The Age of Relevance - Rise and Fall of Being Relevant At All - 10 Critical Concepts

By Thomas B. Cross CEO - TECHtionary - SocialStreamingTV

Call it an age, phase, passage or epoch, relevance or rather being relevant is now the critical messaging fabric of the ever-evolving internet. The thoughts of Marshall McLuhan are more relevant than ever with his "the medium is the message" in the global village as the social media medium drives messaging. No longer is just blasting, lambasting, cajoling or simply shouting at the wind, people are settling into some definite messaging categories. Here’s a brief discussion of what they are and what they mean. The ten most prominent messaging concepts explored so far are reputation, reaction, reform, reposition, rebuild, resilience, respond, reshape, repugnant and remember.

Reputation - there is nothing faster than rising in relevance to the social media world than doing something from riding a skateboard down the street, being 100 years old and walking 100 steps or something really human. Yet even faster, harder, meaner and more destructive is falling from grace than a word, statement, act or even being in the wrong place and the wrong time. 

For companies, there is a rise in the need for a chief reputation officer (CRO) guiding the company and helping CXO's as there are reports of CEOs spending more than 50% of their time articulating and defending themselves and the company's reputation on public policy issues. Many CEOs expressed they thought they had public relations (PR) teams but they are now the chief PR person and whatever they say now is anchored in fast-drying concrete driving the price of their stock downward.

Reaction -- is the most obvious - something happens, a comment spoken, a tragedy or terrible injustice anywhere in the "global village" and people react like a great explosion with devastating consequences. Some are calm while others are crazy and still others chaotic and away it goes on for a short if minor or a bit longer lasting should the cause be something more of a national rather than a bothersome neighbor even ending up in the cancel culture trash bin.

Reform - another area where people think they need to change, however unlikely, is the behavior, attitude or actions of another. No one likes change except a baby needing a new diaper and even trying to change an opinion of another. Even more so than in a public posting that some part of your life is missing something and you need to take action today. Saying that there are far too many whiners and complainers who "bring it on" to thinking the world is waiting to hear their very thought, glance or innuendo. Seriously, if people want to change they will and if they don't want to then don't expect them to and if they do it will likely not be something you were hoping for anyway.

Reposition - this concept is a deeper dig into the psychology of human nature when people are faced with "gaslighting" being from others as they are left with their own cognitive dissonance and unintended consequences. This is a way of saying people don't like what you are saying or doing and what you are saying is not what they are hearing, nor what they will do about it. As a result, people often retreat into their own shells and go on with the life they were hoping the issue will simply faee away for rather than facing a very different reality that exists.

Rebuild - many faced with real-life ruin, tragedy and disaster (which seems like that happens a lot more than usual these days from pandemics to weather storms) find themselves sometimes literally with nothing more than the clothes on the back. This kind of relevance means there is no relevance to what they did before nor knowledge of what they will do next. Possibly the hardest kind of relevance is having none and yet finding a new one but often a very different one.

Resilience - bunker builders, doomsday preppers and others is the kind of relevance of the kinds of people who cannot face what they see or hear today and are prepared for a new one. Oddly while they have a year's supply of everything yet when all this terrible stuff happens they don't seem to be prepared for what to do "the day after." Resilience is about not just about being prepared when "sh-- happens" but also being able to quickly replace what was damaged and go back to the "new normal" again. Relevance is about burying a few nuts but not feeling you never have too many nuts otherwise you become one.

Respond - answering or giving guidance to those who ask for help is a positive way to show your relevance. Caution comes from when they aren't really asking for help, don't understand what you are saying, don't really want to do what you suggest and then respond negatively to the entire process. When in doubt, shut up and let them be is often the best strategy. Rather you can respond by addressing the issue in general without being specifically for them. This is a hard one, so caution is urged.

Reshape - Yes, there are ways to be really relevant to reshaping all lives, issues like race, climate change, environmental action and even pot hole repair. Indeed, this is the most important of being relevant at all. Sometimes a phrase, concept or a hashtag sets the world in motion in the most powerful and interesting ways. From black lives matters, Sandy hook, even stop the steal and so many others relevance comes from concepts that impact individuals to act in ways that often have incredibly positive actions or others like January 6 storming on the Capitol. Reshape shape’s public opinion in a form of relevance that everyone understands, agrees to or can even articulate what it means.

Repugnant - The dark side of the internet is far darker than anyone imagined it will be. It is rather like from the great sci-fi movie The Forbidden Planet, where "monsters of the ID" refers to the primordial beast inside all of us. In the movie an invisible monster destroyed all the people on the planet awaiting only to destroy visitors from space. There are many such monsters on the internet today making hate relevant and sadly for some, making their lives relevant at all.

Remember - as it has been said so many times, the internet is ink and there is no eraser even if you try to undelete it. There is also no undelete so what you do, say, act, respond, reaction or whatever it will be remembered forever. 

You may want to be remembered well but you don't really have a choice now of what people will say now or after you are gone, so learning, listening and acting before what you are remembered for something that no one wants to ever remember. Critically, there is no real way to deflect, respond or even react to both social and death threats and physical assaults on you and anyone associated with you. 

Summary -- Relevance beyond a few seconds is impossible to maintain, sustain and more likely if you choose to participate at all face severe criticism and disdain. It was once said you had 15 minutes of fame, now you have 1-minute and even less as many of those quick videos seem to drag on far too long and who has time to listen to all those podcasts. Nearly everyone wants to feel relevant and yet what it is and how you can achieve it remains far too elusive to be relevant for very long. For others, they turned on, tuned in and have now dropped out.

 Recommendations - Realize your management is the most significant cause for crisis and chaos mismanagement. As was found one organization found “there no need for its own crisis intelligence department, and which deemed it an affront to its own strategy to allow its own strategic decisions to be influenced by what others might or might not be doing.” It is highly recommended that you and your company delete all social media accounts and build your own ultra-intelligent separate internal and external social networks instead of all the toxic nonsense, mis/disinformation (anti-vaxers), weaponized media aka #hashtags , cyberbullies, shamers, haters, privacy violations, fake and deep fake which you cannot predict, you cannot react to all of this, you can only direct your own messaging. Should you want to know more about these recommendations, please email [email protected]