Confused Clarity

I think it was late last night I first noticed the Twitter hashtag #thingsblackgirlsdo started trending.  When I initially saw the tweets getting tagged with this hashtag, it ran the gamut of black, female, racial negative stereotypes, mixed in with a few positive, encouraging and even funny tweets.  I hoped that the latter would overpower the former as time went on or that the hashtag would quietly disappear.  

The trending topic, however, didn’t disappear, as a matter of fact, at the time of writing this post, it reached #1 worldwide.  This of course brought attention the hashtag to everyone’s attention (and and it’s associated tweets).  This motivated @gangstarrgirl to blog about how, while these types of hashtags may not be inherently offensive, they do tend to spawn the tweeting a lot of offensive and negative stereotypes.  I found the following point quite poignant:

In situations like this, I expect to laugh a little because I see myself in some of the jokes but this wasn’t the case. Sadly, several of the tweets are just inane, ignorant misconceptions and ironically most of the worst offenders are—judging by their avatars—black.

I found this poignant because the negativity and the source of many of the tweets in the hashtag, did nothing more than reinforce negative stereotypes.  I would hope this wasn’t think case and I would encourage people to expand their ideas about black women beyond what they read on Twitter, but we know that some people actually use Twitter as a tool for researching race.  

So what does one do now?  How do you turn the tide from negative stereotypes to positivity and encouragement?  How do you plant seeds of positivity about Black women in the eyes of the Twitter researcher?  

Lions Gate, the producers of Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls”, movie took a step in that direction at around 1 PM PST.   At that time, the following tweet was posted through the @lionsgaterise twitter account

Stay strong in the face of adversity#thingsblackgirlsdo - FOR COLORED GIRLS, now playing in theaters.http://brgd.net/FCGTixOnline

First and foremost, this is a great use of social media to do real-time engaging advertising that will be seen by your target demographic.  Additionally, not only did they participated in the hashtag in a way that contributes to the positive side of the discussion, they also made the tweet a “promoted tweet”, which means that anybody who clicks on the #thingsblackgirlsdo hashtag will see the above tweet at the top of the page.  While the tweet does sound a bit commercial  with the promo at the end and thereby slightly less genuine, I understand that sometimes that’s just the way it needs to be.  In spite of this, when I saw the content of the tweet and that it was a promoted tweet, I was really impressed, both from a business/marketing point of view and a personal point of view.  It shows how brands can take part in “branding” a worldwide conversation in a relevant fashion with a positive, uplifting messaging that may even help turn a negative of conversations into a positive one. (Even in those conversations that they did not initiate).

So, with that I was motivated to write this post and to contribute my own addition to the hashtag.  And that is: “#thingsblackgirlsdo - Turn a negative into a positive”

I’m writing this in response to the blog post I just read by Paul Grim in today’s Venture Beat.  In the post, Grim claims that Android will defeat the iPhone because Android will be on more devices and developers should/will build apps for Android first because those devices will have more reach and more adoption, just like what happened in the PC wars back in the day.  All of this = WIN for Android to him.

To me, this is just another sensationalist blog post that lacked a truly substantive conclusion. Why? Because Apple and Android are competing for different stakes.  They’re in two different categories, weight classes, genres.  Basically, winning for each of them.

Most vs. Best

The Android fans claim that they’re on the winning side because Android will be on more devices, thus having more reach, thus giving Android more market share than iOS.

Apple fans claim that they’re team will win because Apple produces the most beautiful, usable devices that run most reliably.

Paul Grim even states:

Apple will always be the Maserati of smartphones — leading-edge, trendy, stylish, downright awesome. But Android will be the Ford Taurus — maybe a little dull in comparison, sometimes clunky, but dependable, cheap and everywhere you look

This being said, it’s interesting and ironic to me that Grim would describe Apple as he does (compared to Android) and then insists that Apple will lose to Android.  

He compares Apple to a luxury car and then goes on to talk about how it will lose.  This is confusing to me because, like Maserati, Apple is a luxury brand, that makes luxury items.  So, they pride themselves on quality and they WIN on quality.  They purposely don’t want to win in the “MOST” category.  Why? Because it devalues their brand.  After reading the quote above, would anyone ever make the claim that Maserati is losing to Ford.  Anyone?  So, why even use that analogy?

Android, on the other hand, isn’t trying to compete with Apple in the luxury category.  They haven’t thrown their hat in the ring of competing to be the best (at least not since shelving Nexus One or any other Google Phone).  Android WINS on being the MOST.  They’re providing an alternative to the luxury item and want to appeal to those that aren’t able to drive the Maserati (so to speak).

To even say they’re competing against each other right now, seems flawed.  Is McDonalds beating Ruth Chris Steakhouse? What about the other way around?  Are they even competing? 

Anyways, that’s my ramble.  We live in an age where everyone wants to declare someone a winner and the other a loser.  Unfortunately, I think the debate is a bit futile and misguided.  If I’m Apple responding to Paul Grim, I’m asking him, “How can Android beat me, when we’re not even playing against each other”?

A few quick thoughts on the lost finale.  I came away with a really good message from it. 

Jack’s father says that the “sideways world” was something that the people on the island created, in order to “find themselves”.  This made me think that we as individuals tend to create a false sense of reality, and use that frame of mind for trying to “find ourselves”.  This ends up failing miserably and we end up getting LOST in this false sense of reality.  So, then we have to “let go” (another common theme in the finale) and deal with the true reality of the situation we’re in before we can move on and make true progress.  This letting go, however, often times needs to be accompanied by us relying on others; implying we can’t do it on our own.  

This sideways world exemplified the idea that people living in a false sense of reality need to “wake up” or “let go” of the false sense of reality, but notice how each person only truly woke up once they got help from others and actually found true love. (Notice that everyone in the church at the end had a “mate”) accompanying them.  These factors manifest themselves uniquely on the island but even more clearly in the “sideways world”.

Lonely people, building community, bracing with reality, letting go of the past and learning to love another person (except for Locke, who fell in love with the island).  Going from being lost and not knowing it to being found and embracing it.

According to (@bcuban)

80 percent of NFL players are either financially in trouble or divorced within 2 years of retirement.  This strikes me as incredibly high.  I would also want to know the percentage of players that are BOTH in financial trouble and divorced within that same 2 years.

I think the NFL gives courses on this perils of this, but I’m not 100% sure. I think the best way for it to sink in for current and future players is to have the former athletes that this happens to come back and tell their story.