Brad Marley

During my junior year of college, way back in 2000, I wrote an article for a short-lived e-mag named ReWired. It was our English program's take on the more-popular magazine, Wired. For one of my submissions, I interviewed my friend's roommate to illustrate the pull of online chat rooms, which were probably at the height of their popularity. 

This is one of the better things I've written in my lifetime, so I wanted to share. I won't be offended if you stop halfway through.

It is funny, though, how our view of technology — and what is now commonplace — can change so drastically in a decade.

(If you get to the end and wonder where I am going with the quote from Thomas Laudal…yeah, I don't know, either.)

***

Pimpin: Hey, a/s/l check.

stargirl111: Yeah, I got a pic to trade. And I'm a hottie.

bowl_4_u: This room is whack. I'm outtie 5000.

cute_and_single: hi pimpin

jocksport456: u e-mail it first

pimpin394: Hi

In a typical chat room, like the one shown above, there are numerous conversations going on at once. People throw caution to the wind and take on personalities that sometimes are the complete opposite of their real life personas. For example, "stargirl111" is quite possibly not a "hottie" as she claims to be, but will say she is because she yearns to find that special someone in this virtual world. If the guy, or so he says, doesn't find her attractive, he will most likely ignore her the rest of the time or leave the chat room. "Stargirl111" will move on. And so the cycle begins for the upteenth time and certainly not the last time.

In a personal conversation, the body acts as a barometer for what the person really feels. The shuffling of feet could mean nervousness, shyness, or it could mean the person wants to get the hell out of that conversation. It would be considered rude to just walk away, especially if you know the person and will likely see them again. In a chat room, the body is taken out of the conversation.

The disappearance of the body is part of a new school of thought called "Virtual Reality Theory." Professors at colleges around the country are starting to believe in chat rooms as a new tool of teaching while some of us still see it as a way of flirting with the opposite sex. Either way we look at it, the two sides converge at one crucial point: The Body. After looking at the the issue from two different angles, we begin to see how.

What About Bob?

Bob is a twenty-year old Sales and Marketing Director for a manufacturing company in Michigan. Bob has some college education since he was going to school to study mechanical engineering before taking this job. He is single and shares a condominium with a friend he used to work with. Bob spends a lot of his free time in chat room.

Since discovering America Online, Bob is somewhat addicted to these rooms. As he logs on, I notice that his Buddy List contains over 80 "friends," ninety-five percent of whom he has never met. "I basically see the Internet as a way to meet new people," Bob says. As he sits down, a friend from the "real world" sends him an instant message (IM). "THis is my friend Frank from Germany. I communicate with him on-line because I'm too cheap to call him," Bob explains.

Only 10-15 "friends" on his Buddy List are guys. The majority are girls that he has met on-line. They are mostly local girls since he considers talking to non-locals a waste of time. "I don't like talking to people from, say, Utah. And, I'm not very fond of Mormons." As we are talking and chatting, one of his "friends" comes on-line. "Oh look, it's Dana!" Bob has never met Dana in real life even though they have been chatting for nearly two years now. "She's fun to talk to and her birthday is October 31st and I thought that was interesting," he says. "Besides, she has had a boyfriend the whole time."

Out of all the girls that Bob has met online, he has only met five of them in real life. He even dated one of them (Sarah) for six months, and he had the pictures to prove it. He told me that all five acted the same way in real life than they did in the chat rooms. I was curious about this, so I asked Bob if we would have gone up and started talking to Sarah if she just happened to be walking by. "I would want to," said Bob. "But would you?" I asked. "No."

Bob has been on-line 20 minutes and he already has six conversations going at one time. He has spoken with a few of these before but most of them he just met. "Gotta find a common link to start a conversation," Bob explains as he IMs a girl asking where she is from. Once he finds out she went to high school fifteen minutes away, the conversation begins. As they chat, I pursue the issue further about the difference between chat room conversations and a real life conversation. "The bluntness is beautiful because you can be (blunt)," he says. "You don't have to worry about being smacked." I think it is safe to say that there is a different persona on-line than there is off-line. To back his statement up, Bob says: "I would never approach a girl in real life because out of pure shyness. It is more difficult to approach a girl in person. The Internet is easier. If I don't like the conversation, I can click 'Cancel'."

Bob goes into a Detroit chat room to try and meet some more girls. After only a few minutes of trying, he meets a girl named "Sunnflower." She has a picture to send but only if Bob sends his first. They swap photos, and Bob likes what he sees. He tels her that she is "a definite cutie." "I like to see if there is a picture before I waste my time talking to them," he says. While he is talking to "Sunnflower", Bob starts looking through profiles of other users who are online. Thanks to the freedom of chat rooms, Bob doesn't have to talk to anyone he doesn't want to. Hiding behind the veil of a computer screen in the comfort of his own home, Bob is able to pick and choose the ones he shall talk to. If he doesn't want to talk to them, they won't know the difference. It's not like they see him staring at them from across the room, either.

He reads the profile of "JodyGirl0213" and it says that she is an administrative assistant. "That means she is boring," he says, referring to her job, "but let's see if she's hot."

Chat Rooms in the Classroom

At the University of Detroit-Mercy, Sister Christian Koontz is taking a giant step in making these chat rooms, once thought of as strictly a recreational tool, a part of Academia. She teaches a class in English called "The Journal." Her class can meet her in a chat room and discuss or ask her questions. The chat rooms are provided by a listserv service called Egroups. Although hesitant to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of chat rooms, due to the fact that she herself is still learning, Sister Koontz thinks that there is a gigantic upside to this idea. "I do think chat rooms have significant, and as far as I am aware, largely untapped, value to academic discourse," she explained through an e-mail. "I see the chat room as a fertile intermediary space, bridging personal journaling and formal academic writing, a space where students can write, to a certain extent, out of an atmosphere, attitudes, and orientation similar to that[sic] I believe to be the most conducive to effective journal work and begin to give rhetorical form to their writing, almost without realizing it because audience presence is real to them yet not so intimidating as a physically present audience is," Koontz added.

The last part of her statement can be directly connected to what our friend Bob said about talking on-line. Sister Koontz's students find it easier to talk when they can't see anyone or don't know who they are talking to, and there is no body to deal with in these conversations.

Toward the end of the e-mail message, Sister Koontz said that she advocates a "considerable application" of Harrison Owen's theories on "Open Space Technology." Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 15 years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity. Sister Koonts is trying to get her students to reach this goal through the power of virtual reality.

We once thought of online classes as something that would happen in the future. Five years ago, we imagined a world where we could get out of bed, turn on the computer, and attend classes in our underwear. Well, now we can. Students don't have to be worried about making a dumb comment or walking into class late and being stared at; with on-line classes, we lose the human element that comes with "regular" classes. Chances are, no student knows what any of the other students look like, and therefore, that have no reservations about participating in class. The potential for embarrassment is just nonexistent.

The Fate of the "Real World"

In the real world, there is something us humans like to call "fate." We have no power over it and it controls every move we make. In a virtual world, would fate be a possibility? If we programmed these worlds, wouldn't we be playing God and thus, determining fate? To quote Thomas Laudal on this issue, he says: "People make VWs (virtual worlds) while God, or something/something quite different than people, created the real world. Does this distinguish the real world from the virtual worlds? Hardly. The truth is that we don't have a clue who — or what — created our real world. But even if we knew for a fact that people like ourselves did NOT create the real world, this would not be a significant difference between virtual and real worlds…"

The significant issue here is that most people in chat rooms, like Bob and Sister Koontz'[sic] students, view it as a "fake" world. Quite the opposite of the real world, they can do things in this "fake" world that they wouldn't normally do. The students, who would be terrified of public speaking in real life, can speak in front of a large number of people while sitting at home in a robe.

These chat rooms are, in a sense, small virtual worlds where the "citizens" leave their bodies at home and explore unknown territories. The "souls" come and go as they please and there are no repercussions. Anyone can get away with anything. At least anything they say can be dismissed since actions do not speak louder than words.

It's baaaaaaaaaack.

For those of you not aware of its existence, "The Weekly Grab Bag" — formerly called "The Weekly Grab Bag of Links," "The Week in Links" and "The Leek in Winks" — is a repository for the interesting stuff I read during the week.

While the topics will vary, you'll notice most of the content revolves around all forms of media (digital, print, social), productivity, public relations, technology and writing.  (But I'm not afraid to throw in something from The Onion to keep you guys honest.)

I'm not exactly sure what the reception was like in its previous incarnations, but I want to share with you what I'm reading, and this is the place to do it.

Enjoy!

• What is a 21st Century Career? (WorkAwesome) - I agree with everything here, but it alludes to the idea that we must now work outside of work. Scary.

• The Best Writing Advice. Ever. (ProBlogger) – Tips #4 and #5 are my favorite. As Guy Fieri might say: "These are money."

• High Tech, High Risk, and High Life In Silicon Valley (Modern Mechanix) – This article is from the October, 1982 issue of National Geographic. The author prophetically refers to the work done in Silicon Valley as "the oil business of the eighties."

• Rules for Writing Fiction – Part 1 & 2 (The Guardian) – I don't write fiction. But if I did, I imagine these rules would inspire me to keep going.

• Improved Productivity: A 12-Step Program (Web Worker Daily) – I've been on a productivity tips kick lately, so this post is right up my alley. It should be up yours, too.

• How to Kill Innovation: Keep Asking Questions (Harvard Business Review) - Many a good idea has gotten bogged down in the details, never to emerge from the primordial goo, so to speak. The culprit? Questions.

That's all I've got. I hope you enjoy these links.

As always, you can find most all of my links on my Delicious page.

If you're like me, your stress level is in direct proportion to the number of e-mail that floods your inbox.

The higher that number gets, the more my heart palpitates and hands sweat, and the more I start to feel like I am being crushed beneath a pile of digital correspondence.  

So when my client told me on a call last week that he received 2,000 in the span of one weekend to an already jam-packed inbox (he has 52,000), I nearly had a heart attack.

(Now, before I proceed, I want the reader to know that there are a number of avenues I could go down with this information, not the least of which would be an indictment on the way we, as an industry, operate, turning number of e-mail into some sort of PR badge of honor. But you know what? I'm not going to go there.)

Think about that: if even five percent of those e-mail were action worthy, and assuming he isn't working on the weekend, he comes into the office on Monday already a day behind because he has to catch up. Soon, he's spending his weekends also getting caught up, which leads to a seven day work week, which leads to a build up of stress levels, which then leads to early death.

Obviously, the moral of this story is that e-mail can kill you.

That leads to this question, which you are already asking yourself: how can we change this practice?

Short answer: we can't. At least not industry-wide.

The problem is that e-mail is too easy. Anybody and everybody can easily fire out 300 e-mail in a day, if they so choose, with no regard for the receiver's well-being. And, the higher the number, the more work they think they've done.  But, really, they are just adding to the clutter.

Unfortunately, there are no rules and regulations in place to hinder somebody's e-mail usage, short of charging for virtual postage, which will never happen. We are slowly being programmed to become e-mail sending machines intent on burying one another beneath this pile of eRubbish that, after time, becomes impossible to dig out from under; our correspondence becomes matters of quantity, not quality.

But we can, however, change our personal habits, which just might lead to somebody else changing their habits, which leads to another person, and so on. We're not changing the world, but we might help somebody get home in time to build a snowman with their kid, and that's got to count for something. Okay, now I'm rambling. Let's move on.

In the spirit of better productivity, I want to share six tips loosely based on the "Take Back Your Life!" strategythat I implement regularly to create a healthy inbox.

Step One: Commit

If you're going to clean out your inbox — and I mean give it an honest-to-goodness cleaning — you have to commit the time. Probably on a weekend. I KNOW. That flies in the face of every productivity rule in the book, but trust me when I say this is a necessary evil. 

If you have 1,000 e-mail to go through, I'd block off 1-2 hours. 2,000 e-mail? 2-3. You get the picture. If you have more than 10,000? Cancel your plans.

Step Two: Plan

Once you have committed yourself to this Herculean task, you need to come up with a system for filing your e-mail. Personally, I create folders for each of my main clients, then create subfolders named after projects. Above all else, these folders must be established before you dive in.

Step Three: Delete

Now comes the fun part: deleting the obvious junk. The quickest way to remove useless e-mail is to group by sender. You will be amazed at how many newsletters you subscribe to, but never read. I'm not kidding when I say you wouldn't miss 90 percent of your e-mail if it disappeared overnight. Grouping is a quick way to identify what needs to go. Believe me, you'll know.

Step Four: Critique

The one point I want to stress during this step is do not be afraid. Really give the e-mail a critical eye. Chances are high that if it's older than two weeks and you haven't referred to it in a span of two weeks, you can delete it. Go ahead. Click the 'delete' button. There. Don't you feel better? Under no circumstances do I want you to keep it because you "might need it someday." That is why inboxes are overflowing and IT departments are pulling out their hair. Of course, if it's a fit for one of those folders you created, move it! At least it's out of your inbox. If there is an implied action, leave it. We'll cover those in step five.

Step Five: Act

Now that the e-mail that must be deleted is gone (you're amazed at just how much junk you had in your inbox, aren't you?) you're left with the mail that contains an action, whether that be a response to your client, or an article that needs writing. What you do with these is up to you, but I like to keep a list of what I need to do, and I try not to get ahead of myself by peeking to see what e-mail has come through while I'm acting on another. That's a surefire way to get behind. (Try to ignore those red exclamation marks.  At this point, they're starting to resemble the boy who cried "Wolf!".) Again. I try not to do anything else until that mini-project is done, and that includes checking my e-mail.

Step Six: Repeat

The kicker, here, is that this isn't a one-time deal. In order to keep your inbox spotless, you have to set aside time on a regular basis — daily, weekly, monthly — to go through the incoming e-mail and either act on it, file it, or delete it. I try to do it daily, but that rarely works. I admit that I need to get better about my e-mail hygiene. Find a schedule that works well for you, and stick to it.

***

I am a firm believer that e-mail should function less as a way to correspond at lightning speed, and more as a way to deliver value to the people on the other end.  They are much happier when you send them a completed project than they are with a myriad of questions. When we fall into rapid-fire e-mail habits, everybody loses.

Therefore, imagine every e-mail you write is a handwritten letter. The care in which you draft the copy should spur others into a desired action without them feeling the need to follow up with more questions. That's a prescription for more e-mail.

Finally, pretend that every e-mail in your inbox is an actual letter cluttering your desk.

What kind of state of mind would you be in if you came to work every day to find your workspace overflowing with letters?

You're probably so used to a hectic inbox that you have no idea what it feels like to have an organized central point of command that allows you to actually get work done.

I suggest you try it.

There may not be a book premise more ridiculous than one involving super smart vines with the ability to perfectly mimic a chirping cell phone, for instance, in order to lure unsuspecting adventure hunters to their gory deaths. But try reading this book two weeks after a newborn arrives on little to no sleep, and then tell me how ridiculous it sounds.

Terrifyingly ridiculous, that's how.

Scott Smith's The Ruins tells the story of a group of young adults on vacation in Mexico who follow a German man they've recently become acquainted with into the jungle to help find his brother who was supposed to meet a woman on an architectural dig, but failed to return.

Armed with only limited food, some hard liquor, and their wits, they soon find themselves terribly unprepared to face the most terrifying literary situation I've ever read (and I've read Gerald's Game.) And, as any group of well-fed, privileged human beings would do when faced with scorching heat and maniacal foliage, this one deteriorates quickly, but not in a way you would readily imagine, or else you would be writing horror novels.

I won't go into great detail in case you want to scare yourself silly, but a large chunk of the survival situation involves one character's hands-on quest to find the sickness that has invaded his body.

If I have not yet completely scared you away from reading this book, here are a couple things that will enhance your experience:

1. Only read in the daytime.

2. Make sure you have had ample sleep (i.e. wait until your kids have gotten past the newborn stage.)

3. Remember it's just a book.

But I suppose if you're into reading horror novels, the horror is the best part, and this book certainly delivers. 

One year ago today I started writing this blog without a firm idea of where it was headed. 

And you know what?

I still don't.

The only thing I can say, with certainty, is that I'm not famous.

But I can say some other things with certainty. 

This blog: