The Changing Times of Social Media

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Disclaimer: This article is all my opinions backed with nothing except my experiences. Disagree? Great, write it in the comments. I wish I was one of those people that was cool enough to be on MySpace, but my dad was too concerned about online trolls to allow me to be on that site, so I was a late bloomer on social media and didn't get a Facebook until senior year of high school. Despite my late start, social media has changed vastly since I began roughly five years ago. Facebook used to be the mecca of all things social media and nothing else mattered. I'd say Facebook is being dwarfed these days. Maybe not by one other site taking over its reign or its universal appeal, but Facebook isn't quite the end-all-be-all that it used to be. Here's the evolution/devolution of every social media site on my plate:

Facebook: When I joined Facebook, all my friends were already on it, and now 97% of everyone in my age bracket is on Facebook. While that's a whole lotta people, I don't see Facebook as that big of a deal to me anymore. It's a part of my life, but not as consuming or entertaining as it used to be. Since everyone's on it, there's too much happening and I feel like I can't concentrate on anything in particular anymore.

Purpose of medium: I use it to keep track of friends, sort of like a rolodex. It also serves as my photo album, as I never take pictures anymore. Do I post my feelings on there? Hellz no and you'll bother me if you do. It's too wide of a network for you to be splattering yours emotions everywhere. Keep it in check.

Award: My first love. Facebook will always have a piece of my heart but it isn't my primary concern anymore.

Twitter: I actually joined Twitter right when it came out, and then quickly deleted it. I didn't understand it and I had no one to follow that I knew. Then I took a social media class that forced me to get Twitter. And I HATED IT!! People were just whining all the time and sending out stupid links and for the life of me I could not figure out why anyone would be on it. Then I took another social media class and refined my list to useful, newsworthy sources and next thing I knew, I loved Twitter. I love the simplicity. Coming from Facebook, where there's so much happening (events, groups, messaging, posts, polls, etc. etc.), I embraced the condensed nature of the medium.

Purpose of medium: I use Twitter to entertain me, as well as gather news. I follow friends, but mainly I like Twitter for news and entertainment. In good fashion, I use Twitter most to keep abreast of social media and technology changes.

Award: My favorite and most-used.

Instagram: I just got Instagram when I got a smart phone post-grad. AND I LOVE IT. It's a place to put those pictures that are too chummy for Facebook. My entire family is on Facebook, but none of them are on Instagram. I also love Instagram because it's low thought. You never have to read anything. You can just look at pretty pictures and keep it moving.

Purpose of medium: Another photo album that doesn't need to be seen by an entire Facebook network.

Award: The most atheistically pleasing

Foursquare: I am even more of a n00b on Foursquare. And you know my thoughts on it: nice try, but did not materialize like anyone would have hoped. None of my friends are on it, nor do I particularly like checking in places because I am terrified of someone stalking me.

Purpose of medium: I only stay on this social network for two reasons:

1. My boss told me I had to be on Foursqare

2. It helps my Klout score (and for no good reason, I am somewhat obsessed with my Klout score)

Award: Most likely to encourage stalking

Pinterest: I used to be OBSESSED with Pinterest. Absolutely obsessed. I pinned the shit out of everything. I'd waste hours making boards. Then I got bored and gave up and never went back. The end of that. It's probably for the best, as I was becoming a recluse planning my future wedding, babies, and closet on a budget that I will NEVER have.

Purpose of medium: Organize a fantasy life that you will never have and then feel sorry for yourself that you will never have any of it, until you read your "quotes" board and convince yourself that it will all work out in the end, since you're a strong person, or whatever that inspirational quote you pinned a few weeks ago is telling you.

Award: Most like meth, or at least I'd assume, as I've never done meth, but basically the most addicting social media site you can use.

Vine: I've never used it, but I've seen some Vines before and it bothers me that people think they're hot shit because they're "Vine Famous" and then announce it in all of their videos, like being Vine famous is something worth bragging about, when in reality it just means you have no life and dedicate yourself to taking videos of yourself all day.

Purpose of medium: To make videos of yourself to amuse complete strangers with all the strange faces and weird bodily noises you can make.

Award: Most annoying

Google+: Is this even a thing anymore?....

Purpose of medium: Wait so is it still around?...

Award: The Facebook with No Friends Award. It's tough to be social when no one is in that social network.

That Day I Spent Trying to Engage Famous People

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Sometimes I get bored and read articles pertaining to my profession. I found this one awhile back that said that one way to get more followers and a higher Klout score is to engage with people that have more Klout than you. Duly noted. I never really acted on this advice until recently. I thought a less direct way to engage with people that will get my name known would be to use a hashtag that would make me famous. Obviously, I'm taking about the #InsertBandNameTODAY hashtag from the Today Show. (For those of you not familiar, every morning while the band plays, they show tweets that use the hashtag of the name of the band with TODAY at the end of it). After a week of trying to get my tweets on tv with no success, I gave up on that technique.

Then I moved to tweeting about products I liked, such as telling Panera I was craving a sandwich, or that Keurig coffee in the office was a real bonus. That got boring quick, as I'd essential get nothing more than a thanks.

So then I decided to aim a bit higher. I spent a day tweeting bands, celebrities, politicians, basically everyone about what I liked about them. I tweeted to one of the Congressmen that said they'd volunteer to not get paid during the shutdown. I tweeted to Ed Sheeran about one of his songs. I got nothing back from anyone. Then I got sad, CNN was on, and Jake Tapper came on with a bad looking hair do. So I tweeted about it.

AND HE RESPONDED THE VERY NEXT COMMERCIAL BREAK.

Tweet to Jake Tapper

I felt like a dick. The poor guy is covering the government shutdown and instead of me saying, "great coverage, way to ask the tough questions," or something, he gets to look at his Twitter and see me dissing his hair.

Then I tried to mediate it and say that his hair doesn't look that bad. I threw in a smiley face for good measure, only then have instant regret for thoughts it seemed creepy that I just did that. Whoops.

I think I'll stick to not tweeting at famous people from now on in fear I might actually get a response.

My First Time Interviewing Someone

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I've been through lots of interviews where people have been asking me questions. From trying to get scholarships for school to getting jobs, I would say I've been interviewed at least 20 times. But I've never interviewed someone else before today. Never before have I been in the drivers seat with someone else's livelihood in my hands. And let me tell you, being the interviewer probably made me more nervous than the person I was interviewing. I wanted to ask good questions that allowed her to explain herself, yet difficult enough questions to reveal something about her.

It's a challenge finding a happy mix of tough and informative. Also, I don't want to be THAT person that you leave the interview room cursing under your breath because they were so tough. I can't tell you what she thought of me when she left, but she did end up getting the job, so apparently I did a good enough job interviewing her for my boss to learn about her and make a judgement call. So far she's been an asset to our projects and I've enjoyed her in the office.

Here is my favorite question I asked, why I asked it, and what I gleaned from it:

Have you encountered a time that you had a creative difference with a client or coworker, and how did you handle it? This question is essential for the field I am in, as well as the job she was applying for. We have creative differences all the time in my office, which is never a bad thing. We just are all creative people with unique ideas on how to solve the problem. I wanted someone that would say they would vocalize their ideas and work towards a way to use all of our creative ideas for the betterment of the project.

She didn't seem like one of those people that were rigid in their thinking and do not listen to creative solutions, so I liked her more.

I also think my interview was successful because I avoiding stupid cliche interview questions such as "What's your biggest weakness?" which guarantees that you'll get some bullshit answer that doesn't allow you to gain any insight into their character.

Here's hoping she's a good fit and I can pat myself on the back for interviewing and selecting a winner!

Are You YOU on Social Media?

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My friend and I were having a chat over lunch once about how people act on social media and it got me thinking, do most people use social media to express things they wish they could in real life, or are they the same person online as they are in real life? I tend to think of myself falling in the latter category, where I am the same person online as I am in real life. I tell the truth, I compliment the same things, I whine about the same things, I talk about the same things, my voice is the same, etc. What you see online is essentially what you'd get in person.

However, some people disagree. Someone I was friends with used to say that what they said on twitter essentially didn't count towards who they were in real life. They used twitter as an outlet for things they can't say in the real world, or don't actually apply to their life.

So what do you think? Are you YOU on social media, or is there some sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing happening when you hit your computer?

Let's get a good poll going! Also, leave comments, especially if you think you're different online than you are in real life. [polldaddy poll=7406652]

5V5FS4T8ZECN

How to Not Get a Job

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Since I work in a company of three, I get to do the job I was hired for, plus other random jobs, such as recruiting! I spent Friday at my very first school's recruiting fair as an employer. I went to multiple back when I was in college, but I was exceptionally excited to be back at a fair as an employer. I was imagining flocks of people shoving their way to my table and rushing to hand in a resume. It was nothing like that. We got some great candidates, and we got a few who are perfect examples of what not to say to potential employers. Here's a list of real things real college students said to us while we were at the career fair that made me wonder if they understand how to get a job:

  • The very first person we talked to told us she was a marketing student and then we explained our company and she goes, "Facebook? So anyone can do this job." Maybe don't trivialize a company's job when you are trying to hand in your resume.
  • "I've never heard of your company. What can you do for me?" Ballsy. If her tone was a bit softer, that might have actually worked, but as she said it like she was entitled to get a job, I made a mental note that she was too pretentious to actually make me want to employ her. She also clearly didn't do her research like lots of her peers did, so she already distinguished herself as not as committed as her competition.
  • "I already have a plan for when I graduate, but I thought this could be a good backup." I appreciate the fact that this girl is honest, but why in God's name are you walking around essentially telling companies that you don't really want to work for them, but if their plan A falls through, you could be their plan B? No one is going to want to follow up with you if you are not ranking them a priority.
  • "I still don't see the value of my college education." This wasn't insulting in any way, shape, or form to me or the company I work for, but it is a huge slap in the face to the school he is currently attending, which is a prestigious school that people would die to go to. If he is willing to walk around insulting the education provided to him, I am sure he would do the same about our company if he was hired. Even beyond that, I greatly value my college education and if we are that fundamentally different on our views of education, it may be an indicator that we would not see eye to eye in the working world either.
  • "I just came from class so I don't have a resume and didn't see what your company is about." I understand having class, but you knew the career fair was today. They didn't announce it this morning and hope people would show up. Show some initiative and plan ahead, especially your outfit. This girl showed up wearing short shorts with her underwear showing, a cami on, and horrible tan lines. There was nothing professional or employable from her showing up not dressed and totally unprepared.
  • I wish I could quote this next exchange because it was hilarious, but I essentially do not even know what happened. We listed ourselves as not being able to hire international students (as we look to hire interns as a way to raise a future full-time employee and international students typically are not long-term options) and the conversation started off with the kid saying that he was an international student that wanted to talk to us anyways, even though he knew we listed as not having positions available. Then he had an unrelated major and no relevant work experience. I could hardly understand him, so I let my co-worker speak to him, and then he got frustrated and said something about how we need to find a way to involve more majors. Then he still didn't leave, so my co-worker told him more about our company and he said something about it not aligning with want he wants. AND HE STILL DIDN'T LEAVE. If you are pointing out that your needs and the company's needs do not align, why are you still wasting everyone's time standing there asking more questions? No matter how long you stand there, new positions outside of our needs are not going to materialize.

As Forest Gump said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." Career fairs are just like that too. You never know if that student approaching is going to be absolutely nuts or totally sweet.

Writing About Writing

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One of the biggest realizations I had at NASCAR was that I loved to write. This really isn't anything new, so it's more of a rekindled notion rather than a realization. Anyways, I compiled a mental list of how I came to the conclusion that writing is probably one of my few true passions in life. Here's some of the highlights from the list:- To start with an obvious one, I started a blog as a hobby. - I really wanted to study English in college but didn't think it was pragmatic enough. - When I'm at work, I sometimes daydream about writing for myself rather than our clients. - I casually google search topics such as "creative writing seminars" like that's what normal people do. - When I ran into my first grade teacher she said she thought I'd have become a writer.

So clearly, if first grade me liked writing and so does current me, it's something I should be doing more of. However, the only type of writing I love is self-reflexive humor pieces, opinion editorials about inane current events, and extensive research papers.

Journalism doesn't quite work for me, as the most hard hitting news story I've written is about leggings not being real pants. Even when I wrote a front page article about the African drummers that came to our school, I somehow rambled at length about me dancing to it. How no one edited out my editorialized narration about myself is beyond me.

I've also dappled in fiction, and see this as the most probable fashion of actually pursuing writing, except for the issue that unless I am retelling exact stories, my imagined ones make no sense. My first piece of fiction that I remember writing was from third grade, where I wrote a story about taking a walk behind my house with a frog and then running from a bear, only for him to come tuck me into bed. When you're a kid you're supposed to have a good imagination, except for me apparently.

If I had it my way, I would take Joel Stein's job. The guy just writes about himself all the time and is hilarious. Getting paid to disseminate my opinions to the masses is essentially what my end goal would be. Unfortunately, that job doesn't really exist to apply for. Trust me, I've been trying.

Absurd Ways I've (Attempted to) Make Money

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For reasons that escape me, I always seem to pursue the most ridiculous methods of making money. Even the "normal" jobs I get seemingly turn into strange experiences.  In some sort of a particular order, here is a list of  jobs I have had and how it turned out for me: The "normal" jobs that could have been more normal:

My first job was at a bagel store, which would have been normal if upper management ever got itself together. By the end of my first year I was the second most senior person in the establishment at a ripe age of 17. Once when I came into work, there was some corporate people there that made me pose with sandwiches for a website. Within the week, some other corporate lady came in and had me cleaning out the inside of the trashcan in the back with a scrubber, and then proceeded to yell at me for not keeping an eye on the cash register and the customer standing at it (which was in a different room, where she happened to be, without her head in a trashcan).

I was a camp counselor for two summers. I would give this job the award for most normal, except for the time a six year tried climbing up onto my lap and then proceeded to try to motorboat me while yelling "BOOBIES!"

The jobs I took that I didn't expect to be normal, and weren't:

I then spent two summers interning at a theme park. I knew this was going to be an experience, but never did I think it would be THIS CRAZY! First off, people on vacations are insane and forget that those people working at a theme park are actual humans.  Beyond that, I lived at the housing unit for international students, so the crazy never subsided. The perks of living there was that the internationals thought I was a helpless undomesticated American that would eat frozen pizza and oatmeal everyday if left to their own devices (painfully true actually), so they'd make me a rice dinner at least 1-2 time a week. On the downside, it was expected that I drink Popov with them every night and would consider marrying at least one of them so they could have a green card.

I spent a summer of my life making political phone calls. As I am not politically active, and I can't honestly say which side I was supporting, but I was told to burn in hell by someone on my first night. It didn't really improve after that night, yet it was a $9.50 a hour job, which was more than I'd ever made anywhere else, so so what if I got death threats? I endured the entire summer.

The jobs that were just plain sketchy, in hindsight:

I sold windows too for a summer. Just on weekends, so it complimented my camp job well. I would go to fairs and such with this short, creepy man and stand next to this window and pretend to know anything about it.  Old men would come over to me, I would get them to sign up for a consultation, and then make a whole lot of money. I made a base of $10 an hour, plus $15 every time I got someone to sign up for a consultation. I would smile a lot and always wondered why I was so good at this job without knowing anything about construction. It was only recently when I talk about this job did I realize I was basically a window prostitute to all these old men who thought I would be the one coming to their house for the presentation.

I also thought donating plasma would be a good money maker. I ate a big meal, laid down to get my plasma sucked out, and vomited everywhere once the process started. The saline taste from whatever chemicals they were putting into my body with the blood they were returning to me clearly didn't suit me. I did get paid though, so my mother encouraged me, "Just try again. I bet they'll pay you even if you puke again." I did contemplate it because I puke for free most nights, but decided against it.

The jobs that are just funny:

My current endeavor of selling makeup. Enough said, especially if you already read From Tomboy to Tweezers.

My real full-time job of social media, which yes, is a real job, and yes, I do get paid for it.

My roommate also put up a pet care profile for me online yesterday. Here's the picture from my profile:

Posing with a puppy

If that doesn't instill in you a sense of security that I can handle your pets, I'm not sure what will.

Maybe one day I will get a job that isn't in some fashion funny, but I doubt it. I have accepted that normal isn't for everyone.