Saturday, February 17, 2007

Authenticity and the Internet

Design and Development Fake Authenticity and Search Engine Marketing Manipulation

Search engine optimization is being defended once more. This time, by
Danny Sullivan, who attempts to set things straight with Jason Calacanis. He is joined by many other voices on issues of trust, integrity, social media optimization and marketing practices.
The anti-SEO sentiment may be driven by bitterness over what is viewed as purposeful manipulation. Skilled search engine marketers not only target known users of a product, but they also create desire, need, and emotional connections to products or websites.
This, in turn, helps to create fake, inauthentic traffic and links by the unknown end users who weren’t specifically marketed to or designed for, but bought the storyline and wanted in anyway.
We want to feel part of the Big Thing, even if it has nothing to do with us, wasn’t supposed to be for us or isn’t remotely even like us.
“We have a hunger for something like authenticity, but are easily satisfied by an ersatz facsimile.”-George Orwell, c. 1949
Can we tell where we stand in a culture of fakeness? How can we determine whom to design or market to when the expectations themselves are created by our creations

A Partial Response
This is a very, very interesting topic and related I think to another very important concept - integrity. The problem with personas is that they are individually incomplete descriptions of ourselves. If we do not pursue authenticity (I mean by this some golden thread that persists and links personas - an identity) we get trapped in the phantasmagoria of disconnected personas (this is an ancient problem remember the Minotaur and his Maze)which has very severe psychological consequences, despair for one, not unlike Eliot's Hollow Men. Indeed personas are important for exploring one's identity (and we give a moratorium to adolescents for exactly this purpose and I think that the Internet has extended this)but that is just because they are incomplete. What binds peronas together is an identity, this is what persists and is held accountable in the end. A persona masquerading as identity is therefore not sustainable and will collapse under scrutiny (as per your account of Howard Dean). Neither can one act with integrity without a strong grasp of one's own identity, personas by themselves contradict themselves and give the lie. As the Internet matures, becomes reliant on trust and accountability (the foundations of good business) so we will see inauthentic personas collapse. Thank you for a most stimulating and thought provoking blog - A. Ian Kruger

And should any question the importance of identity and its integrity I will refer to that wonderful piece “Jim and the Indians” by Bernard Williams

Don't get it? Well as I understand the challenge, Jim has to make decision that violates every rubric (read persona) that might have given him a safe mechanism on which to base the decision, he is completely naked. Now if there is nothing besides personas: utilitarian, deontological, machiavelian, hobesian or otherwise, he is trully f***d.