Death in the Family

I strayed a bit from topic last week, but I had to do the same again, because this is another death anniversary for me, but for somebody much closer. My cousin, and eventual adopted brother Lance Corporal Michael Geary, a Marine deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, was killed in action, on December 8, 2010. He was only 20 years old and his death couldn’t have come at a worse time in life for us. My grandmother, my mother’s only surviving parent after her father passed away when she was 14, had just passed away the morning before Thanksgiving of that year, after battling skin cancer and other ailments for a couple years, and we decided to not celebrate the holiday that year, but to also not tell Michael about it, because he was deployed at the time and we wanted to wait until he was back so that he wouldn’t become too homesick and depressed over there. Never ONCE did the thought of him not returning cross our minds.

See, when he was about four years old, he and his biological mother, my aunt Nancy, had moved in with my grandmother after his father left them for a second family he had in secret for two years at the time, and he lived with her for most of his life, so that she could take care of him while his mother worked at a hospital. They eventually moved up to New Hampshire after my family did, living only one town away in Derry, and

we ended up adopting him for insurance and education reasons, when my grandmother became too old to really take care of him herself while his mother was working. He still lived with them for the most part, but we would help take care of him and our grandmother when his mother was working long hours. It’s bittersweet to realize that neither of them ever realized that the other passed away, even though their lives were so close for nearly his entire life.

He grew up in Revere for his first couple years, born to my aunt and a deadbeat dad. My aunt had made the mistake of thinking that she could change a supposedly reformed criminal, who served time for bank robbery when he was younger, and our family was actually accepting of him because he did work a good job and took care of them after she got pregnant and they married. However, that only lasted for about four years, until he left for the second family, and my aunt had to go back to work and live with my grandmother in Brighton, MA. My grandmother too had to go back to work so that they could support him, because her husband’s life insurance had run out after a decade, and her own son, my uncle Eric, had just died of cancer at age 32 when I was only four, so she started working again at typewriting and record keeping for a law firm, I believe. After 6 more years in the city, they wanted to give Michael a better life and to get away from his father, who hadn’t paid child support in years, so they moved to New Hampshire.

Eventually, the rest of my mother’s three sisters moved up to New Hampshire so that we could all be together, so he was never alone and didn’t have trouble making friends upon arrival. He was a goofy kid when he was younger, chubby and not very good at sports, but he was big, strong and had been my best friend when we were little so I got him interested in sports, particularly the new sport of Mixed Martial Arts, since he was already a tough kid from living in Boston and self-defense combat sports came natural to him. He did it until his high school graduation, where he had at first intended to go into the Police Academy, which he had wanted to do since he was a kid. However, his father had started to try and come back into his life at the time, and was pressuring him to become a Union worker just like he was, and the pressure was starting to get to him. He decided that before become an officer, he wanted to serve his country in the Marine Corps., partially to get away from all the pressure and discover himself without his father trying to re-enter his life.

He entered boot camp in relatively good shape, but still goofy and not totally grown into his body, but when he came back, it was like meeting a new person. I’ve never seen a human being transform so much in such a short time; where he had once been goofy and awkward, he came back in incredible shape, confident, and his face had changed into a very handsome man, something none of us ever expected for him. He wasn’t an ugly kid before, don’t get me wrong, but he looked amazing when he came back; everything had changed about him for the better. Things were like this for another year-and-a-half; he had girlfriends for the first time in his life, he had received two promotions in the military already, and was finally succeeding at life, where he once used to struggle in school. However, as mentioned, it all came to an end at the expense of a sniper’s bullet, a cowardly terrorist who hid behind children to shoot him.

It devastated our family; we didn’t even celebrate any of the holidays, where we had only intended to miss Thanksgiving. I was filled with so much anger, and I hate to say, but the one thing that made me feel a bit better at the time was hearing from his military friends that after he was killed, they scorched the earth all around that god forsaken place; they told us that nothing within a mile of the incident left that area alive, whether from bullet fire or airstrikes. The revenge made me feel better, but nothing could fill that void. For me, I dropped out of school for a while because I couldn’t handle losing my first, best and longest-known friend and family member along with my grandmother who raised him, and I regrettably turned to drugs for the next two years, putting and education to a halt and alienating myself from the life I was once knew. It took me years to get over it, and visiting his graveyard earlier today was the first time I was able to not cry; his mother wasn’t so lucky, and she immediately collapsed at the grave.

Despite this loss, I realized one day that the best way to remember him was to do my best and make the most out of my own life, rather than flushing my life down the toilet like I was previously doing. That’s what made me realize that I was going to follow my dreams and follow a career that I want to do, not something I wanted to do for purely financial reasons. I made the best out of the situation and used it to open my mind to the world and the way things really are and to expand my mind further beyond the limited scope I had. I used to be an extremely liberal person, thinking about the welfare of other people, things like equality, but after years of experience, from the military to my own early life in the city, I realized that most people don’t ever see the animalistic nature that people are truly capable of like I have. Most of these people who grandstand on their soapbox, they just can’t comprehend that some people are just inherently lazy or even just plain evil, no matter what you do to help them and no matter how much you try to force equality upon them , so I really began to think more independently than about trying to help everybody.

Every person, no matter what the lame excuse is, has an equal opportunity and I’ve seen plenty rise to the occasion with odds stacked against them, but we as people will NEVER be equal in ability, whether ability to perform at work and other physical things, or in ability to feel empathy for others and think intelligently. No matter what you do for them, they won’t magically change. I lost faith in humanity, and I doubt I’ll ever regain that faith, and I have very little sympathy for a lot of people, but I’m finally not afraid to say what I want. I’m not afraid to voice my thoughts, and to disagree with people, because I don’t fear what people can do to me because what more are they going to take from me? I’ve experienced more than many do in a lifetime, and I know that I think intelligently, so when I put that together I know that I can amount to something, and that’s all that matters. I don’t want to live with regrets, and it sucks that I had to lose a brother to realize that, but I have to make the most with what I have to honor his memory. As for memory of him, well, I'll choose to remember him for who he was, not for how he met his demise.

Patrice O'Neal

Today I wanted to stray a little from my normal focus on communication in the modern world to commemorate a comedian named Patrice O’Neal, since it’s the second anniversary of his death and as a huge fan there’s not much else I can think about. On November 29, 2011, he passed away after his type-2 diabetes led to a previous stroke in October which left him essentially paralyzed and eventually he was only able to communicate via eye movement before he passed. Patrice was a guy who grew up in Boston in a poor area and was just one of the most naturally funny people in the world. If I can relate this post to communication at all, then it can be about how Patrice was among the best of communicators of humor in history.

He could tell a story and no matter the topic, it would become hilarious, even when he was telling a story about something bad and serious, like one of his most well-known stories to fans of his when he revealed on my favorite radio show, the Opie & Anthony Show w/ Jim Norton, of which he was a regular guest, about how he was charged with statutory rape of a 15-year-old when he was 16, but Massachusetts didn’t have close-in-age laws, plus he was black and it was in the early 80s so he was basically screwed. He ran into trouble throughout his life due to this, such as being turned back from Canada, after numerous comedy tours up there, when one time they finally checked his background after he had driven 15 hours to the border and he was never allowed the border after that. It’s a sad story, considering how ridiculous the charges were, but even with stories like that, he was able to relate personally in a way that few can, and take serious topics and find humor in them.

He started as a comedian in Boston during the early 90s and as his stage presence evolved, he got more and more popular. But he was always a guy of principal, and was never willing to sell out to corporate masters who wanted to turn him into a walking gimmick. They basically wanted him to act like the other famous black comedians of the time, who were wacky and acted like they were in a minstrel show so that a network would pick them up and market him, but he wouldn’t fall for it. That got him into good graces with Spike Lee, who put him in the Edward Norton movie “The 25^th Hour,” which got him exposure and his career started to take off, with numerous guest roles like “Chappelle’s Show” and one of my favorite shows of all time, the comedian roundtable “Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn, and TV pilots that never took off because he was so brutally honest to the producers about not being their slave, that they would pass him over.

Coincidentally, he hosted a minimally popular internet-video-commentary show called “Web Junk 20” on VH1 which was eventually completely ripped off by Daniel Tosh’s big hit show “Tosh.0” when internet stuff became big, and I actually came into personal contact with him. By sheer chance, I had been a big fan of him for 6 years before this, and in 2006, my first college roommates and I had made a funny video of me punching my roommate in the face, replayed in slower and slower motion throughout, after he had lost a bet to me, and somehow Patrice had come across the video, thought it was funny, and wanted to use it. I told him how I was coincidentally a big fan, and that if I could get tickets to his show, I’d let him use the video, which he didn’t even have to do because I would’ve let him use the video anyways, but he was cool about it and I got to meet him at a show. I stayed in minimal contact with him after that, calling into the Opie & Anthony show whenever he was on, seeing him whenever I went to one of his comedy sets, through social networking, etc, and he was getting more and more popular each year, despite his uncanny ability to piss off producers by not “dancing” for them.

He peaked after he got chosen for the coveted final spot on the Charlie Sheen Roast in early 2011, although the circumstances were a clear set up by producers to make him look bad, after he had disagreed with a pilot they cast him for. The way he explained it to me, and eventually on the radio before his passing, the comedian who had that spot had dropped out two weeks before the roast, yet they waited until two days before to tell him that he had the spot, clearly not giving him enough time to prepare. He said that he’d written his jokes on the flight over the night before, and decided to just be brutally honest, rather than gimmicky like the other roasters. That night he absolutely KILLED; he was by far the funniest and most down-to-earth guy at the roast, and he was lauded for the performance, which led to a huge breakthrough in his career, and massive exposure to a much wider audience, leading to his first hour-long TV/DVD special “Elephant in the Room” which was critically acclaimed. Sadly it wasn’t to last, as he had suffered from Type-2 diabetes since his early 20s which led to his stroke.

His style was different than most, sacrificing high energy for being comfortable with his audience, not afraid to hear people call out to him so that he could set up a punchline on their behalf; he was impossible to heckle because of this ability. He was known to actually pay people to leave his comedy show if they tried to attack him for his controversial jokes, and for being a huge proponent of free speech, no matter what the person said; he would get in the funniest racial arguments I’ve ever heard with the radio hosts I mentioned before, and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He was featured on a Fox segment about the outrage over rape jokes, and completely destroyed a female guest commentator, in one of the greatest moments of comedians defending free speech. His posthumous releases “Mr. P” and “Better Than You” have sold huge numbers, showing just how popular he was becoming before his untimely death at age 41. He’ll be missed by the world of comedy and free speech supporters.

Social Media Communication Strategy

Facebook has grown over the years to become a new tool for the modern age of communication. I recently administrated pages for Facebook-based companies, specifically promoters, so I wanted to get into how to effectively communicate via this medium and the techniques to use, many from personal experience and some from research. People have decided that traditional advertisements are cliché, kitschy and otherwise obsolete; the enjoyable are typically only enjoyed for the humor, and does little to explain or further interest in the product. I wanted to basically get into how communication has evolved in the internet age, and how marketing has become a key aspect in all of these things, as with my last post about sneaky marketing and the new terminology.

When the internet age began, pop up ads became the norm, and soon afterwards, they became the bane of any internet users existence; not only were they annoying, but they soon bred the pandemic known as "spyware" or "adware," which could be used to install malicious software onto a person's computer, or could be used as a keylogger, which would track keystrokes and thus be able to route a user's browsing history, e-mail accounts, usernames, passwords, and credit card account information to another computer, which could then be used for a number of scams and identity thefts. While this was soon regulated, they became a total annoyance and one would be hard pressed to find any successful pop up ads in today's age. Advertising was at a standstill.

Then came Facebook and social networking, along with the realization that people are more apt to trust the product recommendations of trusted friends, family and even acquaintances, over the impersonal nature of preconceived ads that target a wide demographic. This has become a total game changer, and has altered the face of marketing for the future; however, the problem still remains as to how a business can successfully gain new fans and consumers. Since it is a new marketing landscape, new information is created every second, quite literally, as the instantly updating nature of internet marketing feeds into this concept; yet, it is still possible to weed out effective techniques from these constant updates.

What would appear to be the most obvious choice to gain fans for a new Facebook entrepreneur is also a choice that would almost certainly fail; that is, to invite every single friend from their existing personal page to become fans of their new business page. Facebook users are supposed to only be allowed to like 500 pages, barring system glitches and workarounds, and suggestions tend to accumulate on a person's account, blending into an unintelligible mess of invites to events, fan pages and businesses. People use social networking to locate pages that they like, and do not like to be harassed by continuous invites to pages that they don't enjoy; therefore, a business needs to find methods that lead them to the site, rather than spamming them directly. A tactic like posting the link on your own page is acceptable, such as in your information box, as it does not aggressively bombard your friends with advertisements, nor is it bad to share links from your business every chance you get, as this does not directly target a specific person. These, coupled with using @tags to directly link the page, are the most basic, yet effective means of advertisement.

As stated before, people like the recommendations of other people, as opposed to aggressive marketing by the actual business; such popular plugins as the 'Livestream' app have allowed consumer feedback to be posted on Facebook and shown on actual business website in a live streaming format within a box on the side of the page. However, as of October 3rd, 2012, this app is to be discontinued and replaced with a 'Comment Box' app instead, which offers the same box format, but instead of a constantly updating live comments, it orders comment by relevance to your actual profile, preferring to show comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked comments. This is extremely useful, as it displays comments from people that are relevant to the user, as well as those that are well liked among the whole fan community overall, while also allowing for moderation of unsavory and vulgar remarks that may appear if someone reads deep into the comments.

For people that have started on with an actual website, it's not uncommon for fans of the site to not think to also like the Facebook page, and it's obvious that the more likes on a Facebook page leads to greater popularity and exposure; thus, sending an invite to the Facebook page via e-mail and e-zine will round up those that haven't made their support public and increase fan count. Now, once people see their friend's support for the page, it's key to make a good welcome video or message on the page; with cover photos and link tabs at the top where you browse photos, this is easier than ever before. With the allure of the page being ready, not the trick is to gather new fans, and this requires the indirect actions of your existing fans.

Such concepts as taking lots of pictures at live events, and then asking fans to tag themselves will indirectly post these updates on their profile walls, which then subsequently appears on the news feed. Now that comments on pages can be set to appear on friends' newsfeeds, their comments and tags will be spread to each of their friends accordingly. As mentioned in the beginning, the pop up ad market all but folded; however, Facebook's integrated ads sidebar is cost effective and streamlined, not popping out at people in an annoying manner, but appearing in a conservative manner on their sidebar, while still being easy to access and like with a simple click. If the company has a physical store, advertisements in the store should clearly list the Facebook fan page, and with the advent of modern technologies that have been made public, like QR codes, a person can use their smartphone barcode scanner to scan a physical bar code-like symbol on physical advertisements which brings them directly to your fan page; flyers in public places (like schools) can accomplish the same thing.

With these strategies, a person's page should have a solid foundation, and thus can only build up from there.


external links: 11 Reasons Your Company Needs Facebook

Facebook Comments Box App

21 Creative Ways to Increase Your Facebook Fanbase

Social Media and Internet Marketing Terminology Review

The Ultimate Glossary: 120 Social Media Terms Explained

I read this article last year for a class on Social Media, and wrote something on it, so I decided to look back on it and add onto my thoughts then, because I needed some inspiration for my blog since I was a bit burned out from the week. The author of this paper is Kipp Bodnar, a lecturer, blogger and marketer of HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, as well as at an Inbound Marketing Software company out of Cambridge, MA. The paper makes a few key points, but is organized as a glossary of 120 social media marketing terms, some simple and some more complex. I was surprised at the amount of terms he listed that I didn’t understand; all the definitions were provided by his article, since the nature of the article was to familiarize people with terms they don’t understand. Essentially, I found it as a prime example of how marketers essentially divide people into specific demographics to effectively target them for communication and advertising.

There are so many terms and services, some of which are known by name, but people don’t truly know what they actually are used for; examples of terms people see all the time are ones like RSS, though few people actually know what it is. A lot of articles give a lot of information and use these terms, without explaining them since they expect people to know what they are; they also leave very little room for interpretation, since they have a direct point they intend to make, or they are too vague. Although a glossary format doesn’t sound like a useful article, learning the precise definition of each word allows for interpretation, such as “inbound marketing.” Though I knew the concept I never actually knew what the idea was called; inbound marketing is a concept of making a trail that leads people to you, rather than the traditional concept of interruptive, or “outbound” marketing, that includes such outdated techniques as cold-calling, TV advertisements, and postal mail.

Where outbound interrupts a person, and tries to forcefully grab their attention, inbound marketing leaves a trail of interest through such things as “tag clouds,” which are keywords that a post is tagged with in order to make it easier for people searching for this keyword, or multiple keywords, to find your site. Search engine optimization is one I am familiar with, as it allows your page to come up more frequently when keywords of your tag cloud are searched. The idea of non-invasive marketing is a very radical concept, and one that is only relevant nowadays. Instantaneous transmission of data was impossible before the internet age, therefore those outdated, outbound techniques were necessary for advertisement, but now that people have the ability to choose and receive information immediately, it brings a whole new level to the marketing game, and update techniques are necessary.

It appears that the marketing world is learning; an old Bill Hicks skit about marketing, which has received a lot of views on Youtube despite his death in 1994, outlines the thoughts of nearly every person exposed to the old marketing techniques. He asks; “Is anyone here in the audience in marketing?..... If you are, then please, kill yourself.......put a gun to your head.....suck a tailpipe.....just do it.” These were the thoughts people had toward the intrusive ways marketers used to force their ways into the lives of people, as the interruptive behavior became exponentially more obnoxious, and these new techniques of inbound marketing through social media have totally changed the game. It shows some of the sneaky techniques that marketers use, essentially leaving breadcrumb trails back to their page. Every era, advertisers are able to evolve, and as sneaky as they may be, I hate to admit that they are actually necessary for these forms of communication to exist in general. I can’t lie; I hate the marketing aspect of media, but it helps to know the techniques that people are using to essentially brainwash you.