The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Technology Can Damage Your Ego.

So yesterday I was waiting to get on a plane and infront of me was this American schmuck shouting orders down his phone to some poor bugger at the end of the line.

There he was in his sharp suit, giving it the full ‘Billy-Big-Bollocks’ and without doubt, he was not only aware people were looking and listening at him, but – as Macca’s say – he was probably ‘lovin’ it’.

So he finally gets off the phone and looks all smug with himself when 2 seconds later, the theme tune to ‘Sex And The City’ starts blaring out and best of all, it was coming from his phone.

Class!Within a fraction of a second, this guy had gone from Gordon Gekko to Julian Clarey and he spent the whole flight doing his best to not catch anyone’s eye … which was hard for him given I spent the entire flight trying to catch his stare.

The moral of this story?  Well, there’s two.

1. Be true to yourself because you’ll be found out eventually.

2. Technology can really screw you up.

This reminds me of a mad project we did years ago [with our friend, FBI profiler Mr Britton] where we analysed the passwords people had on their ‘Video Hire Membership’ to see if it represented something of great significance to them.

Well, what was interesting was that apart from common things like people’s names [which were often their partners or their children’s] … there was also a huge amount of words that at first seemed totally random, but then took on massive relevance once we interviewed the ‘owner’ of the account.

EG …

Surf Boy was a bloke obsessed with surfing.

Jugaholic was a guy who loved porn. [his ‘video history’ also backed this up!]

Toke was a woman who loved smoking pot.                  

Pink Rules was a gay guy who was active in the Gay Pride movement.

Only Natural was a vegetarian woman [rather than being a Crowded House fan!]

Sure, we knew this information wasn’t going to be something that was going to be ‘statistically valid’ [plus it took ages to get permission from ‘customers’ to [1] find out their password and then [2] interview them – all the time not telling them what it was we were trying to find out] but there seemed to be a real theme that people’s passwords reflected something of real ’emotional importance’ to them.

Look, I could go on about how we used this info [as well as how it also reflected the individuals movie watching habits] but I’ve got loads of work to do, I’m tired and … more importantly … we have a book coming out [fingers crossed] featuring a load of case studies using our ‘FBI Research Techniques’ and my partners would absolutely kill me if after years of trial, error and expense … I went and let people read it all for free on my bloody blog.

Sorry, I feel all ‘corporate and yucky’ saying that … but as I keep having pointed out to me, if I continue to want a nice roof over my head, I’m going to have to learn that sometimes it’s in my best interests to stop giving and doing things for free – especially when it’s something I’m proud of or incredibly excited by, because then, I’m a commercially-minded persons worst nightmare, ha!

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