at yourself as a brand. I think it's irresponsible and potentially harmful.

petercooper 16y ago
The cost is merely your soul. It's giving up that view of yourself as an autonomous human being with unique hopes and dreams, wants and needs. It's deciding that you value a certain society-accepted sort of "success" more than you value yourself. And if you really don't believe in yourself, then you find that everything is easy. You can get a job if you're a branded huckster. You can get laid if you're a pick-up artist. Maybe it won't mean anything but you can have it anyway. I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. Self promotion as a directed activity is not always so cynical or an attempt to get more than you deserve. It does not always involve dashing your "unique hopes and dreams." Branding is not any more "bullshit" than, say, economics or art are. There are people doing good, honest work who've found that by adopting some of the principles of branding and responsible marketing to boost their public perception, they can actually turn their work into a profitable long term enterprise where otherwise they could not. I haven't sold my soul or done things I didn't want to do, yet without self promotion there's no way I'd have 38k feed subscribers and a 6K strong mailing list. These things help me realize my ambitions in an honest way. There's a school of thought that "if you build it, they will come." Now, more than ever, this is not true. You can toil away and do excellent work but without getting out there, spreading the news, and working on your persona, you'll struggle to get by. This is why, I feel, a lot of people do settle for regular, full-time jobs when they don't want to - rather than go out on a limb and share themselves honestly with the world, they'd rather do it on a case by case basis in their résumé.
- rorymarinich 16y ago
  I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. Self promotion as a directed activity is not always so cynical or an attempt to get more than you deserve. It does not always involve dashing your "unique hopes and dreams." Branding is not any more "bullshit" than, say, economics or art are. I agree. That's why I also dislike people who say things like "You are an artist" or "You are an [economic term thingy]" too. (This last one is theoretical but I would dislike this being said.) When you tell people that THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE without including a counterhypothetical HERE'S WHY YOU MIGHT NOT CARE ABOUT THIS, you're doing an injustice to yourself as a writer. It's dishonest to write about a good thing without also carefully demarcating the limits of that goodness. "If you build it, they will come" is a terrible line that promotes antisocial behavior and irrationality. It works well for the outsider artist who truly does go off and build a monument, but if you're writing a "how-to" article you're not targeting outsider artists. The real line to teach is "Friends are the best thing ever, in business too!", and then to suggest that marketing techniques are the best ways to make yourself visible to future friends. God knows that's the only fame I've found worthwhile.
nathanmarz 16y ago
I appreciate your perspective. I think you have an assumption that there's something innately "sleazy" about marketing, which is where I disagree. I also want to note that I advocate marketing, which is a different concept than selling. Selling is a transactional concept while marketing is about increasing your value in the mind of others. There are sleazy ways to market yourself. However, the methods I advocate -- blogging, open source, speaking, etc. -- are about finding ways to provide value to people.
- rorymarinich 16y ago
  No, not at all! I'm actually studying advertising right now, and am a big proponent of learning to use marketing. The difference between my perspective and yours (in my opinion, of course — feel free to contradict!) is that you see marketing as a wholly advantageous thing, whereas I'm more wary — I see it as an easily abused drug which provides a shallow relief to a deeper problem. Here's how I'd put it. When I recommend a blog to somebody, or to myself, it's never because of the factors that make a blog bloggy: RSS feeds, archives, pagination, etc. The really important thing about a person's blog is the person, and the traits that person embodies. The blog is simply the way that person delivers herself to me. Ditto Twitter: The medium doesn't make the man, the man defines the medium. Bad Twitters are atrocious. Ditto bad blogs. You see "value" in these various marketing positions, as if the problem is "does not market well". I think the problem is somewhat more multifaceted than that. Part of the problem is that people use tools they cannot competently handle; while I suspect that your post won't be popular enough to, say, motivate a man to suddenly try and get speaking roles, I imagine that a man who sucks at writing and at speaking and at being interesting who suddenly decided to present at a conference might find your advice more traumatic than useful. A similar presentation that uses the same facts you do but shifts its perspective somewhat might sound more like this: "Here are some tools you have to express yourself. These are the ways that people use them; this is why they use this one instead of that one; here are some instances of good behavior with this tool that might inspire you." Perhaps you then explain why expression might be good for people, might get them work/recognition/whatever. By phrasing it that way you get to a core issue — what's the point of using these tools specifically? — and also move away from suggesting things like, "if you are not happy then it's probably that you're not using these tools", which is frequently wrong and occasionally harmful. I'm on your side here. I just think you presented your thoughts in a somewhat problematic way. Hopefully there's some ideas worth turning over in our discussion here that lead to future ideas. :-)

petercooper 16y ago

The cost is merely your soul. It's giving up that view of yourself as an autonomous human being with unique hopes and dreams, wants and needs. It's deciding that you value a certain society-accepted sort of "success" more than you value yourself. And if you really don't believe in yourself, then you find that everything is easy. You can get a job if you're a branded huckster. You can get laid if you're a pick-up artist. Maybe it won't mean anything but you can have it anyway. I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. Self promotion as a directed activity is not always so cynical or an attempt to get more than you deserve. It does not always involve dashing your "unique hopes and dreams." Branding is not any more "bullshit" than, say, economics or art are. There are people doing good, honest work who've found that by adopting some of the principles of branding and responsible marketing to boost their public perception, they can actually turn their work into a profitable long term enterprise where otherwise they could not. I haven't sold my soul or done things I didn't want to do, yet without self promotion there's no way I'd have 38k feed subscribers and a 6K strong mailing list. These things help me realize my ambitions in an honest way. There's a school of thought that "if you build it, they will come." Now, more than ever, this is not true. You can toil away and do excellent work but without getting out there, spreading the news, and working on your persona, you'll struggle to get by. This is why, I feel, a lot of people do settle for regular, full-time jobs when they don't want to - rather than go out on a limb and share themselves honestly with the world, they'd rather do it on a case by case basis in their résumé.

rorymarinich 16y ago
I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. Self promotion as a directed activity is not always so cynical or an attempt to get more than you deserve. It does not always involve dashing your "unique hopes and dreams." Branding is not any more "bullshit" than, say, economics or art are. I agree. That's why I also dislike people who say things like "You are an artist" or "You are an [economic term thingy]" too. (This last one is theoretical but I would dislike this being said.) When you tell people that THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE without including a counterhypothetical HERE'S WHY YOU MIGHT NOT CARE ABOUT THIS, you're doing an injustice to yourself as a writer. It's dishonest to write about a good thing without also carefully demarcating the limits of that goodness. "If you build it, they will come" is a terrible line that promotes antisocial behavior and irrationality. It works well for the outsider artist who truly does go off and build a monument, but if you're writing a "how-to" article you're not targeting outsider artists. The real line to teach is "Friends are the best thing ever, in business too!", and then to suggest that marketing techniques are the best ways to make yourself visible to future friends. God knows that's the only fame I've found worthwhile.

nathanmarz 16y ago

I appreciate your perspective. I think you have an assumption that there's something innately "sleazy" about marketing, which is where I disagree. I also want to note that I advocate marketing, which is a different concept than selling. Selling is a transactional concept while marketing is about increasing your value in the mind of others. There are sleazy ways to market yourself. However, the methods I advocate -- blogging, open source, speaking, etc. -- are about finding ways to provide value to people.

rorymarinich 16y ago
No, not at all! I'm actually studying advertising right now, and am a big proponent of learning to use marketing. The difference between my perspective and yours (in my opinion, of course — feel free to contradict!) is that you see marketing as a wholly advantageous thing, whereas I'm more wary — I see it as an easily abused drug which provides a shallow relief to a deeper problem. Here's how I'd put it. When I recommend a blog to somebody, or to myself, it's never because of the factors that make a blog bloggy: RSS feeds, archives, pagination, etc. The really important thing about a person's blog is the person, and the traits that person embodies. The blog is simply the way that person delivers herself to me. Ditto Twitter: The medium doesn't make the man, the man defines the medium. Bad Twitters are atrocious. Ditto bad blogs. You see "value" in these various marketing positions, as if the problem is "does not market well". I think the problem is somewhat more multifaceted than that. Part of the problem is that people use tools they cannot competently handle; while I suspect that your post won't be popular enough to, say, motivate a man to suddenly try and get speaking roles, I imagine that a man who sucks at writing and at speaking and at being interesting who suddenly decided to present at a conference might find your advice more traumatic than useful. A similar presentation that uses the same facts you do but shifts its perspective somewhat might sound more like this: "Here are some tools you have to express yourself. These are the ways that people use them; this is why they use this one instead of that one; here are some instances of good behavior with this tool that might inspire you." Perhaps you then explain why expression might be good for people, might get them work/recognition/whatever. By phrasing it that way you get to a core issue — what's the point of using these tools specifically? — and also move away from suggesting things like, "if you are not happy then it's probably that you're not using these tools", which is frequently wrong and occasionally harmful. I'm on your side here. I just think you presented your thoughts in a somewhat problematic way. Hopefully there's some ideas worth turning over in our discussion here that lead to future ideas. :-)