Let me state up front, I am a thief.
No major felony stuff, but I have stolen from a
super market — dozens of times. No, I am not confessing to teenage dares or any
mistaken indiscretions of my youth. Just plain old stealing as a middle-aged
adult. No, I didn’t do it out of a desperate financial need, either.
You may wonder why a successful entrepreneur and
well-known book marketing expert would steal — and brag about it publicly. Let
me tell you why.
I have strong convictions about automated, cashierless
check-out counters. I hate them and never cared for them. Aside from creating
more unemployed people, it frustrates the customer and dehumanizes the
experience.
My response to this? I steal.
When I go to get eight items at a self-checkout counter, I
end up scanning seven. One is on the house. I feel justified. It is my form of
protest, my little way of raging against the machine. I have no defense. I am a
thief. But I am also a victim, robbed of human dignity.
I grew up used to the experience of seeing a cashier,
making small talk while they ring things up and bag my items. Now, they charge
for bags, I have to price-swipe and pack my stuff, and I pay while not
interacting with a human being. This is progress?
Every time I am forced into using the
self-checkout counter, I lament that technology is reducing us to isolation.
Granted, I don’t become best friends with the lady ringing me up at Target, but
this becomes one less of increasingly fewer in-person human interactions.
I apply the same thinking to movie ticket
purchases. If I go online to buy a movie ticket — and they do away with their
need/cost to have a cashier to sell it to me — why am I charged a fee to buy
that ticket? I get my revenge by lying and saying that everyone in my party is
a senior and get a discount. I simply despise a missing human element and then
BS charges when the process actually saves a company money.
The humanless interactions are greatly on the rise.
I can already order things online and never see
people in a store, never talk to a salesperson, never even get to express
polite concern for another by holding a door for them. But it goes beyond
occasionally ordering from Amazon. Everything is becoming like this, where
everything is done online.
Dating? Love is all online.
Finding a pet to adopt? Fluffy is online.
Go out to the movies? Just stream.
We talk to fewer people.
Touch fewer people.
See fewer people.
Out of sight, out of mind. Our collective will to
care for others likely wanes if we are exposed to fewer people.
Even learning what is going on in a friend’s life
is something that may happen only if I scroll their social media posts. What
happened to calling or seeing me? Where is the one-on-one, give-and-take
exchanges as opposed to one-sided public outbursts?
We text people instead of calling. We email
invites instead of mailing them. We zoom over meeting in person. We take online
courses and work from home instead of coming to an in-person environment. No
wonder why Gen Z and some Millennials are stressed out and can’t act like fully
functioning people.
Our social actions are no longer personal or in
person. Our human contact is reduced to zooms, robots, apps, and emails. It is
amazing any of us venture outside.
I may sound like some aging geezer lamenting on
old-fashioned ways. No, I am a middle-aged guy who knows of a pre-Internet
world, one where people saw, touched, and lived with one another. Of course,
life was not perfect back then, but all other factors aside, life is best lived
with more people interacting more often — not less.
So, supermarket or movie theatre, you want me to
do things without humans — and pay more for the “privilege?”
Not on my watch.
Need Book Marketing Help?
Brian
Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors
promote their story, sell their book, and grow their brand. He has over 30
years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres.
Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!
Read
This!
Please
Support Book Aid International
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/please-support-book-aid-international.html
Wall Street Journal Leaves Authors With One
Less Best-Seller List To Manipulate
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/wall-street-journal-leaves-authors-with.html
Can
You Discover Your Book’s Reader Identity?
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/can-you-discover-your-books-reader.html
The Author Viral Content Toolbox
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-author-viral-content-toolbox.html
Interview With Combined Book Exhibit’s
Director of Business Development & Media, Chris Malinowski
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/interview-with-combined-book-exhibits.html
Spotify’s Audiobook Deal Is Great – And
Awful!
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/spotifys-audiobook-deal-is-great-and.html
20+ Online Writing Communities For
Authors
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/20-online-writing-communities-for.html
Why Are Author Marketing Emails Lousy?
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/why-are-author-marketing-emails-lousy.html
What’s Your Book Marketing Approach?
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/whats-your-book-marketing-approach.html
How Authors Should View Selling Books
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/10/how-authors-should-view-selling-their.html
University Press Week Highlights Need For
More BIPOC Books & Authors
https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2023/10/university-press-week-advocates-for.html
About Brian Feinblum
Brian Feinblum should be followed on LinkedIn. This is
copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2023. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now
resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue
dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The
Writer and IBPA’s The Independent. This
award-winning blog has generated over 3.4 million pageviews. With 4,600+ posts
over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by
BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018
as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by
www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades,
including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book
publicity firm, and two jobs at two independent presses, Brian has worked with
many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with
best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen,
Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard,
Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C.
Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He recently hosted a
panel on book publicity for Book Expo America, and has spoken at ASJA,
Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction
Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland)
Writers Association, APEX, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association.
His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal,
USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News
(Westchester) and The Washington Post. He has been featured in The
Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald. For more information, please consult:
www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.