The BrandForward Blog

I grew up in Texas. (It’s no secret if you hear me talk). Forget the podcasts, my relaxed language is tinged with y’alls and drawls. And yes, y’all has both plural and possessive form in case you were curious. I do a pretty good job of keeping it on the down low at work, but there’s always that occasional “fixin’ to” that gives me away. Well, the thing about being a girl growing up in a rough-and-tumble state is that you’re taught to be one tough little cookie. I was playing baseball (the hardball sort) when I was 7 or 8, riding my PawPaw’s horses at 4 or 5, and roughing up the neighborhood boys during tackle football games.

I don’t think I realized I was a girl until at least 14.

My first brush with discovering my X-chromosome origins came when I was about 6 years old. I inadvertently discovered that boys and girls are different after taking my shirt off while outside on a scorching summer day.

While my mom was out getting some much-needed sanity, I was at the baby-sitter sweltering in the sun playing hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids. So as the boys started taking off their sweat-soaked shirts, I, of course, thought it was okay for me to do the same.

Imagine my surprise when I was sternly grabbed by an arm and whisked off to hastily locate my top.

“BUT HEEEEEEEEE DID IT?!” I’m sure I wailed.

“WHY CAN’T AYYYYYYYE???”

I had just been unceremoniously introduced to the concept that “life isn’t fair.” Especially for girls.

So when I came across TEDWomen this week, it was a mix of excitement and reservation. On the one hand, I soak up TED Talks like some people soak up Appletinis. Gotta have my daily fix, and watching TEDs over lunch is becoming habit-forming. My podcasts always feature my latest favorite Talk, and some weeks it’s hard to decide which one to choose.

There are so many incredible people and TED knows how to find them. TED rocks. (There’s a concert idea in that).

But at the same time, since my sunny days as a rabble-rousing girls-libber in the Lone Star State, I’ve always been firmly against segregation or propping up. Singling out specific segments of the population in veiled (or blatant) coddling efforts does more harm than good.

Making special allowances is the equivalent of saying one group isn’t as able, isn’t as driven, isn’t as intelligent, and therefore needs a hand up.

I can feel that 6 year-old seething inside.

While it may improve things in the short-term (and there’s no arguing that Affirmative Action has helped a lot of people and you can’t paint everything with the same brush), in the long-term it generally reinforces the negative perception that created the disparity in the first place. I’m against discrimination and strongly believe pointing out differences in an effort to make compensation only perpetuates the behavior or attitudes you want to discourage.

It seems women haven’t made it as far as we’d thought. Reading from the TEDWomen web page, I felt us go slipping backward about 30 years.

And then there was this line on the website that felt like it was either catering to a right-brain/left-brain stereotype, or the ambitious, competitive, testosterone-fueled hunter male vs. the communicative, nurturing, berry-gathering female. Do we really need to go back there?

I thought that’s what the original TED was about, except for the part about focusing on women being different. Every speaker on TED is different and unique… different nationalities, different ages, different educations, different genders. In past events have women’s speeches been less innovative and dynamic? Is women’s thinking less relevant to the broader audience?

Now my inner 6 year-old is really wound up.

Or maybe TED just wants to create a venue where women can talk about “womany” issues like poverty, sickness, art, and motherhood. If they’re truly ideas worth spreading, why wouldn’t they be integrated into TED? Or create topic-driven events like TEDBusiness, TEDSocial, TEDCulture, or hey, TEDucation.

TED is about bringing together a wide variety of perspectives and influence, and until TEDWomen, I thought it was also free of borders and conventional boundaries. It always felt like TED was about great ideas rising to the top, no matter where or who they came from. Now that there’s a separate event, it’s only going to encourage further segregation, and ultimately a watering down of the TED brand.

Or worse, the original TED will be viewed as the pinnacle event, with presenters at the top of the thinking in their fields, and TEDWomen being viewed as the also-rans.

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the way to honor and highlight women isn’t by separating them. It’s by deeper inclusion. And considering TED is all about ideas, there was bound to be a better one for achieving it.

Will women resent having to choose between attending a TED conference and a TEDWomen conference?

Will female presenters feel they’re being slighted by being invited to TEDWomen instead of TED?

Will male presenters be invited to TEDWomen?

What are some ideas that would have highlighted women thinkers in TED without segregating them?

Back in those halcyon days of high school my BFF Shannon started talking about getting a tattoo. A nice big one that no doubt was intended to shock her parents, get her officially banned from church, and seal her social identity as a true rebel. I remember briefly thinking how cool it would be to get one, too.

That fantasy lasted a whole three minutes.

While visions of Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song angel may have briefly danced in my head (yes, I also thought I was a rebel) there was this little voice of reason that chose at that moment to scream rather loudly “DON’T DO ITTTTT!”

Yeah, I wasn’t much of a rebel after all. My wonder years consisted of a series of close attachments to more audacious friends who I could live through vicariously. Heck, I wasn’t even cool enough to let my senior prom date wear a Zeppelin T-shirt under his jacket for fear we’d get thrown out. I even made him change. Some rebel I was.

I don’t know if Shannon ever got that tattoo. At least during high school she didn’t have the requisite courage in the face of needles, didn’t have the $300, and had a lack of vehicle freedom that all conspired to stop her. Regardless, it was pretty fortunate. My father would’ve never allowed me within 100 miles of her for the rest of my natural life.

Fast forward “a few years.” (Aren’t euphemisms awesome?)

While getting a tattoo takes planning, a stuffed piggy bank, and the keys to an unguarded vehicle, social media carries some of the same qualities of a tattoo with none of the barriers to entry.

Let’s compare:

Tattoo:
Permanent, mostly irreversible, possibly a job killer. Captured evidence of questionable judgment at some point in the past. Even if it’s just a whimsical remnant of an indiscriminate youth, its current presence and visibility makes a statement that can’t be easily erased or ignored.

Social Media:
Permanent, mostly irreversible, possibly a job killer. Captured evidence of questionable judgment at some point in the past. Even if it’s just a whimsical remnant of an indiscriminate youth, its current presence and visibility makes a statement that can’t be easily erased or ignored.

It’s a good thing social media wasn’t around back when Shannon and I were in high school or college. I perish the thought of what would have probably been questionably inappropriate blog postings following us some 20 or 30 years later. Do I really want the 17 year-old writer in me having any influence on what potential clients or employers are thinking about me today? Or what about the 22 year-old me that got more than a few letters to the editor published? Today, all that would be online. A part of my permanent record.

Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the early end of Gen Y got lucky that social media transparency didn’t come into vogue until just recently. We’ve all (for the most part) had the time to acquire the wisdom and experience that creates at least a little caution.

But what about younger Gen Y and Millenials?

What about parents creating baby Facebook pages and planning childrens’ names around available URLs?

Social media transparency has created a whole phenomenon that hasn’t had time to hit us yet. What happens when an entire generation that was “born online” (or has had an online presence since even middle school or junior high) is ready to be taken seriously?

It’s always been said “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Well what happens when who you know knows everything there is to know?

It’s like you’re writing an ongoing resume. That spans 10, 20, 30+ years. Gone are the days of carefully controlling a potential employer’s perception with two sheets of paper. Your identity is online and the only relevant pieces of information on that two-page resume are the two words at the top: your name.

Consider them googled.

The question now is what have you been adding to your social media tattoo? How many years have you been adding to it? Is it as carefully crafted as a traditional resume? Or is it a hodge podge of kegger photos, misogynist rants, and random tweets that allude to your life as a disgruntled employee?

The most important thing we all have to remember about social media is that our tweets, posts, and comments come without CONTEXT.

Just because you have 2,100 tweets that are perfectly sane doesn’t mean an occasional F-bomb or a workplace rant will be forgiven by the employer who didn’t have the benefit of watching your stream every day for two years. They only get a quick snapshot and make a dozen assumptions about you based on what they find.

And oh yeah. Just because 99.999% of your Facebook photos are rated PG doesn’t mean a friended co-worker you’re competing with for a promotion won’t come across that “one time at band camp.” And anonymously forward it to your boss. An ill-timed reveal of the office pet’s well-concealed snarkiness or behind-the-scenes indiscretion might make an otherwise adoring boss think twice.

Even though your potential clients and employers are human, too… and they should understand that no one is perfect… they can’t help but come to conclusions about you based on the contents of your social media presence. They don’t have the benefit of context and that’s what makes an innocent remark or photo so dangerous.

Yes, transparency and authenticity are essential to a rewarding online experience because those are the qualities that connect us to people and create real relationships. We should all strive to embrace transparency and be our authentic selves online. But there’s a fine line between being who we are and “letting it all hang out.”

It’s called discretion.

And discretion can live peacefully alongside authenticity and transparency. But it’s an art that takes time to master. And in the meantime there will be tweets we’d like to take back, blog posts we wish hadn’t published, and comments we hope aren’t seen out of context.

Just because we didn’t spend a couple of hours getting a tattoo doesn’t mean there’s not permanent, visible evidence that we don’t always make the best long-term decisions.

And in a lot of ways, social media is even more visible and permanent:

The biggest difference in a tattoo and social media is that a tattoo can be placed in hidden locations, reflecting a higher level of personal discretion and judgment, whereas social media by its very nature is public. Even Facebook or MySpace privacy settings can’t stop someone who’s determined.

Social media is the new tattoo. And no amount of opaque make-up or layers of clothing can conceal it.

What are some words of wisdom you’d share with today’s kids who are embarking on social media? Do you think they’d be able to understand why we talk about the importance of discretion? Or would they think we’re hopelessly lame and old school, just trying to keep them from having fun and expressing themselves?

It’ll be interesting to see what these new tattoos eventually look like. And to what lengths users will go to have them removed.

If you’d like to tweet this post, here’s a trimmed link you can copy and paste: http://tr.im/newtattoo

A quick note of thanks to Wayne Kurtzman (@WayneNH) who first picked up on my “social media is the new tattoo” quote earlier this year and wrote a great post about it. If you have some time, take a look at his post on the topic.