Maintaining relevance and authenticity

[VinceG]

Relevance and authenticity are related concepts. Relevance concerns how useful you and your values and your experience and your intelligence is to those around them. It's a term often bandied about by artsy types, and occasionally used as an epithet to describe what happens when someone loses touch.

Authenticity concerns how true to yourself you're being. These twin gauges are very useful to people looking to gain power. One should always keep a close watch on how authentic and relevant they are.

Useful discussions about these concepts are difficult because the words can be very hard to define. Thus leading to a situation in which meaning is lost between people and feelings are hurt.

Getting distressed over these two concepts is never the right move. Yes, they are statements about your character and how you come across. But getting butthurt is losing out on a lesson someone else has to teach you.

If someone challenges your authenticity, for example by calling or insinuating that you're a douchebag, try to understand what their problem is with you. Inauthenticity can be very hard to spot in yourself, and you need that other person's perspective to clue you in. It's a contradiction in how you come across as opposed to your stated values.

If you manage to find your inauthenticity, be very, very happy. You've discovered an aspect about yourself that you didn't know before. These sorts of breakthroughs are life-changing. They pave the way for creating incredible depth of character.

What I do personally, is take negative aspects about myself and make an art form out of them. At my former forum, I was over-the-top egotistical. I didn't have the maturity to tamp it down, and so in my efforts to make myself more relevant to the people there, I amped it up and created spectacles. People love ego, it makes for great entertainment.

Doing this felt very rich to me, very satisfying. It's way more art than science, everybody has their own inauthenticities that they can commandeer and then own. It's intensely personal on purpose, it wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Relevancy is the true tool of the powerful. Relevancy involves an audience. You can't be relevant to nobody. You have to create and nurture it. You have to know what that audience craves. One of the things I like most about good music review is that it captures this idea perfectly. Musicians have a particular subset of people that they speak to, and adapt their music and their message to it.

It's short sighted to only want to create for yourself. It's fearful. People are itching for good things to listen to, new things to read. Think about this board. We keep coming here for the freshness of other people's ideas. Are they as good or well-written as some of the stuff in a great blog? Of course not. But we keep coming here anyway because we like to be entertained by the novelty of other people's points of view, especially points of view of other people like us.

In my other forums, I noticed people reacting strongly to certain things I'd write, and just ho-hum at others. I noticed the trend and started to work on posting things that worked. I refined my humor and my ability to be novel. Eventually it started getting stale and easy. I needed new avenues for growth, so I started over here.

But still, there's no leverage here. This is why Steve pooh poohed the tendency for people to spend more time here than working on your own website. Posting here is fulfilling and entertaining, but will get you nowhere. And if there's one thing Steve and I really agree on, it's that you should go somewhere.

Create an audience. It's a lot of trial and error, but art is one of those things that has to be done to really "get." And keep yourself relevant to that audience. The audience isn't so much a bunch of people as it is a creation that happens to resonate with people. An audience is an idea. They're referred to in sassy terminology, "the mid-thirties house-frou." "brooding mid-teen glampires."

It's not so much a method of asserting superiority over your audience as a way of communicating specific ideas about relevancy. You need to present yourself in a certain fashion to be relevant to a group of people. Some people look at that as inauthentic, creating your own presentation consciously. But if you focus on authenticity, while you're creating your audience, you'll evade that trap.

The key is to focus on authenticity first. Find yourself. Look for your inauthenticities and create deep, nurturing character with them. Then look out and find the people that resonate with the creative force that authenticity imparts. Stay true to your authentic character while entertaining, cultivating, and nurturing, and teaching an audience. Stay relevant to them.

[Mounds]

I'm trying to figure out how I relate to this post. It feels quite opposite of what I do. I strive to be unapologetically, 100% myself. If that attracts an audience, cool. If not, no loss. Pretty much anything I post is for myself anyway.
Occasionally, I do post something that is for "other people". Generally, those posts come off as phony and don't get any attention.
Anywho, back to zany old Mounds.


<stops posting, stands on chair and go-go dances for no apparent reason>

[VinceG]

Originally Posted by Mounds

I'm trying to figure out how I relate to this post. It feels quite opposite of what I do. I strive to be unapologetically, 100% myself.

That's the very definition of authenticity.

[Mounds]

Originally Posted by VinceG

That's the very definition of authenticity.

That's kinda what I figured after the fact. Maybe I should rephrase my post and say I have no desire to be relevant here. If I become relevant, that's cool. If I fade into the background, that's cool too.

[VinceG]

Originally Posted by Mounds

That's kinda what I figured after the fact. Maybe I should rephrase my post and say I have no desire to be relevant here. If I become relevant, that's cool. If I fade into the background, that's cool too.

That's cool. I'm hoping to inspire a deeper dialogue. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine.

[Mounds]

Originally Posted by VinceG

That's cool. I'm hoping to inspire a deeper dialogue. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine.

No problem! Just seeing where it would lead

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Mounds

That's kinda what I figured after the fact. Maybe I should rephrase my post and say I have no desire to be relevant here. If I become relevant, that's cool. If I fade into the background, that's cool too.

I was thinking this myself today at work Mounds.

I spent my teens and twenties deliberately making myself invisible to most people and falling under the radar, which I preferred.

I'm not the most popular person here, and nor am I the most unpopular...which is fine with me. I wondered today if it was fine with me really...as I have noticed I sometimes feel unappreciated, or ignored...if it's around that time of the month especially...but when all those emotional gyrations have passed, at the end of the day, I have my say...some people relate...others don't.
Some people react strongly to my straightforward manner, and some people love it. I came to the realization years ago that whether I am liked or disliked...it's ok!

But I'm with you, I'm not so interested or concerned in drawing a huge audience into tell me I'm right or how "awesome" I am. I know I'm awesome (and right)

[Mounds]

Originally Posted by elucidate

Some people react strongly to my straightforward manner, and some people love it. I came to the realization years ago that whether I am liked or disliked...it's ok!

<third person>

Mounds hearts Luci's straightforward manner.

</third person>

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by Mounds

<third person>

Mounds hearts Luci's straightforward manner.

</third person>

Moundsadamous(?) where for art thou?

[VinceG]

Originally Posted by elucidate

But I'm with you, I'm not so interested or concerned in drawing a huge audience into tell me I'm right or how "awesome" I am. I know I'm awesome (and right)

The point of creating and cultivating an audience is not ego gratification. If you do it with that goal, you will fail.

The point is to have an impact on the world. To make a difference. Getting others to see things your way, and having those people spread your ideas, lets you add your two cents into the global cultural melting pot of ideas.

You don't need the world. The world needs you.

[elucidate]

Originally Posted by VinceG

The point of creating and cultivating an audience is not ego gratification. If you do it with that goal, you will fail.

The point is to have an impact on the world. To make a difference. Getting others to see things your way, and having those people spread your ideas, lets you add your two cents into the global cultural melting pot of ideas.

You don't need the world. The world needs you.

I feel like I make that happen here, and in my real life. I just don't make a huge song and dance about it.

[VinceG]

Originally Posted by elucidate

I feel like I make that happen here, and in my real life. I just don't make a huge song and dance about it.

There's a wonderful global community out there. This forum is but a piece of it. But if you start a website and put that lovely voice of yours out so the entire world can see it, then in the process not only will you have an impact on the world, but the world will have an impact on you.

[elucidate]

That happens wherever I go anyway, and has for as long as I've known that my own happiness ripples out into society and saving my own world contributes to the whole world.

But yes, I know what you are saying, thanks.

[Mounds]

Ah, I get it now too.

I have a list of accomplishments that I'm working on achieving and once I'm done that list, I'll be capitalizing on my success through the sale of e-books and other digital media. Anyone will have the opportunity to buy my thoughts.

Call it a power thing but I'd rather have the world seek me out than me seeking out the world. The people that need to me will find me. They'll find me through my good deeds in my offline life, my insights on this board and my e-books. Not to sound arrogant but I don't feel like I need the world.

I think we have a similar goal, just a different way of getting there.