Yoda and Steve: Millennial Jedi Ghosts

This morning, amid a frantic and dizzy haze left over from my first Agency party, I took a moment to chat with an old friend. He’s my age, 23, and an avid Apple user. Of course the one topic we get stuck on was Steve Jobs passing; I’ve heard it over and over from my young friends, “I never thought I would have such an emotional reaction to a stranger’s passing.” Yet many young people have been very emotional about it.

If you think about it, Steve really touched a lot of people, connected families, educated the masses, and expanded (for better or worse) media’s reach. He, and Steve Wozniak, saw a word full of technology—with computers tiny, in hand, in every home. I owe a large part of my education to these men. I’ll go one step further to say I wouldn’t be writing this blog without these men--Lord Zuckerberg probably wouldn't be the millennial god he is today, and our beloved Twitter Jack and Myspace Tom would be average Joe's. The Steves, and in particular Steve Jobs, somehow became this generation’s voice. He’s like our Lennon, our Yoda, our connective voice from which great timeless wisdom flows.  Young people were are incredibly attached to Steve, not because he created cool phones and computers. They see in him enabled inspiration, through inspiration. 


We dream to change the world, which is what he accomplished. We dream to understand how he understood.

Apple Store Memorial

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something.”

Thank you Steve. Thank you for everything, really.

OccupySTL Observations

Today I took some time and visited a group of protestors in the city. I’ve never really been to an official protest so I didn’t know what to expect, maybe a manic agenda and a guy in red and white striped pants shouting about ‘Viet-fuckin-nam’. For about two weeks Crystal and I had been following the Occupy Wallstreet protests in New York; it finally spread nationally, with a meeting place right here in St. Louis, MO.  Of course there are hundreds of social and political issues at hand here, I had a only few note-worthy observations.

Disclaimer: These are just some of the generational takeaways I had, great fodder for emerging ideas. It should also be noted that there was not a community manager on ‘staff’, so tweeting, hash-tagging, checking-in, all kinds of fun mobile social networking wasn’t on their radar. If you want more, check out Rodgers Townsend’s blog. If you want to join the protest, or help out stop by Kiener Plaza downtown…and for God’s sake bring them some food and water.   

Happy Fall-tastic Monday Everyone

Here’s something short and comical that a co-worker of mine sent me. It’s hilarious and so fitting for an upcoming blog post. Since I don’t have time for many details, I’m leaving you with this:

Via The Oatmeal.

Is EVERYONE Updating Their Features?

It sure seems so. I’m not sure which happened first (because my iPhone, Pickle, was having a teenaged meltdown last week during the stream of App updates) but all our favorite social networks made some serious updates and changes. Most notable among them, Facebook; I’m not going to go too deep into that one right now—Mashable has done an amazing job of keeping everyone in the loop with updates. As I hear it there is going to be a second wave of update in the next couple weeks.

The timeliness of all these changes really is astounding—On the 20^th, Instagram gave mobile photographers their new and improved, hi-res, user friendly Instagram 2.0. Reactions online seem to be positive, although some of the opinions of avid Instagrammers weren’t so great. My Foursquare told me there were some updates to the ‘lists’ section of the mobile app on the 20^th as well. Then the changes to Facebook hit, and all hell broke loose.

I’m just putting this out here to say, I’m watching how these social networks feed off each other. What does it mean for users? What does it mean for developers? I’m just saying, watch them, they kind of move together.

Check out this blogpost from  Sam Lessin at Facebook, it's a perfect post about profile timelines.
If you don't have Instagram (sorry Android users) here's a great Mashable 'Top Users' review.

The Growth of Social Media 2011 [Infographic] via DigitalBuzz

Check it out here.

Absurdity and Subtlety

I’ve been hovering over a theory for weeks: Millennials generally lack the ability to understand subtle cues and changes in inflection and tone.  Obviously the theory needs serious testing, though I have some anecdotal evidence to support the theory—ultimately it needs academic style testing, one with a ‘control’ and all that science-y good-stuff but here’s how I landed at my current conclusion:

For years I’ve had friends who would rather text, IM, or Facebook me when they have a problem. Very rarely do I get a confrontational phone call; I can count on two hand the number of negative conversations I’ve had in person. An uncomfortable conversation normally manifests via text or Facebook message. A week ago I noticed two Facebook friends stirring up an online feud, escalating into a ridiculous Twitter battle, which finally ended with a phone call, I’m told, and ‘unfollowing’. Now, there are three things at work here:

1.     Communication is lost, or misinterpreted via online medium; in other words the lack of subtle tone, inflection, and physical cues is leading young people to hyper-react.

2.     The inability to communicate one-on-one about sensitive subjects, i.e. rent, cleaning the dishes, passing notes in class, anything that potentially causes an argument, big or small, in person. In essence, avoiding confrontation until it erupts.

3.     The socio-cultural weight of ‘unfriending’ or ‘unfollowing’ among young people. (Which is a larger post coming soon)

"Why not?"

It seems absurdist executions are “working” well with Millennials; why else would this DQ spot keep happening? I’m circling on a hypothesis driving this phenomenon: Millennials generally lack the ability to understand subtlety. More to come.