Communication and Conviction
I’ve just read the third issue of Warren Ellis’ and J H Williams’ Desolation Jones (which, obviously I commend to your attention, or I wouldn’t be mentioning it). There is a sequence in the middle of it where the plot fucks off completely (at least superficially – this is part three of a six part story, and indeed, the opening of an ongoing series, so it may become more relevant later), and allows a supporting character to deliver a monologue on the bleak and savage experience of working in the porn industry.
This is against the normally accepted “rules� for writing (and yes, I know just how stupid that idea is, thanks). The general preference (both in terms of what gets produced, and what plays most to an audience’s expectations), in these Hollywood-influenced days is for dense, plot-driven stuff. The purpose of any scene tends to be to drive the plot forward, and the idea is to use the plot as a vehicle to expose character.
Ellis has sacked that off here, and gone to off to talk about what interests (or given the subject matter, perhaps appals might be a better word) him. Alan Moore did something similar in his collaboration with Williams, Promethea, where the plot really wasn’t ever much more than a paper-thin excuse to allow Moore to talk about symbolism and magic. (That it was Williams as collaborator both times is not much of a shock – if you want to get away with this sort of thing in comics, you’ve got to make it visually interesting, and Williams is one of the few artists that you can absolutely rely on for visual interest…)
All of which is by way of saying: this has all got me thinking about communication again.
Communication, as I’ve been saying a lot recently, is what I do. It’s taken me a few years to come to the realisation that every last one of my interests (with the exceptions of expensive drink and cheap drugs) is basically about communication. I like to communicate, be it visually or with the written word, and I like to build tools to do it. It’s why, despite the egos, the absurdly tiny budgets, the mad bastards, the fact that no job I get is secure, and the fact that people are not giving me the free drugs that I manifestly deserve, I am still working in the internet industry. (Side note: I do not understand people who have jobs they do not enjoy. Your job is, on average, about one half of your waking life. Get another job. What have you got to lose?)
What Ellis has got me thinking about here, is trust and time investment. Ellis and Moore, as two of the more respected writers in comics, have, to an extent, earned a certain amount of indulgence from the audiences they’ve built up over the years. Were I to produce a novel that took a break from the plot to talk about the social dynamics of on-line communication, then all of three people would buy it, and two of them would be my mother, because I do not have any vested indulgence from an audience.
This remains true throughout any communication medium – if, as a consumer, you have a prior familiarity with someone’s work, then you will give them more room to stray outside the zone of your initial interest, because you have built up a certain amount of trust that either they have something worthwhile to say, or that they’re generally clever enough to be talking about something interesting, even if it’s not your direct and initial interest, and to state the blindingly obvious, the more time and trust you’ve given them in the past, the greater the amount that you’ll indulge them.
So, having spent 500-odd words stating the blindingly obvious, let’s see if we can go somewhere new with this, shall we? And specifically, let’s drag it back to my major area of interest.
How does one encourage that level of trust and confidence in on-line communication? With film, TV, and traditional publishing, one’s early work has an extra stamp of approval, in that a) someone thought it was worth publishing and distributing anyway, and b) there’s a whole, readily-comprehsible (in the sense that we grow up with it, and so it is second nature) culture set up to work as a recommendations engine for traditional media.
The base unit of currency on-line, then, is the link. It’s the basis for Google’s PageRank engine – a sophisticated analysis of the relationships between keywords and linking behaviour. And there are others, as I’ve noted before. Smart-selecting solutions are going to be an integral part of “Web 2.0�.
But if they’re smart-selecting, automated things, then they lack the value of the human endorsements that help us gauge likely value in traditional media. While they may help people find information that they’re looking for right now, they don’t have the same value when it comes to building a relationship with an audience.
That has to come from repeated encounters with human endorsements over a prolonged period, and the reader has to be able to clearly identify the thing being endorsed. (And be able to trust that the person providing the content is what they say they are, but let’s assume that that’s a given.)
So, the first and most obvious thing that you need to have on-line is your own style. Basic rule of marketing: do it first. Establish your position as the first to do something, and people will remember you for it. On-line, this is twofold. Firstly, content – you’ve got to be saying something worth remembering (or providing something worth using) in the first place, and be one of the early authorities (as judged, once again by peer recommendation) on the topic. Secondly, presentation. There’s all kinds of shit out there offering all sorts of information. People need to be able to clearly and quickly discern what you’re talking about, and why they should listen to you or use your service. Present your information clearly and well, enable all appropriate interaction, and do it in a manner that isn’t like the way anyone else does it, without confusing the consumer.
That last clause, of course, is the bastard. “Without confusing the consumer.� This is a new and evolving medium. Most people are still finding their feet here – they’ve got basic web-literacy, but advanced stuff may frighten and confuse. We’re now more-or-less at the point where the browser wars are over – it’s relatively simple to design a site that will work in most of the major browsers. We’re now at the point, as we approach Web 2.0, where the challenge is to also produce something that is also functionally intuitive.
Which, of course, is where the job I love comes in.