Perhaps digital media isn’t the only industry that suffers from the intense naval-gazing we see around us. And I really didn’t mean to sound so disparaging right here on the front end.
But sometimes it just drives me crazy to read all the inside baseball blog posts.
I had to explain the word meta to my 10yo daughter last week. She’s not allowed to watch Glee, but she’s quite culturally aware, and so we’ve shown her selective clips of one song or another when they feed into the public understanding.
So we showed her the Glee version of Don’t Stop Believin’, the Ohio State response, and Glee’s Safety Dance. [Grr. Having trouble finding quick links to working versions. Will update later as I’m able.] And so the word meta came up.
And how I love that word.
You see, I’m a semantics girl at heart. I could argue what is is for a week. I’m in content strategy for a reason, and it’s about feeding my analytical soul as much as it’s about helping my clients make stuff happen.
But at the end of the day, we need to make stuff happen. And the self-referential, meta culture in digital media can confuse the process.
Don’t make it so hard to talk about things that you can’t make them happen. Name a goal, pave the path and make it happen.