In this clip from Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer comes upon Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquette celebrating Julia’s “Last f***able day.” It’s meant to skewer Hollywood but yeah, it’s a a mirror of our culture at large. Since it’s about all of us let’s toast and chug the melted ice cream, ladies!
LOVE this.
For those engaged in the conversation about social change through culture change or political change here’s your answer. Do you want to listen to a bunch of males mutter about what they will think about doing for you if you put them in office or do you want to watch this and share with your friends and heighten awareness of the unspoken belief systems that keep women down.
Art is a way forward!
Yes, we need political change and let’s work for that but also as important, perhaps more important let’s prime the culture for change with smart commentary like this.
Thanks for the great conversation about digital storytelling earlier at #ChiCounts. Here’s the Storify. In a world of fewer media gatekeepers, good information from nonprofits and causes is in demand. You now have all the tools to tell your stories well to your very specific audience and to amplify your reach. But what stories should you tell? It’s all about figuring out where you fit in your news ecosystem – whether its geographical or knowledge based — and creating a system for storytelling
Sally Duros is a social journalist and digital storyteller. Connect with her on Google+ and twitter at saduros.
OK. I have a question for you wise ones particularly you moms and dads and social media wizards. I’d really like to hear from you teens out there. I have a few resources in mind, but I need your thoughts and inspired suggestions.
We’ll call this a hypothetical.
Say you are a mom of a 16 year old girl. Say your daughter is very bright and beautiful and going to one of the most prestigious gifted high schools in her town. Say she has fallen in with a crowd that thinks the game “F**K, Marry or Kill” is Fun, and thinks that oral sex is not really sex. She is a good student but has had stress around school performance. She has been a girl who has known her value in the world. Her family is loving and caring, but mom is going out of her mind with worry because not only does previously sweet daughter think oral sex is not sex, she and her boyfriend appear to be addicted to sexting and other sexually provocative behavior on various social media, including Facebook and Tumblr.
Mom fears this amounts to a pornography addiction. Mom has intervened stridently with daughter, boyfriend and with boyfriend’s mom – who doesn’t seem to care. Mom and daughter are locked in disagreement. Dad has been asked to intervene.
I see a few women authors are active in this world of the teen girl. Leora Tanenbaum, author of Slut, wrote this recently. Also Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out, seems very active in this sphere.
Where would you point this mom and family to for support? Also, do you know of social media “erasing” and monitoring services that could be useful? I know of a few under development. Thoughts and reax?
[media-credit id=2 align=”aligncenter” width=”660″][/media-credit]These are choice days for memes, which Wikipedia defines as
A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
In the year 2000 — when I first came across it — Craigslist was an earnest site providing a deceptively simple service — free classified ads online— that was extremely useful to most everyone. Today, Craigslist is the 9th most popular website in the United States. As much as it is loved, it is also vilified. Some blame Craigslist for newspapers’ lost profits and decimation of the revenue model for news. If only it were that simple. If Craigslist hadn’t brought free classifieds online, some other web service would have. Personally, I credit Craig Newmark and Craigslist for setting a kind and gentle tone for the Internet. For him the Internet has always been about social change.
Today Craig can be found on Twitter with nearly 39,000 followers, Facebook with more than 120,000 and on his CraigConnects site. He converses constantly with his followers, chatting about the birds and other wildlife he sees on his deck in San Francisco’s beautiful Cole Valley. Craig’s current focus focus is on craigconnects, which he says is his “initiative to link up everyone on the planet using the Internet to bear witness to good efforts and encourage the same behavior in others.”
He will be speaking at 11 a.m. today at Chicago’s TechWeek at Merchandise Mart.
Q. Do you see the pressure from social media to change the culture of businesses as leading to lasting change or a new type of organization? What would that organization look like?
A. I do see that in large organizations, those with 150 or more people or more, that’s the Dunbar number. Currently, to get ahead in a large hierarchy, you tell your boss what he or she wants to hear, and then she or he tells her or his boss what they want to hear. That means that real company knowledge and possible improvements never make it to the top. However, social media tech can be used by line workers to combine knowledge and improve business businesses. In such situations, the boss has to back this up, and that often proves difficult.
I’m currently seeing the Department of Veterans Affairs using such methods to better serve vets and also provide better return for the taxpayer dollar.
Q. 435 Digital is all about increasing the capacity of smaller and local businesses to operate efficiently online to reach their customers and grow their businesses. What kind of tools do you see developing as an alternative to traditional advertising for local business? What other services do you see emerging?
A. I like the use of social media, where friends can help friends make better product choices, and that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, Facebook, etc. Also, importantly, there are user review systems, like Amazon or Consumer Reports, which help.
The big problem is that sometimes such systems can be gamed, that’s already a problem. I feel that that might only be fixed with lots of reviewers, constant vigilance, and networks of fact-checking.
Q. You like to say trust is the new black, what are your thoughts for how local businesses can best translate the trust they have built on the ground into trust online? Services like Yelp might be part of the answer, but what else do you see?
A. I’d say that organizations just need to be straight with people in all presences, offline and online. Maximum transparency is good, within obvious limits. (There’s always stuff you can’t talk about, like customer private info.)
It helps to speak in plain language, and to get to the point, and then stop.
Q. You recently successfully launched a veteran’s initiative through craigconnects, and community building is another area that you plan to encourage under craigconnects. How do you plan to use the tools of the social web to encourage us to take more responsibility for our communities and neighborhoods. What new tools are you excited about?
A. We’re still planning that, but probably soon two areas:
networks of factchecking so that we can get trustworthy, reliable info. use of nonprofit rating services to help us select good nonprofits to help and how to find bogus ones to avoid. We’re working with GuideStar, charity Navigator, and GreatNonprofits.org.
[media-credit name=”435Digital Tribune Media” align=”aligncenter” width=”668″][/media-credit]Recently, Internet privacy concerns erupted over Facebook’s introduction of facial recognition features. Most of us have some version of this on our home photo editing systems, and many people misunderstood what Facebook was offering and how to use it. The bottom line is that only photos by your friends will suggest that you are in the photo and only you can tag the photo.
To be sure, there’s potential for abusing some technologies but the facial recognition genie is out of the bottle and it won’t be going back in. That leaves us with the question of how we will marshal this and other technologies so that they are not abused by government despots or evildoers.
[media-credit name=”435Digital Tribune Media” align=”aligncenter” width=”668″][/media-credit]Sree Sreenivasan is the Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, He blogs at Sree.net and his Twitter handle is @Sree. A contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, Sree calls himself a tech evangelist/skeptic. His lists of social media resources and tools are extensive and free. He is constantly updating updating his Facebook page, Sree Tips. Sree’s social media guide includes case studies and social media guidelines.
GREGORY HEISLER FOR TIME THE WHISTLE-BLOWERS: Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom; (left to right), Coleen Rowley, the FBI; and Sherron Watkins, Enron
Sally’s World, January 10, 2003
www.worldwit.org
Did you see that TIME Magazine chose three women as their persons of the year? Sharing the honor are Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Sherron Watkins of Enron.
On its cover TIME dubbed them “The Whisltleblowers.” In the photo, the three women look at the camera straight on, stern-faced, arms crossed, silhouettes dramatically lit, their hair framing their faces like haloes. They look annoyed, a bit like moms who’ve caught their 10-year olds throwing firecrackers at each other in the basement.
The photo portrait of this triumvirate doesn’t exactly fit the formula of what we think of as “out of the box” thinkers, but that is precisely what they are. To think out of the box is to be truly radical. It’s not simply to zig when you see a sign that says “zag,” but to blaze with a light that signals a whole new direction. It’s a risk and it’s a signal of what’s to come.
And in stepping out of the box, what did these three expose? Conflict, pure and simple. The conflict between what their organizations said they were doing and what they were REALLY doing.
I understand why TIME called them whistleblowers, but the term can be seen as, well, negative. It brings to mind other words like snitch and disgruntled. None of these women went to the press. The press went to them when their internal memos were leaked. None of them had an ax to grind. They all loved their jobs and believed in their organizations. As TIME says in its report, they are more like “the truest of the true believers.”
If not whistleblowers, then what to call them? These three “Persons of the Year” wriggled just as uncomfortably with being called heroes or role models.
Here’s a proposal: Let’s call them a harbinger.
And here’s why. Like the first robins of spring, our “Persons of the Year” are a signal of new growth to come in the cultures of our organizations.
If you read the TIME reports about what they did and why they did it, you will see that they were motivated by a desire to help their organizations to succeed and grow.
If this succeed and grow motivation sounds like a “chick” thing to you, well it has for a long time considered to be so. But since these women are a harbinger, it won’t be a “chick” thing for long.
The fact that they stood up could be a sign of an opening in our business organizations of benefit to all of us – men and women and future generations of employees. If we look beyond the headlines and read the subtext, this story is about how people – men and women alike – are driven to connect with each other in mutually enhancing relationships – inside and outside of organization.
It’s an opening that’s been a long time coming and was effectively advanced by Jean Baker Miller in her book, Toward a New Psychology of Women. Penned in 1976 at a time of dramatic change for women, this work is, in my layperson’s opinion, a work of remarkable clarity and brilliance.
Baker-Miller recognized that, socially, women through their activities carry human essentials that are not valued. Of these, the most important woman’s life activity is participating in growth fostering relationships – the process of acting in relationship with another person so that person can develop and grow.
This is the everyday stuff of rising children, and it is often described as nurturing or mothering. But these are gender-based words that negate the fact that all people – men and women alike -want to participate in growth-fostering relationships. Baker-Miller and her colleagues call this mutual psychological development and they say that it is essential to all of life and functioning.
So where do our whistleblowers/harbingers fit into this?
These three were so driven to foster growth within their organizations that they risked the conflict to make the growth happen.
Because women are usually subordinates, they do not actively engage in conflict with their dominants – their bosses. When the conflict is forced underground, it becomes covert, distorted and saturated with “destructive force.” But conflict doesn’t have to be that way, and by it’s nature it is not.
Conflict is actually good for us. Entered into with integrity, respect, confidence and hope, conflict is the source of all growth. “The infant would never grow if it interacted with a mirror image of itself,” Baker-Miller writes. “Growth requires engagement with difference and with people embodying the difference.”
28 years ago in her book, Baker-Miller called on women to reclaim conflict.
That is exactly what the ladies of the harbinger have done.
Their actions show that we have learned at least that much – that some conflict is necessary if we are to grow. Twenty years ago, these three would have had neither the position nor the means to even ponder a conflict. The fact that they stepped forward is a very good sign.
It’s not the end of the road but a beginning. For a long time, many of us have questioned the values of our institutions. We have looked for evolution to a more responsive organization that is more tolerant of authenticity. There’s been a lot of dissatisfaction but few guideposts to the next destination. Many of us have wondered how we have gotten into this mess and how we will get out of it.
“One adopts measures in keeping with his past training–and the very soundness of this training may lead him to adopt the wrong measures. People may be unfitted by being fit in an unfit fitness,” said the noted theorist of rhetoric, Kenneth Burke, who Baker-Miller quotes in her book.
That’s good for a giggle and it’s also true. Our three harbingers have pushed back against the “unfit fitness.”
With a little luck, they have cleared a path and planted a tiny seed for a new type of organization, one that is geared toward engendering authenticity and relationships of mutual growth.
And one that will allow us to have a good, clean fight when we need to.
Sally’s World, October 2002
www.worldwit.org
By SALLY DUROS
I like to walk around in a bookstore and look at the new books and the bestsellers and browse the various sections. I like to see how and where the various types of books are shelved and what the latest trends are in size and design and color.
I’ll often just grab a bunch of books with intriguing titles and sit down. Thumbing through them, I’ll jot down any new catch phrases that I spot in a little notepad I obsessively carry with me at all times. Yes, I am the one who hogs the table at your Borders Books Cafe sipping one cup of coffee for hours, although as a good citizen I do return the books to their shelving section. People who work in bookstores don’t get paid enough to have to pick up after me. I am also hedging a bet with the fates in case some day a bookstore café becomes my place of employment.
This bookstore ritual of mine is one way in which I take the temperature of the times. From these visits, I can tell a lot about our collective mental health, about what is worrying us and about how we intend to fix whatever ails us.
On my last visit, one thing I noticed is that Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men about George Bush and his business associates has for some time now been topping the New York Times Best Sellers Chart for Business Books. The release of Moore’s book was delayed last year around 9/11, and Moore was circulating an angry email at that time charging censorship. Whatever you think of Moore’s politics, he sure knows how to push his thumb into the center of the bruise and maintain pressure with great deliberation and zeal. This one has impeccable timing. Shipping this book as the Enron scandal unfolded was serendipitous genius.
Perhaps because of my somewhat checkered, on and off illustrious career, and perhaps because I am a business writer, I am often drawn to business self-help books. These books are a kind of guilty pleasure. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I actually READ them.
You know the type. There’s usually a man or woman pictured on the red glossy dust jacket, body language denoting power, arms crossed, head tilted in challenge. The title promises to solve your burning career question of the day. You know, something like: “HOW TO AVOID BECOMING THE MAIN COURSE: Power lunching tips from 50
prosecuting attorneys.”
I am happy to report that my latest visit to this section cheered me right up. Usually these books are sold by some kind of game metaphor, or hunting metaphor or crushing-the-beer-can metaphor. You know, “You – snake, Me -crocodile – UGGH!” For a long time, there was a “Be Bad, Break the Rules and Get Ahead” metaphor. And this was especially popular among books geared toward women.
I really dislike these books because they discount the importance of culture, promote image above true values, and urge women to ignore their gut instincts. The 90s gave rise to corporate cultures of corruption and greed where office politics ruled, where so many of the behaviors urged in “Be Bad and Break the Rules” would actually maintain the status quo. I believe we have to hold true to what is right, push back and be heard if we are going to build businesses that are good workplaces for all of us.
I was cheered this last visit to the self help section because although one or two of these titles seem to sell into perpetuity, the wellspring for new books on this theme is drying up. Once again, it is Enron and the ensuing corporate scandals that have slain the “Be Bad” cliché.
All I can say is “Thank You, Sherron Watkins!” The Enron VP didn’t exactly leap, but rather was pushed, into the public spotlight. But still, she did a great favor for all people in business, but especially women. She was Brave and she told the Truth.
To fly so high at Enron, Watkins had to possess political savvy, superior intelligence and a tough gut. She knew what rules to break and what rules to bend. But in the end, what is remarkable is what she didn’t do: She did not remain silent. She spoke up – quietly – in a culture that above all valued glad-handing and backslapping and the rogue mentality (wink! wink!). The CEO and Chairman and top management team at the Crooked E didn’t listen. But the world did.
I also took the time for a second cup of coffee and to read “The Greed Cycle,” an article by John Cassidy in the Sept. 23 New Yorker that talks about how the “shareholder value movement” encouraged our corporations to go crazy. It seems we were so busy building shareholder value that we lost sight of what was valuable in our businesses and what was valuable in our selves.
So “Ta! Ta!” to books with titles that pair “Bad” and “Business.” And so long to business philosophy books that endorse image over substance. Instead I see an upward trend in titles using the words “brave” and “authentic” and gasp! “honest.”
Maybe we will all start learning things worth knowing again. Like how to develop products that meet a real need. How to sell these products to customers. And how to make those customers so happy that we ALL make a profit! Maybe we will get focused
on making an honest living again!
So my visit to the bookstore tells me that we still need time to recover, but I am optimistic. The business bestsellers tell us we are well on our way.
Sally Duros is a writer, editor, producer and communications consultant.
