"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" — Tom Waits, "Singapore"
I was around 21 or 22 the first time I heard this phrase, courtesy of Tom Waits on his magnificent Rain Dogs lp. It always struck me for its, I don't know. Mystic zen? Something. It's one of those lines that, when you're young, just plain sounds cool and you don't have to put much thought into it; just file it away and enjoy.
And then one day, 25 or more years later, a day comes when you're trying to figure out why you aren't making any headway in the office even though you're hitting the ball out of the park on a regular basis, and everyone is fawning over the guy who's taking your initiatives and presenting them as their own. Those who learn swiftly, on their own and under their own motivation, have a hard time understanding those who can learn, but won't. And maybe they're a little repelled. Disdaining. Whatever. But that other guy, he doesn't have that problem. He wants to be the guy people turn to for help and doesn't need them to learn on their own so he can go on to other projects. He even has a name: The Go-To Guy. He's got the answer everyone's question, and/or will go searching for it, for them. He may not know, himself, but Google's right there and he will not send them an email link that includes the lmgtfy.com domain.
...
The pressure to be on social media is astonishing in its scope. If you aren't visible for the masses, you don't exist for the masses. And who wants to be non-existent? So I finally gave in and joined, sometime around 2008 but didn't really get active at all for another 5 years, when I was out of radio.
Social media is like work, for me. Only I'm not getting paid. I and others, amateur and pro, alike, create content for Silly Con Valley information distributors, free of charge. I don't think anyone ever could have come up with a device that's so perfect for forcing creatives and other self-starters to waste their time and get beaten down, mentally, if they'd tried. And once you're there, if you are the highly communicative sort and you have a finely tuned bullshit detector, it's a recipe for antagonism. If the pressure to be there in the first place is bad, that's nothing compared to the pressure to conform to the CW of your peer community — who haven't spent 30 years of their life under the threat of being fired at any given time, if they didn't have their act together and their words chosen carefully and responsibly for the public interest, necessity and convenience. The majority of your FB friends will not thank you pointing out disinformation and the illogical nature of their content. They never had to sit down in an aircheck session.
For this reason alone, I'm finding a huge preference to Reddit these
days, although that, too, is a time waster for creatives unless you are deliberately collaborating or otherwise incorporating it into your work. When the worst
thing anyone can do is downvote you, life's not bad. It's easy to hide in the crowd; you're under the cloak of anonymity, there's no price to pay. There's an aspect to transparency that, especially as a creative, I find horrifying. It invites ankle-biters like nothing else on earth.
...
I often lead kayaking trips, now, for an interest group on Facebook. Kayaking has been a hobby for 11 years. I started out under the mentorship of two wonderful Middle Tennessee paddlers: Dennis Fulk, and Leslie Dunn. They both saw that I had some smarts and a knack, and gave me tips while we in the midst of river trips.
Now the sport has increased twenty-fold, thanks to the twin engines of poorly designed but newly affordable brands you find at discount retailers, and social media — especially Facebook and Instagram. FOMO is making a ton of greenbacks for someone, that's for certain.
Leading trips for these interest groups is both wonderful and a pain in the ass. Nothing delights me more than turning people on to new things and experiences. I take no small amount of pride that the first trip I ever organized to the Nantahala Gorge area led at least 5 people going on to intense whitewater training; at least two went on to become instructors, another followed his drummer to become a raft guide on the Ocoee. Every summer. Another one of my newbs started up her own Facebook kayaking group and was a board member of TSRA, Middle Tennessee's premier swiftwater training group.
And that's all wonderful. But here's what is happening in the Facebook paddling groups springing up everywhere:
First, you've got those who would be organ donors if they had the ability to purchase a motorcycle for $90, and get it on the road without any kind of instruction or licensing. And they're cheering on equally uninformed newbies and wannabees.
A more personal challenge — because, remember, I used to get paid to research, digest, and share information — are those who, going by their profile pics, appear to be fairly successful people and when I post a paddling event, want to know exactly where is the put in location? and where is the take out (some times it's right in the event info; occasionally I'll arrange another meeting place for a caravan)?, exactly how long will it take? and other items which are specifically addressed in the event information. They may ask how long is the drive? All this, rather than do their own web/maps search. I've gotten to the point where I just don't/won't answer those questions anymore. 85% of the time in the past, when I have, they ended up cancelling out, anyway. Others have no intention of signing on to go with strangers, at all. They just want the details so they can go with their own crew. I don't think it occurs to them, the amount of time it takes people to master some types of knowledge, but the internets have trained them to expect to be spoonfed.
So yes, of course they love the one-eyed man. They love the go-to-guy and gal, who will happily answer their questions for the ego boost, alone. Hopefully the go-to-guy will find some way to benefit, beyond that.
I just can't do it anymore.
