aerial view of life and personal brands

November 26th, 2009 by David Miller - writing

Sky finally clear after 5 days of rain. Feeling like I need to get up into the mountains for some kind of aerial view of life, a descriptive phrase I one heard applied to literature. Mental health-wise it seems to help looking at places from far enough away that you can see the cars and people moving down below, the dust rising, but not hear anything. For some reason it’s easier afterward to walk down there and join everyone again.

Some strange, ill-defined emotions right now. Last night I wrote up interview questions for Patagonia ambassador Liz Clark, who is currently sailing around the world on global surf mission. As I came up with the questions (Current # of days at sea? Best surf conditions scored?) I felt momentarily ‘connected.’ Part of it was the notion that she would be reading these questions and answering them, but it went beyond that. I imagined both of us off on these distinct missions essentially charging something that almost nobody else was and leaving behind friends and family to do it. It seemed  ‘poetic,’ always a tipoff that something is wrong with your thinking. I took my new coffee cup (remembering a detail from Liz Clark’s story–she’d learned how to sharpen a knife on the bottom of a mug),  filled it with Malbec, then walked through Barrio Arrayanes to our plot of land on the other side of the arroyo.

Thinking about this more today,  I realize how last night’s imaginings are examples of the most idiotic kind of thinking, the most deceptive emotions: I don’t know Liz. I have never met her. And while I super admire what she’s doing, I really have no idea what she’s like besides what I’ve read from her in Surfer’s Journal. And yet I was associating my own vision with her, and worse, not even her as a person in real-life, but with my own mental construct of her persona or brand.

It’s human nature to look for symbols. It’s also human nature to want to emulate people you admire. You could argue that people emulating or imitating other people they don’t actually know (such as celebrities) has been around as long as mass media.

But as we continue accelerating into the era of personal brands I wonder if the default mode for communication won’t devolve into unconsciously reducing all people to personas for quick and easy brand association / alignment  / identification.

Which leads me to other questions:

If  people’s real-selves aren’t as smart or cool or well-intentioned or relevant as what they believe the overall ‘perception’ of their brands to be, how does that affect the way they communicate or associate with people in the real world? Do they just start hiding behind their hyper personal identities and/or walk around as their personae?

Then there’s this troubling thought: Is categorizing and making spontaneous brands out of strangers we see in the street already our default mode of thinking, something that predates branding as a marketing concept, going back to survival instincts, rapidly assessing someone as a potential threat?

Finally: If you lived a life 100% free of internet  / computer and lived in a small town where you knew everyone, would you see people as more ‘individual’ and less symbolically?

I would really appreciate your insights on this while I go look for a path up Cerro Piltriquitron.

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  • http://www.1worldimages.com Bob Berwyn

    Your essay made me think about why I balk whenever my editors ask me to do a “profile” on an “interesting” local for the Summit Daily. It’s not that I don’t think that they’re deserving of some attention or press. Basically, I’m leery of describing someone on a short interview. I feel like I can never really do an accurate piece about someone without spending days/weeks … even months, getting to know them.

    I’m thinking of books by John McPhee (like Basin and Range) where he spends days and weeks, over the course of a year or more, with geologists in the field, and then describes them and their work in the context of the bigger story. It seems to fit, rather than being just a one-off.

    I know people love to read about other people, but I always feel like it’s a kind of voyeuristic, vicarious interest, and I dislike feeding into that.

    If there’s someone who has done something interesting, I don’t have a problem writing about their deeds and about that person, but I don’t want to give readers the impression that I “know” someone, based on a short meeting in a coffee shop.

  • David Miller

    Thanks for the comments Bob, and happy Thanksgiving, btw.

    My take is this: I love portraits of people, and feel like they can be done in a way (thinking of Gay Talese’s portraits, also Truman Capote’s) that makes transparent the narrator’s relationship (or lack thereof) with the subject. . . in the end just giving a kind of fly on the wall perspective so that the reader can make up his / her own conclusions about the person.

    It goes without saying that yes, the writers still manipulate the perspective given and the way they portray / frame the scenes, but there always has to be some kind of medium to tell a story, and that medium is always constrained by the author’s own viewpoints / edits.

    This begin said, I hear you about John McPhee and others (Barry Lopez comes to mind) who invest whole chunks of their lives getting to know places and people before writing about them. Certainly a lot of travel writing is the antithesis of this.

    I think though the question I was trying to raise overall is this: how is computer mediated communication, specifically the newest social media and marketing influenced trend of personal branding, leading people not only to write, but actually think differently?

  • http://angryredhead.wordpress.com Candice

    I think social media/personal branding has actually encouraged me to face who I really am (cliche, really). Seeing how fearless others are, and how passionate people can be, has really encouraged me to reveal my own personality and to start thinking about things differently. This whole process caused a ton of inner turmoil and self-doubt though, and I realize I have a long way to go before I’ve solidified my “presence”…but I feel like I’m learning tons.

  • http://lonelygirltravels.com Lauren Quinn

    Man, this is some deep shit. :)

    Undergrad psychology classes tell us that we all create personas to a certain extent, and I think you’re right in the assertion that personal brands are a hyper extension of that. I think you see it most pronounced in celebrities and politicians. The outer personality, more than the work of the person itself, becomes the selling point, what people are drawn to. I think personal branding within social media is an even more extreme, encapsulated version of this–whittled down, often, to 140 characters.

    Of course, this is very limiting and narrow. You lose the subtle nuances of character, the complexities: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” I imagine you’d lose a lot of freedom to explore yourself and the world around you if you were constantly wondering, as we’re told by some to do, how what we’re saying relates back to our personal brand.

    Our world is constantly getting reduced to smaller, more easily digestible and marketable tidbits. People like me have been moaning and fretting about this for decades. The world seems to still go on though, and a small (albeit decreasing) number of venues for multi-dimensional discussions like these endure. I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s worrisome. But definitely important stuff to keep in mind as one delves into the all-consuming world of personal branding, social media, marketing, etc. Thanks for bringing this up; it’ll definitely be kicking around in the back of my brain for awhile (the part behind the persona).