Mar
18
Starfucking 2.0 – A Primer
For those of you who don’t know, until an hour ago I was in Austin, Texas for a conference called SXSW, which stands for South by Southwest.
I have now seen more starfucking in 96 hours than you’d find in your average trip to Cannes. Since it’s important to learn new things when you go to events like this one, I’ve studied for the last several days, so that I can recreate the learning experience for you, in the comfort of your own home.
First we’ll tackle the concept stuff, and we‘ll do a practical example at the end of the lesson.
Know why you’re doing it in the first place.
Starfucking is not simply sucking up. Starfucking is attempting to create a relationship — ideally one that nets you either social or financial profit — that really has no business existing in the first place. Going up and saying, “OHMYGOD I LOVE YOUR BLOG SO FUCKING MUCH!!!” is simply ass-kissing, and we will likely discuss this in another post. The Havinator and I saw our share of that too, and we have thoughts.
Use the right buzzwords.
There is nothing more humiliating and career destroying than using outdated buzzwords. As far as I can tell, “community” is still popular, as are “long tail”, “scaleable”, “Tipping Point” and, naturally, “social”. Newcomers to the list are “tribes”, “outliers”, “crowd sourcing”, “streaming”, “sphere”, and the newly retro-chic “everything we know about **** is wrong.”
Name drop the right way.
Flashy shows of money aren’t cutting it these days. Really, you don’t actually know someone until you’ve been intimate with them. It’s not enough anymore to have seen Guy Kawasaki while you were skiing in the Alps. You have to have held his hair back while he puked in the women’s bathroom of a dive bar in Zurich.
Learn the power of the pause.
When telling people of your exploits with internet famous peop;e, it is important that you pause after mentioning their names to ensure your listeners understand the gravity of what you just said. “So, I was getting drunk with Arianna Huffington the other day… [pregnant pause]… and she said something really fascinating.”
Alternatively, just make assumptions.
The other option is to say, “So I was getting drunk with Arianna Huffington the other day and she said something really fascinating”. Blather on without giving the listener the chance to ask who the fuck Arianna is. Assume everybody starfucks as much as you do.
Details matter.
Because it is very easy to lie about your connection to important people, it is critical that you’re never vague. Embed within your conversations as many small details as you can. If you drank beer with Seth Godin, make sure you make it very clear to your victims exactly which beer you drank. (Aside: Ideally, it should be from a microbrewery. Everybody knows famous people don’t drink Bud.)
Know what people value.
We are in a recession. The economy sucks and no-one cares that you have a business… business cards can be had for free. Interrupting a perfectly good conversation to sneak your card in is so 1.0. Now you have to actually have clients. Try to say, “I was talking with a client the other day…” as often as you can, making sure to add verbal emphasis to “client”.
Also, try to ensure these clients remain nameless, even to the point where continuing the conversation would be socially awkward. If you don’t mention their names, there’s a chance that the other people in your conversation think you’re doing it to discreetly protect your roster of the rich and famous.
Remember, getting paid to do your job makes you rare and special and you should tell as many people as possible.
Use different short forms.
Do not use acronyms or short forms known by The Great Unwashed. In fact, avoid acronyms and short forms that make any logical sense to anyone, so as to avoid commoners accidentally using your short form and appearing to be cool when they’re not. Everybody knows this conference is sort of called SXSW (a short form for South by Southwest) but it is crucial you call it neither of those. You call it… wait. I can’t tell you because then I would be breaking my own rule.
Time for the practical example!
Pam from Escape from Cubicle Nation and I shared this place together for South By. We had this great midnight chat over cupcakes she picked up at this roadside Airstream trailer on South Congress. I told her that I had been talking with a client the other day and I told him, dude, everything you know about crowd sourcing is wrong. It’s about building a scaleable tribe! We should be working to stream the outliers into our sphere to make a really authentic social community.”
Now you know.
I am absolutely guilty of some of your “south by sins” (GET IT? I’M BEING IRONIC IN THE COMMENTS) but found this post hilarious nonetheless. Also so glad we met!
(OTHER COMMENTERS: I MET NAOMI. IN CASE YOU MISSED THAT. SHE IS VERY IMPORTANT!)
I was TOTALLY starfucking Naomi from Ittybiz out beneath the stars one night while sipping some chichi free-range, fair trade Merkan lager and eating organic, vegan, gluten-free pizza…
But then we started talking about Grey County, which negates even the flimsiest shred of coolness outlying my crowdsourced buzzwords had built up.
Dammit.
Pretty sure that the strange taste I’m experiencing right now is vomit in my mouth, after reading that practical example… do people really talk like this?
…
Yuck.
OHMYGOD I LOVE YOUR BLOG SO FUCKING MUCH!!!
Sorry, I’m an ass-kissing starfucker, I couldn’t resist… :)
Laugh? Vomit? Laugh? Vomit?
I think I actually need to go to SXSW before I can do any of these things. Sheesh. At least I’ve got the “oh my god I love your blog” thing down pat. I’ve been doing that since 1999, back when blogging was THE buzzword. And we knew it stood for weblogging. Yeah.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to talk to a client. ;)
When I’m internet famous, I’m going to demand that everyone deftly hold out their pinky finger while palming my balls when they talk to me. If they don’t, I will deliver a roundhouse kick to the chin.
So everyone keep that in mind when you see me next year at VANILLAICECON 2010.
Love ya. Mean it.
Dammit, Joel took my line.
Well, I’m going to pretend I don’t read comments before posting and say it anyway …
I saw where you were going the whole way, but I still threw up in my mouth a little bit when I read the last paragraph. But unlike Joel, I know that yes, people absolutely *do* talk like this.
$#%#ing AWESOME Article, Naomi!
I loved it. This clearly illustrates the uneasy feeling I get when I hear all the hype about SXSW. No doubt it’s a cool conference, but some people who talk about it are “too cool” for my comfort level.
I laughed so hard for about 15 minutes, that I forgot I was still in my little cubicle working at 9 P.M. Good medicine.
Kick ass writing!
After I get back from getting drunk on Reserve Label Black Butte Porter with Kevin Rose and discussing how everything we know about about social conversations is wrong… I’m gonna check out more of your sutffz.
So… am I missing the point when I just want to talk to people about their lives and their days and what project they’re working on and OMFG I don’t care if you’re the Pope or if you are the hotel maintenance person…
‘Cause sometimes the quiet ones have a better story to tell than the person surrounded by groupies.
Otherwise – I’d probably slap you a high five on my way to grab tea & then tell everyone in earshot I just saw you – over there – so your groupies can find you.
;)
So, feeling compelled in a fawning sort of way to leave a comment would be kinda the same thing, no? ;-)
I’m not sure that famous people don’t drink Bud. They just don’t ADMIT they drink Bud. Though I’m pretty sure Coors Light is the “beer” people who don’t like beer drink in order to say that they drink beer. Those of us who love beer, and were raised never to go near a mass market American “beer” with anything shorter than a 10 foot pole, would love it if they would just drink gin or something instead and stop making it look like we are trying to look cool by drinking micro-brews.
BTW, if you ever have cause to be in North Carolina or a state bordering NC, I have a good beer recommendation. I know a brewer in those parts.
I think Penelope Trunk put it best, “SXSW is like Prom for bloggers.” You get all dolled up in hopes of either getting laid or being the bitch of the ball.
So Naomi, how does it feel to be Bitch of the Ball? I’ve always wondered. And if you didn’t get laid, at least you got some decent cupcakes out of the deal.
“I was just telling a client how your practical example almost made hot tea come out of my nose. Sheesh, Naomi. GK and I will tweet you next time we go for botox a deux.”
Dear God, please never let me act like that IRL <– oops, there I go again.
God. I’m glad someone finally let slip what SXSW actually stands for. I thought it was some sort of weird Roman numeral thing I never learned.
I’m glad you went so I didn’t have to, but then that’s why we pay you the big bucks.
Now I love you even more. If you weren’t so damn far away I’d totally stalk you.
Same as it ever was…..:-)
And don’t forget to perfect that constant room/immediate vicinity scan while talking to someone, because ya know someone even MORE important to talk to/ overhear you could be nearby.
You know what they say: it ain’t who you know, it’s who you blow.
Do they issue knee pads as part of the registration packet or do you have to bring your own?
Hello Naomi, I just had a conversation on this very topic yesterday with a client who was interested in attending a conference like south by but was concerned about justifying and explaining the ROI and the metrics of synaptic-node-linking.
I told her that many of these conferences are portals in the new media marketspace that can provide a way to extend her personal network via a fractal geometry and optimize her social media presence.
Leveraging these connections would expand her sphere of influence many times over, creating an aura of credibility and authority that would establish her as a thought-leader and give her tremendous influence in her community. I helped her prepare a logarithmic analysis of the long-tail effects of hyper-connectivity in the e-commerce modality, and that cleared everything right up.
Of course I might just be full of crap.
(PS Looking forward to seeing you in Chicago)
Man, I’ve been waiting to read this post since about five minutes into SXSW when my gentleman friend said “the phrase ‘thought leader’ makes me want to reach for my revolver – and I don’t even have a revolver.”
Now I need to add every other word from @Stephen’s comment to that list too.
Looking forward to next year. I’ll let you hold my hair while I’m vomiting in some bar in Greece. If you’re lucky.
“Looking forward to seeing you in Chicago”
So is that preemptive starfucking?
Thanks Havi, I am glad that my comment inspired you, I worked hard on it.;-)
And as for “preemptive starfucking”, Drew, I have been waiting for more than a year to do some starfucking on Naomi, so yes, that is exactly what it is.
(FYI: Michael Martine got a good vid of Clay and Sonia wondering why Naomi was not at SOBCon last year – http://ittybiz.com/the-greatest-client-testimonial-evah-evah/ BTW Naomi uses the term “one of my clients” in that post. )
Naomi,
I find it hard to believe you have been to other events being the professional you are and being that Real.
Just a newbie here, no income yet, went to my first in Atalanta and amazingly discovered everyone knew what everyone else knew but were still in the same place. Do they call nowhere a place?
Hoping to turn it around at Willie Crawford’s Birthday Bash driving from Boston to this one too. I’ll be too tired to Starfuck but sure I’ll be in awe just seeing these folks.
Thanks. Someone had to say this.
I always try to wear a prophylactic to these events but this year there seemed no way NOT to get messed on.
Cheers!
Todd
OK. Um. So. Yeah. I finished posting this in bed with the jetlaggiest of jetlags. Apparently I forgot to turn off comments. Which is cool, because these are some of the best damn comments I’ve read in a long time. But now I look like a fuckhead for not responding to any of them.
Must go write blog post about comments maybe not sucking anymore. If you guys are the outliers — oh yes, I just said “outliers”! — and normal commentors suck again, I BLAME YOU ALL.
You don’t need to reply to the comments N (we’ve spoken a couple of times so I feel I have a greater connection to you that means I don’t need to use your whole first name anymore), just let the fawning masses paw over you and bask in the post-coital glow of being starfucked.
It’s the same within the personal development business, which is why I hate being in a room filled with other coaches. Makes me feel dirty.
I am rarely short on words. That was brilliant writing!
I love the online “Web Marketing Bullshit Generator” site of old.
Maybe it is time for it to be updated to include a “Social Media Conversation Bullshit Generator”. There’s plenty of online examples to parse for snippets. :)
Well said.
Didn’t make ‘South By’ this year myself (still fighting back tears on that one) but pretty much everything on your list is par for the course at every conference/gathering/convening of the ‘internet intelligentsia’ I’ve attended over the past 9 years.
What’s truly sad is how effective it’s been for some people…
haven’t laughed that hard in a while – thanks for making my Friday a much better day!
Holy crap, I kept meaning to respond to this post, but I was so busy talking with Guy Kawasaki, then I had to check in with Chris Brogan, then Kathy Sierra wanted to go horseback riding, and Tony Hsieh from Zappos was feeling a little out of sorts, so I had to get him grounded and on his way, and before I knew it, the time flew by.
Oh, did I mention I went to SXSW?
It was SO great spending time with you, although I will say that I would have liked at least 3 more hours of that conversation on the porch.
You promised to fix all my problems while we were roomies together, and I am STILL in need of your goddamn information, which means I will have to keep reading this blog, which will take me away from conversations with Robert Scoble, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin.
Damn you, woman. :)
Hysterical and painfully right on, Naomi – and you too, @Stephen. (Actually, all the comments were worth reading – a rare occurance!) I was in the music end of broadcasting for many years during the progressive-rock era (when FM radio mattered), and the vibe was the same even if the buzzwords were different. Some things never change.
By the way, isn’t SXSW (easier to write – fewer letters in this Twitter era) a music festival? Does anyone remember who played, or was everyone too busy starfucking?!?
OMG I <3 UR BLOG SO EFFING MUCH!
- (pedophilic starfucking 2.0 for tweens)
brilliant post! although i felt like the sxsw interactive groupies were too often confusing New Media Douchebags (http://youtube.com/watch?v=zSP8xm_gaK4) for stars. regardless, Ron’s got the right idea: they should include kneepads and waterproof ponchos in swag bags next year.
Still love this! It would be even more incredible with some SXSW pictures.. ya know, people posing with celebrities.
You don’t know me. I’m not famous. I am very sincere when I compliment someone, even if it isn’t ‘cool’. I don’t need to be famous, or ‘micro famous’; I just want to learn more so that I can be better at my job. This is why I @ someone famous on Twitter.
I’ve never been to SXSW. I thought I wanted to go in 2010 to learn, but I may be changing my mind about that if the only reason people go is to get famous.
Ok… I got halfway through this entry and started becoming worried that perhaps people I knew might end up in the article. Then I realized that this wasn’t likely because they ostensibly travel in different circles. Then I realized after reading the comments and thinking about it that it was likely that at least a few of the people I’ve met go there. Then I felt a bit ewwy and hoped it wouldn’t result in a sex chart, and then I was relieved to know that I wouldn’t be on this one either…
The only contribution I can make to this conversation is to say that it’s not networking if it involves your genitals. It’s something else, and if you do it right, the ‘long tail’ that results will be an amicable relationship that does qualify as networking.
I could name drop like a complete slut, but one of the reasons why I could do that is because I never do. There’s an odd combination of anti-marketing for you.