eastwikkers

A Simple Deception

Another deception is getting play in this New York Times article (as noted in GMSV today). The problem this time is with Wikipedia. In short, a respected editor who used the name Essjay and was supposedly a tenured professor of religion at a private university and an expert in canon law turns out to be a 24-year-old who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and apparently has no relevant degree.

Most curious, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales initially defended Essjay, accepting the editor’s claim that he’d hidden his identity to protect himself from reprisals for mediating disputes between Wikipedia contributors. According to the NYT article, Wales also stated that the editor “is now, and has always been, an excellent editor with an exemplary track record.” Wales later reversed himself saying that his “past support of Essjay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on,” which really doesn’t at all explain his initial defense or his reversal.

Protecting ourselves by hiding our identity can sometimes be a smart thing to do, and anonymity is often debated in PR. But anonymity is not the same as deception. If I reveal I’ve chosen not to disclose my identity, then it’s up to readers to choose whether or not to take me as credible. I haven’t deceived anyone. Wikipedia’s Essjay lied about his credentials, pretending to have experiences he never had in order to assume a position of authority. The difference is huge, and it’s hard to see what part of this Wales didn’t get immediately.

And what about lying about one’s identity for career advancement? George Eliot? I don’t think so. Actually it’s closer to the fraud perpetrated by Stephen Glass. Essjay was not writing fiction. He was pretending to be an authority on religion, and he used that authority to mediate arguments. Even if Essjay is as knowledgeable about religion as a tenured professor, his readers should have known the truth about what that knowledge was based on.

This deception sits at the heart of social media and our online interactions. How can we ever know that a person or company we encounter on the Internet is honestly represented?  Initially, we can’t. In the offline world, eye contact, a handshake, a feeling we get when we enter a building all help, but even with these, we are often deceived. As more and more of our lives are conducted online, we’ll need to develop new ways of sensing deception, whether through new technology or through social media mechanisms that allow us to get feedback from the crowd – some of these are already emerging (though how can we be sure they are legit?).

The ramifications for PR are clear. Our weapons against a heightened fear of being deceived – and its consequence, cynicism – are more transparency and less hype, a lesson that needs to be passed on to clients as well.

What Fools These Mortals Be

In the Real Thing, Seth Godin discusses authenticity and concludes:

“Consumers are begging to be sold on the authentic. The easiest way to do that, of course, is to be authentic. And yet, ever since they replaced the sugar in Coke with corn syrup, who knows any more... Being inauthentic is tricky, unpredictable and often wrong. But it also works.

The fact is, most of the people want to be fooled, just about all of the time.”

While I reacted angrily to this, I also know there’s truth there. Still, it’s at odds with the evolution of the Internet -- with the rise of social media and the propensity for exposing the inauthentic. So maybe the problem is with the words “most” and “just about all.” Maybe it should be “a lot” of people and “a lot of the time.” Which still leaves a lot of people using a lot of their time to search for and even demand authenticity.

And then there’s John Murrell at GMSV writing on Viacom’s plan to release copyrighted content on Joost and reassuring us that: “The Internet will never become television -- the television will become the Internet.” Why? Perhaps because the Internet is where we go to break down the machinery used to fool us.

Writes Murrell: “The reason YouTube, and back in the day, Napster, have become popular, is because they give the people what they want. The big media companies are not giving the people what they want: they’re giving them what they, the companies, think they should have. People will laugh at Google and YouTube thinking that this is a big letdown for them and a huge boost for Joost, and in the short term they’re right. I still think that Viacom and others are fighting a battle that cannot be won. The Internet will never become television -- the television will become the Internet.”

But this is only partly true too. More likely, the Internet and television will merge into a completely new beast where there will continue to be plenty of opportunities to be duped, stupefied, and generally fooled by corporate-, government-, and individual-generated content, and as many opportunities or more to engage in wholly authentic conversations on a grand scale. (We’ve always had the ability to have conversations on a local scale and have meetings, socials, and conferences that seek out the authentic.) The truth is, a lot of people are willing to watch just about anything in order to avoid doing anything (especially after a long day at an exhausting or unfulfilling job with little to come home to) and are more than willing to be spoon-fed whatever someone else creates for them, including a comforting veneer of authenticity from celebrities, politicians, and talking-head experts. And this is unlikely to change until there are fundamental economic changes that are nowhere in sight.

As we continue to increase opportunities for authentic conversations, we will get more participation from those who would not or could not participate in other forms. Greater participation will result in more value, and the general volume of these conversations will grow louder and more influential (if they don’t degenerate into shrill attacks designed to create controversy and more ad revenue). This is all great but it's not the whole story.

So what happens when the youngest children today have the choice of spending their entire lives engaged in authentic conversations or accepting whatever is fed to them, wherever it comes from? Watching my children and their elementary school peers use social media sites to get more information about their favorite Japanese anime, I suspect that they, just as we, will do both, at times demanding authenticity and truth, at other times absorbing, and even enjoying, the experiences that others create -- whether they are authentic or not.

JetBlue owns up

When was the last time you got an unsolicited apology from a company you do business with? I received a stunning e-mail yesterday from JetBlue Airways that demonstrates the kind of candor, clear acceptance of responsibility, and authenticity missing from so much business communications today. Here’s an excerpt:

"Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week."

The letter is signed by JetBlue founder and CEO David Neeleman, and also appears on JetBlue’s web site on Neeleman’s "flight log."

Even more impressive is that the company has outlined plans to fix the problems it has acknowledged, with a Customer Bill of Rights.

After disparaging them for their behavior during the snowstorm, I’m back in JetBlue’s camp.