The Lost Coder: entry

Before I burn this to the ground, I want to say this first. I have been involved in search engine optimization for a little over 7 years, I’ve been a part of helping small businesses launch a dream as well as helping fortune 500 companies keep a dream alive. I have personally chosen not to help large companies and corporations because frankly, they’re not really there to serve the publics best interest. The money that can be made isn’t worth my conscience kicking me for years to come.

First off, I’ve personally struggled with my ethics versus what I do for a living almost everyday. I am pro-small business, anti-establishment by nature. I understand full and well that the people that work for the corporate meat grinders are just trying to support themselves and their families, and that the world can’t function on small business transactions alone. I understand that business is like the chain of evolution where the fittest survive and the rest will be eaten or fade away into obscurity.

Mass Mind Control

My problem, specifically with online marketing, is that it is unchecked when it comes to transparency to truth and honesty in advertising. It’s beginning to follow the same formula as TV does; we will tell you what you want, we will tell you what is hip, we will tell you how to get it, we will form your opinion for you. Social media platforms opened up to the ability for consumer reviews, but of course that leaves it open to the shills to pollute consumer opinion on the same sites. Then there’s the fucking morons on the net who have no business sharing their opinion in the first place because they can’t seem to think past the herd mentaility or whatever the TV tells them is cool. All you need is a checkbook, a pulse and an internet connection to become an authority on something.

I’m guilty of abiding the enemy. I have helped people and companies that take part in business practices and product offerings that I would much rather take a fat steaming shit all over than help them market. I have helped people who have found ways to cash in on the fear and paranoia of the Bush administrations propaganda, the tragedy of 9-11, and even the Iraq war. I have enabled the opportunists, because I have a family to support. But then something funny happened…

I stopped. I looked. I realized. I got angry. Not the felonious kind of angry where I’d burn down city hall, but the kind of angry that births resolve and decision. I see what the search engines do to business owners by dangling the golden carrot on a string in front of them, then I see what internet marketers are resulting to to keep businesses happy while chasing the golden carrot, and finally what consumers are doing to avoid the tactics and how the search engines keep profiting in the end regardless. The search engines are polluting the internet for profit and ruining the last frontier we have for honest and real communication.

They Compete For You

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft all share something in common. They want money. They don’t care how the businesses pay for it, just fucking pay for it or else you can’t succeed on their medium. This is where Pay-Per-Click comes into play. To back this up, have a look at how Google has their 2 biggest competitors doing everything except for calling in witch doctors and making voodoo dolls to catch up to them. It’s all about the money. It has NOTHING to do with presenting a new way for the public to get relevance and honesty versus paid placement and intentional dishonesty through gobs of cash.

Deep down inside, I hate marketing in itself. The purist in me believes that if something is truly good enough, it will market itself. Of course considering the sheer volume of internet users, one could say that it’s statistically impossible for a product or service to carry it’s own weight to the point it marketed itself globally. Even though that’s exactly what Google did. But it’s better to disregard that example because it makes too much sense.

This Isn’t About Blame, Just Accountability

Our compliance for accepting bogus advertising and forced product placement started with the radio because we could tune it out. Then came television.. fucking up the program right off the bat. It has been the one invention (outside of money, glorification of sex and drugs) that will keep the masses stupid and ready to make decisions for the wrong reasons. Marketing, or rather, concerted lying, enables these companies to have a mass audience and is just as insidious as actually buying into the bullshit.

To me, the internet represented a last frontier for honesty in marketing.. kinda like one last chance for people to say whether or not something is total bullshit and not worth buying or if it’s something they feel confident in having in their homes. The power of word of mouth still goes a distance in consumer confidence, and so does the social portals allowing people to vent and smell out the shills (i.e. craigslist), but the wolves will always beset these protected doors with tried and true tactics to keep the masses under the spell.

A Scary Trend

Here’s a thought; have you noticed that since 2001, there has been an explosion of people doing online shopping versus actually going in person to a store? Let’s really call this what it is; since 9-11, people have been feeling more inclined to avoid public contact because of the following things;

• fear of the people outside their homes
• listening to pundits and supposed authoritative types echoing fear laced propaganda
• companies looking to counteract this trend by focusing on how to cash in on the surge of internet users afraid to go outside

Seriously, how many holiday gifts have you bought that came from an ecommerce portal in the last 4 or 5 years?  Do the math here… companies are relying on our dependency for the internet as a solution.. a place to go when we don’t want to go out.. when we can’t think of a good reason to go out.  Search engines deliver us there, but the online marketing delivered the companies to that position.  And anyone can get on the front page of the search engines if they can afford it.  Whether they deserve it or not.

That’s the nature of business right?  Beat your competitor to the gate or lose that sale.  The playing field that the internet was available to prescribe to any and all businesses was one of limitless equality for market share.  But be it in human nature, many found out how easy (and profitable short term) it is to lie on a web page, and even easier for a web designer to provide a medium, a web designer to establish an appealing facade, and some marketing people to broadcast this bullshit because a paycheck is riding on it.

Conclusion

SEO in itself is not a bad thing.  It is a service made up of grossly underpaid and overworked professionals who are tasked with publicizing a product or service and then managing the traffic flow from that effort.  Everyone involved in this industry has a point where they can’t work with some company in good conscience and choose to walk away.  I’ve done it and I have never, NEVER, regretted it once.  Hell I’ve missed out on some seriously good money because of it.. but ya know what?  Fuck ‘em… I’m the one who I have to really answer up to with the choices I make.

Everyday I’m watching the internet become a beacon of polluted consumerism.. a capitalist wet dream full of greed and scams.  Social portals start pure and become victim to cronyism to those with the most pull and money for swaying public perception.  There is a limit for all of us when it comes to being shovel fed bullshit, but when will it be met and where will the internet be at that point?