Ina Disguise's Blog: New blog, page 89

Testing marketing theory

Since I published Best Scandal Ever in May 2013, I have been rather lazily testing marketing theories I learned in Second Life.  So far so good, I have learned a lot from doing very little, and now have a large variety of outlets for my little niche.  I have spent little, and done a lot.

A few months back a group of fashion graduates tweeted out that they required $25,000 to produce four handbags.  I asked why they would need this amount of money?  They replied that this was to produce four prototypes and market themselves.  I think I have already demonstrated that this is nonsense.  If your product is good, you do not need the ridiculous amount of capital suggested on the average course, and you do not need a half million a year to promote to the luxury market.

Now you could tell me that since I am still a fledgling author and artist at this point, that this is extremely presumptious of me, that time is money, and had I acquired $25,000 I would have a viable business, staff and be moderately famous as an author by now.  I would reply to you that this would lead to a shoddy product, many complaints and undue pressure to produce a product that would make me ultimately unhappy.

I see too many thirty and forty somethings who have invested heavily in what they imagined was the perfect life, only to find they were unhappy and mediocre as a result.  I used to be a super fast achiever, not unlike the lightening fast Mr Wolfe, who is so speedy that I would challenge the paciest gamer online to outmove him at self promotion, but since the bereavements and enforced leisure period, my strategic streak has come to the fore and I am disinterested in putting out crap. If it isn’t meaningful, it isn’t worth doing. Ask the millionaire accountant who took up painting the fences at the Airds Hotel in Port Appin after a weekend away in the 1980s, and he will tell you much the same thing.

When starting from scratch, you have two options online, either you believe the hype and invest in vanity advertising in your chosen interest area, a majorly growing market that it would be wise to invest in as a shareholder, if not as an advertiser;  or you invest time.  After a little trial and error, my belief so far is that the latter is far more useful, and gives you time to sharpen your game.  If you are any good, the market will come to you.  There are obvious caveats to this, but generally speaking, this theory has been borne out by experience so far.  A personal approach is also very worthwhile.  It is insufficient to present the product as good, now you have to explain why and what it is for.

This year, I am taking a micromanagement approach to expanding my tiny niche, and there will be a few surprises in the form of writing, gaming, artwork.  I will report back on this date next year as to how well this has worked out, but I suspect that, as I have seen so far, Second Life is an excellent grounding in online marketing.  I may try some additional tweaks, but this is a ground up project, requiring a patient and steady approach.  If I am correct, I will have made significant progress by this date next year, and all it will have cost me is time and a minimal advertising budget.

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Advice for carers

There is a shortage of advice for carers, particularly those, like me, who did not start out in life with the idea that we would be spending the best years of our lives stuck in the house with an ill person, or people in my case.  I will give you a short history before I continue.

I finished up with postgraduate study in 2003, as by this time my father was bedridden and my mother, despite having the help she was entitled to, was struggling.  I continued to work as many hours as I could, some jobs being completed on the way home from other jobs, and found various inventive ways of fitting in as much work as I possibly could around providing support for her in the form of looking after her property and lifting my father when necessary. This still meant that I had to work in temporary, hence easily ditchable employment. My mother would not admit that she required help, and so the siblings found it quite easy to belittle my efforts alongside providing no help.  Just before she succumbed to a stroke I was working full time as a banking consultant, part time as a government research interviewer, and doing some corporate research during mealtimes.  A total of about 17 hours a day, six days a week, the remaining time being spent on maintaining the house and gardens and letting her get out.

My father became steadily worse over the five years between 2002 and 2007, and it was impossible to take the reins due to the fact that my mother was extremely difficult before her stroke.  When it became apparent that she had a heart problem, I spent two years arguing with her as I tried to tell her to go to the doctor.  It was obvious that she was not going to take this advice, and again the siblings ignored my entreaties to invite her to their house to give her a break, or advise her to go to the doctor as requested.  Therefore it became pointless to speak to them at all, since it was clear that they were not prepared for their parents dotage, nor willing to listen to me at all. I have never had much of a relationship with them, since my unexpected arrival over a decade after they thought the family was complete, came as a bit of a shock to them, so it was no great loss.  Their subsequent behaviour has been so poor that I frequently have cause to think I would be better off with no siblings at all.  These are middle class, respectable people who are in late middle age, so this came as quite a shock to me, never mind anyone else.

There is no legal or supportive body to go to if you are in this position.  I have been told by several care homes that I worked in on a temporary basis whilst trying to help my mother, that it is entirely normal for the absent children to attack the unfortunate carer, and there is no help for you on this basis at all.  You have the responsibility, you have the loss of your own life, and you have the daily drama of caring for your relative.  The last thing you need is to be attacked by your own family.  Having been through a particularly bad example of it, I can tell you that the only backup you are likely to receive in the face of such attacks is to be told, after investigation that you are off the hook.  You are basically at the mercy of adults who are functioning as particularly nasty children.

My advice is to opt out completely.  Despite what you may be told, there is no reason why you should make yourself available to be attacked.  My course of action was to ensure that I was notified of the impending visits in order to avoid them.  For the first few years of looking after my mother, I simply avoided the house during these visits.  Recently, I have been more inclined to guard my belongings, and ensure that my mother is not left alone as she tends to forget what she has been told within a few minutes.  I get no time off at all.  The vulture-siblings are not aware that she rarely gets through a night without needing something, and they have chosen to be so unhelpful and vicious that I am trapped in the house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is preferable to accepting help from a third party, with associated worry garnered from years of my eldest sister seeing any third party involvement being an opportunity to accuse me of things I have not done.

Considering the amount that each carer saves the taxpayer, in the course of their poorly paid excuse for a life, and the associated knowledge of the person being cared for, who is almost always receiving far better attention than they would in the conveyor belt care home system, I find this lack of support astonishing.  Yes, there are courses available, should you need them, to help you react correctly to the situations with the person being cared for, there are day care facilities provided by local bodies where you can drop off your patient, should they agree to it, but nobody cares if you are persistently victimised by your own family.  Nobody cares that your life has been destroyed, and nobody cares about your privacy.  You can, if you do not care about privacy, get help from a third party with the direct daily activity of caring, but in my position, with two vicious sisters, this is not at all helpful.  I have learned over the years to either take my mother with me, when I do need to go somewhere, or schedule it at times when it is either impossible or unnecessary to inform them at all.  All this to protect my mother and her assets from attack by her own family.

You will find that your house becomes messy very quickly indeed.  It is amazing how much mess one tiny woman can generate.  Your family may also attack you on this basis, especially if you lack the funds or inclination to redecorate frequently.  Personally, I spent several years decorating whilst caring for my parents and neighbour, and became a familiar figure, covered in paint, in my local area as I was rarely out of my painting clothes.  I am about to have to start again, as this house is large and I keep it on a five year cycle.  As long as you enjoy this process, it is something you can do whilst your patient is sleeping or watching TV nearby.

You will find yourself crying a lot, particularly if you are female and are looking at a life with no children or opportunities to go out.  This means that you cannot even hope that a gallant gentleman will save you from destitution in your dotage, so you have a bleak old age to look forward to, whilst your selfish relatives roll around in the money they were able to make by being selfish.  The only good part about this element is that you are forced to be inventive.  Towards the end of the period of my being able to work, I worked from home to avoid claiming the benefits I was entitled to.  This is considerably easier to achieve than it used to be, thanks to the internet, but particularly with a progressive illness, you will have to give this up eventually in favour of something that you can either do whilst providing care, or nothing at all.  Be prepared for some dark moments as you realise your hope of the life you previously worked for is diminishing with time.

As your patient’s illness progresses, it will become increasingly difficult to keep up with even the simple things that you were able to easily cope with, so it is wise to be extremely mean as you may have to draft in a gardener or painter that you did not need to begin with.  The time you spend in a chair with your patient is still valuable to them.  If you are fortunate, you will have some means of utilising this comfort companionship.  Artwork is particularly good for the elderly generally, so if you can find some creative spark, especially craft related since you can get them to help, this is a good way of reducing your inevitable feelings of helplessness and loneliness.  Again, being online, you can find various places to dispose of what you have made once you have come up with a product.  Cooking may be your thing, but make sure you have an audience to consume what you have made if this is the case.

There are some examples of fairly high powered people who are in exactly the same position as you, and who have admitted that caring is the hardest thing they have ever done.  You have to be tough and self aware to pull off the whole caring thing, and being a nice gentle person will not cut it when the person you are looking after becomes difficult.

Some days are horrific, and you will feel like the worst person in the world because you did not cope as well as you should have.  You are a person too, so it is important to remember that the scummy person criticising you has no idea what you are going through, or that nobody becomes an angel at age 70.  My elderly best friend was one of the most evil, fun people I have ever encountered.  She would have been fun at 30, and she was fun at 89.

There are times when your patient will start a fight out of boredom and frustration, and it is in the nature of dementia, in particular, that they will play people off against one another for sheer spite.  It is in your interests to remain out of it, for your own sanity as well as ensuring that your patient does not inadvertently catch themselves in the crossfire.  There are very few cases in which carehomes are the best option, so even if you have a bad month, it does not make you a bad person.  Two years ago, my mother did not let me sleep for more than two hours for four months.  It was appalling, but we got through it, just as we got through her stroke, the death of her husband and brother, and the dishonest and despicable behaviour of her children.

Finally, pat yourself on the back for your commitment despite all this.  You are probably stupid for being so softhearted and allowing everyone to take advantage of you. Congrats for having what it takes to tolerate the bullshit that goes with it.

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Make it happen

Let me tell you a story, today, about my sister.  Not the off-the-planet crazy one, but her sidekick, the drunk.  She is fifty five years old, and has nothing positive to contribute to the world.  If asked about any subject at all, she becomes aggressive and defensive, and will not lift a finger for anyone unless there is a self-serving reason for doing so.

Many years ago, when I was still a child, she told me to ‘get as much as I could’ because I wasn’t in the will, as it was made in 1964.  Little did she know, that neither was she.  My father took pains to tell me that his money had been amassed purely for my mother’s benefit, and that she was to have as much fun as possible.  The year that my sister told me this, my mother told me that I was ‘to look after her once they were gone, as she wouldn’t be able to cope.’  And so the world turns.  The selfless must care for the selfish.

Several years later, and this particular sister was telling me that I could not possibly understand her dilemmas on life, as ‘my life changes every day.’  This is true, if I want to change something, I do not tend to see obstacles in the way of my changing it.  It may take a long time, or, as in the case of Wolfe, be improbable, but nothing is out of reach as far as I am concerned, even now. (in case he drops in on one of his ina-binges, this aside does not relate to meeting him in person as I would regard this as a waste of my time)

My sister has been in a constant rut since she was fifteen years old.  She will do almost anything to avoid thinking for herself, and seems to believe that her rut is not only righteous, but a source of comfort.  She is one of the unhappiest people I have ever met, despite having amassed quite a bit of money by staying in stable but mind numbing jobs which require a plodding non-initiative based approach.  In short, the drunk is a screaming, poisonous bore.

This stability, and the effects of long term drinking, has led to her becoming a bitter, vindictive and malicious person who imposes her very narrow view of the world on anyone she perceives as weaker than herself.  In the company of the narcissist serial bully, she is extremely dangerous, since she believes whatever she hears from the stronger personality, and carries out her deranged instructions.  One of their many complaints about me began with ‘my elderly mother is extremely well looked after.’  This as they dumped my unwell mother back at our home and called in a complaint implying that my eldest sister’s inability to look after her was all my fault and that I should somehow be punished.

The lack of rationality aside, these women are both extremely unhappy, despite having comfortable and unrestricted lives.  When I compare them with my own extremely constricted situation and frequent hardships whilst looking after my mother, I wonder why their freedom seems to go with such intense unhappiness that they must spend quite so much of their time inventing fantasy complaints about the life of my mother and I.  Considering this liberty and affluence, I fear having nothing to strive for.  Would it turn me into a bitter, grasping and nasty waste of space, clawing at the air in a deranged search for meaning in my life?

This week, I suggested to her that she might be happier moving away from the rest of the family and getting a life of her own.  Her immediate reaction to this is likely to be that I am being manipulative.  How she could manage to find manipulation in my stating clearly that this is what she should do, to free herself of the influence of the very spoilt and vindictive eldest sister, with the worry and spite that goes with it, I do not know, but I am entirely confident that she will complain to anyone that will listen that I have suggested that she simply go and seek happiness elsewhere instead of interfering with our lives for the benefit of nobody.

The likely outcome is that nobody will challenge this stupidity, and she will remain a thorn in our side, stopping us from doing anything remotely pleasant, for my mother’s remaining years.  This is extremely tiresome.  Her rut is now gaping wide enough for us all to fall into it.

If you are unhappy, you affect everyone.  Make it happen.

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Followers, likes, and fans

Recently on Twitter, I have found more people who follow you, wait until you follow back and then quietly unfollow.  They usually do this in the first week, so clearly this is a policy they have adopted to grow their following.  Given that the vast majority are muted, since they are not interested in my product, and I am not particularly interested in theirs, you would think they would content themselves with sitting quietly on the list, but no, apparently this is not enough and they require a list of mute followers who they do not themselves follow.

When first on twitter, this was mainly 17 year olds, with a list of four word sentences about nothing in particular, who seemed to require validation in the form of 20,000 or so followers not listening to anything they say.  Recently I have noticed, however that more and more middle aged people are doing the same thing. When did we all become so vain and facile that we relied on fake followers and likes for an ego salve every day, whether interested or not?

Now in the case of someone trying to build a following or business empire such as that of David Wolfe, I can see why it would be beneficial to have a massive following of superficially disinterested people.  The more followers or likers of his page, the more important he appears to be, and the more feedback he gets from his many posts.  Whether this feedback actually does him any good long term is really up to him. I am sure that the numbers are considered to be useful indicators of popularity with the same types of interest groups as lost their money in the dot com boom of the late 90s – people who do not really understand how the internet functions.

My guess is that they are mostly floating fans of the pithy memes and few of them will actually turn out to be customers.  Experience so far tells me that engagement has no relationship at all with followers or likes.  I have around fifteen thousand readers, and a few thousand people who want to see artwork,  and you would never guess from my figures on social media or individual sites.  I am considered to be providing good blog posts, although people rarely comment.

When I examine my own behaviour, I can see why this would be the case.  If I am interested in something, I do not need to click like to be reminded that I am interested.  The only things I click like on are either things I wish to be seen to be interested in, or reciprocal likes with someone who has requested that I like their page. I would not dream of clicking like on ebay, for example, although I spend a great deal of time and money with ebay.  It is a kind of extension of tattoos or branded tee shirts as far as I am concerned, and not something I feel the need to identify with.

The internet generally was a lot more interesting and personal when we were still without the social media giants of facebook and twitter.  Social media has made it far easier to spread the word about things that are important to us, on one hand, and far easier to sink into a daily social whirl without actually finding any new and important interest streams, on the other.  Take the number of daily meat eaters who now spend their time ranting about animal cruelty when they see a picture of a dead giraffe or lion, for example.  Are they actually joining the dots in terms of the tasty steaks and cheese on the supermarket shelf?  I think not.  It is nice that people are less anthrocentric than they once were, but not so nice that they seem to be encouraged not to actually think for themselves.

Our reliance on celebrity culture for stimulus is also causing a kind of brain death which horrifies those of a generation who remember life before continuous light entertainment on demand.  More and more news items refer to products, and more recommendations from celebrities have replaced actual media content, examples beyond clothing and makeup including politics, social values, moral judgements and campaigns. Even the spellcheck on my own blog attempts to make me spell like a Yank, in a futile attempt to make us all adhere to Webster’s simplified English.  It will be a sad day indeed when everyone forgets how to spell programme properly. The road to idiocracy is paved with apathy and laziness.

Rather than rely on the number of likes, retweets and followers we get, perhaps we should worry more about the input, in order to improve the quality of our general output, at work, with friends, and in our daily lives.  Does it really matter if Brad went out without Angelina?  Does it matter at all if Miley takes her clothes off again?  No, of course not, but as long as you waste your time on that, you take your eye off the ball in terms of being aware of your own power and ability to shape your own futures.  This suits your political situation, whatever country you are in, perfectly.  The less time you spend actually thinking for yourself the better.

Stay unhappy, and you keep shopping.  Stay entertained, and you stop thinking.  Carry on relying on others to provide you with a minute to minute mood changer from your gadget or phone, and you forgo your own development.  All of those things are desperately important if you happen to want to steal the future from the masses.  Sleep on, and you win the destiny of losing everything to the very companies you continue to feed with the holy money.

As long as you are worrying about how many fake followers, likes you have, you are not doing anything about the things that really matter in your life.  It is too easy to pick the soft option.

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You will spend your money on….

This is the time of year when you have just slightly overspent on your family and friends, and socialising in the event that you have employment and suitable friends/colleagues.  You will now be considering diet products, as you will seek to lose weight for your forthcoming holidays, which are traditionally planned at this time of year.  In the event that you have the time and inclination, you will also be considering a New Year’s resolution, which may also cost you money.  After the debauchery season, comes the austerity season.

Your spending is highly regulated by media influence throughout the year.  This is much the same whatever your income bracket.  It is a skillfully managed machine that has become finely tuned over the last three centuries or so, since the rise of the department store and initial increase in marketing budgets that led us to where we are today.

It is alarming, when you are unused to it or know how the system of manipulation works, how smoothly you are induced to slip into a state where you are easily induced to spend with the herd.  Your diet is as relevant to this as any other part of it.  Take out the traditional food, socialising, willingness to conform and you quickly realise how often, and how fully you are lied to in the course of the year.

I used to wonder why people would want a holiday every year, because I loved work so much.  Now that I am ‘on duty’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week I actually need a holiday once or twice a year, in line with those who chose to have children or who have been trapped in a particularly tedious job and lifestyle by circumstance.  Most things that people in the west want are actually social constructs to make someone else a living.

Once you accept this, and try swimming against the tide somewhat, you will discover just how fast the streaming goes.  In my lifetime we have gone from 20 year spending phases of life to 5 or less.  It used to be that you had the childhood phase, the disposable income phase, the young family phase, the mature family phase, the post family phase.  Now we have more individualistic phases to extract the cash from a wider range of people. Computers and gadgets have caused a proportion of the population to genuinely believe that they need the latest phone/social media/computer/game/movie, and they need it now.  To fund this, they need a ready supply of fairly meaningless and unfulfilling work, and during the course of this they need to lie, agree to say nothing about things they don’t agree with, or pretend to like someone who really is not at all admirable.  The age of the role model, and the age of integrity have gone in favour of the great Capitalist con.

The irony is that our national economies performed much better when we favoured honesty and were shown examples of heroic rebellion.  Saying yes to people we have no respect for, on the grounds that they have a nicer suit or car, is what led to the economic crash.  Banks and supersized companies alike, favour the cheating robot over the honest and devoted employee.  This is not healthy.  The Western economies fully deserve the downfall they will suffer in the next century or so as a result.  Sooner or later, command capitalism or simply a well educated, well motivated developing nation who admire progress will eat us all alive, unless we learn how to look back and learn.

As individuals, we need to learn to swim against the tide.  Every time a stupid acquaintance remarks on our old car or clothes we should learn to righteously sneer at their frivolity and congratulate ourselves at avoiding the great capitalist con that keeps them in debt.  There is no actual joy to be gained from being endlessly available or engaged in pursuits that are simply designed to drain our finances into someone else’s pocket.

It is important to remember that the multiplier effect only goes so far.  We in the West dropped the idea of real money some years ago, in favour of virtual money that moves as a number without any currency to back it up.

Be ahead of the game, rather than sorry at the end of it. Any economic growth they report now is directly at the expense of another nation, students or sectors of society that you are told to hate, for a variety of increasingly spurious reasons.  Hate the fat, hate the elderly, hate the disabled in relation to the welfare bill or the NHS.  Hate the Muslims whilst we destroy their countries for yet more gain.  Hate whoever they tell you to hate, but do not be deceived that it has anything to do with anything apart from the money.

 

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Blogging update

For those interested in my periodical updates on the progress of the blog, I have been putting entries on the site since the beginning of July.  Pretty much all the work bar about 5 entries has been done since then.  The statistics are quite interesting.

This month, I have seen a 30 percent increase in traffic, so I guess I am hitting more interesting topics now, and certainly my off-the-top-of-my-head postings are fairly consistent.

I talk about work, David Wolfe (my current muse), motivational speaking, UK politics, economics and health, especially related to the elderly. I seem like a fairly serious person, with sporadic outbursts of temper and poetry, which is pretty strange considering that I do not particularly like poetry.

David may be interested to learn that he is not a particularly popular topic, and posts in which I am not pleased with him are a lot more popular with readers than posts in which I repeatedly explain why I am unlikely to stay displeased with him.  I am now at the rather weary point where he is becoming insignificant, which seems rather a shame considering the amount of work processing David has been. Unrealised potential on both his part and mine aside, emotional upheaval is a bit of a waste of time.  It certainly has not done my well being much good, all things considered.

Still, I knew what I was letting myself in for.  Not only would it have been stupid of me to go through the standard rollercoaster everybody else seems to also go through, it would have been a waste of a golden opportunity. I wonder how many people that he has come across that understand the processing element, or whether they just forget, and remember their health kick with some embarrassment?  It is about so much more than that, and I am entirely confident that David either does not understand what he is doing, or has decided to focus on viral spread at the expense of retaining the respect (and self respect) of people who actually got something they did not choose to comprehend free of charge.

Anyway, I may or may not choose to share more on this in the form of another few novels.  At the moment, I am working on the development for the next collection, which is taking rather odd forms, some of which are nothing whatsoever to do with Wolfe.  He takes up very little of my time, so he is cheap at the price as far as I am concerned.

Hopefully the blog will continue to grow at this accelerated rate, and now that I am aware of the subjects that are of interest to people, I will concentrate on those.  Sadly, I am not sure I have much more to say to Wolfe in this more direct form.  As components go, this one is ultimately weak.

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