People Need To See Validation, Not Just Results

After months of low-engaging posts on a topic (elsewhere, not on this blog), I decided to post a link that grossly generalized a topic to the point of lying. Everyone jumped on it as if it were fact. At that point, I realized that no one was reading and considering what I had been saying all along. They didn't believe me. BUT they believed this link from a dubious source because it "looked correct".

I really had to stop and think about that. The people that I was posting to KNOW that I have credentials and KNOW that I don't post without thinking, but that didn't seem to matter to them. This got me going on human nature again...

See, people are funny creatures. Regardless of the quality and the results of a thing, humans will require a heavy amount of weight to our requirements for validation of a thing. It's pretty amazing and a bit disconcerting.

What am I getting at?

There is no intrinsic value on it's own. That's nearly impossible.

People assign value based on many contextual factors that may have nothing to do with the actual value they purport to want. Hopefully, the truth can be gleaned from those many factors.

It's the white lab coat effect.

Scenario: If a barefoot person in jeans on the side of the street told you to take some pills they gave you, you'd probably tell that person to go to hell.

• You could know that they are a doctor on vacation
• You could validate all of their claims with a quick Google search
• You could know for yourself that the information about the pills is sound
• You could personally know the doctor in question
• You could have a valid reason why they'd have pills on them
• ...and so on. 

After all that, people still wouldn't trust them completely because they aren't wearing a white lab coat and standing in an office. That context is too strong to overcome with mere truths. Our minds would deny ourselves until we got over whatever mental barriers we had constructed. We simply wouldn't have the proper context we desire for that situation to make sense. 

Personally, I've been trying to battle this in my life, but the need for "proper context" is legitimately difficult to get around. I'm not immune to these mental barriers, I've just started trying to think about them.

I wonder what the proper context is for validation nowadays. Likes? Retweets? Influencer mentions? Guest blog posts? Podcast appearances. There seem to be a lot of them.

Behind The Scenes Is My Scene

As much as I like culture, community, and groups, I really don't get down with a lot of social activities, I get down with popular energy. There's a difference. I really like the behind the scenes stuff. I like the process, the building, the construction, the planning, and the stuff that makes it happen. I also like to work with other people that are doing things that make sense. Discussing different aspects of development isn't work to me. It's fun. THAT would be my social work. All the yakkity yak of traditional marketing isn't my thing.

That kinda makes me feel a bit misaligned in today's climate. It seems like the product matters so much less when the modus operandi is to steal flavor and market hype. Of course, this is a result of the power of the Internet. I'm not mad at it, but I would be lying if I didn't state that

It's like church. I used to like the scriptures, the free breakfasts, the songs, the sermons, and everything that goes into the production. But standing around talking about what Jenny Mae did last week? Miss me with that. Worrying about how nice your car and outfit is? Bullshit. Lying to the congregation? You can go to Hell. Give me the nuts and bolts.

So do I want to be a hermit? Nah. I'd just like to see a different type of community that isn't so reliant on the nonsense side of the extrovert lifestyle.

I confuse a lot of people with that kind of talk, but I don't give a shit.

Well, I'm just putting thoughts out there. Maybe we can start building some type of communities where the hype about the thing doesn't have to be the thing at the end of the day. Or maybe I need to work harder at understanding what's going on in the world now. My mother saw the direction I was going in and warned me, but I didn't understand what was going on. Now it's painfully obvious that she saw me for what I was: a cool-ass loner that would be okay with leaving a situation instead of working within it.

P.S. I'm currently thinking that a YouTube page would be more effective than typing words into a blogspot page, but I'm not ready for that level of...uh...creation.