I’ve been reading more of the book on creating your “brand”. I can’t use all of it, but there are some highly useful concepts in there.
Theophilus, in asking about Vash, is actually requesting something of a brand description for “Vash“. We do that all the time, look for short-hand to get a handle on people and concepts. It is a physical process actually, the reticular formation of the brain at work.
Branding Web Presence
I was thinking about my ‘web presence’, ahem, such as it is, on the internet horizon (that miniscule blip…oops! you missed it), as I was reading the book. My website started as a desire to do something creative from long-lost artistic leanings and to share some of the hard-won practical knowledge in the important areas of my life. Sparked by a need to to keep tabs on my wayward, but computer-genius, son.
So Ilona’s Reflecting Pool grew and evolved; it had the parameter of concentrating on the “whatsoever is lovely” of Philippians 4:8. It is filled with experimentation in graphics, layout, topics, and is a mix of copying what I admire and producing things of my own origination. It is a collage of expression.
And out of that grew ‘truegrit’ (this blog).
This design is more stable and businesslike, which is why I so wanted the MT mode of blogging. It is clear and serious, which fits how I want to be expressed here. Want playful? I have a blog for that… and I am trying to have separation of intent, which I find is useful for the web…. but I always break my own rules.
Truegrit grew because not everything in this life is “lovely”, but in order to produce the lovely , one needs to address the corrections of ‘wrong’ and ‘faulty’. It is the present incarnation of my old “Opinions” page, in which it should appear in an iframe. Which itself was stimulated by participation in the forums. ( that brings me to Vash, and forum life…..)
Comparing brands
…. and how affection and respect can break the barriers.
I want Vash to describe herself, but I can give you her labeled identity vs. my label identity.
We met on my first visit to a Delphi Forum, the old “ExWitch”, which is no more. I went there by way of a featured url on a Christian newsletter.
Vash quickly became something of a Nemesis for me there. She is young, I am old. She is atheist ‘by name’, and I am ‘Christian Fundamentalist’ ( but be careful-I have a different definition than many of you in this). She is Socialist- left in politics, I am mostly conservative. She is smarter than I am, but I have more life experience.
We have duked it out on many an issue. My profile is stubborn endurance, hers is piercing, belly-finding probes. You’d better be real with Vash on the boards, but that is a little like me. I like her, I value her input.
She’s seen me go through my usual track of becoming a lightening rod, occasionally incinerated. I think she feels some pity, and so has become kind to me. It is one of the few long-lasting online relationships I have experienced.
There’s much more if you go into detailed analysis, like thinking style of INTP, and stuff like that, but that is peripheral here. forums no longer give me the satisfaction of new stimuli, which is one reason I spent time there. I also have an undercurrent of the web being a type of ministry. In my terms of what that is for me…. and the forums that elicited that dried up or fossilized…or something. Imploded, maybe.
I learned much about how to, and how not to, communicate with people. Always one of my weak points.
How many dead-ends there are in debate of the issues is another illustration the forum format provides.
People often believe what they want to believe. but there are some sincere seekers out there. And those are the ones that interest me. And I am a die-hard when it comes to believing that discussion will accomplish more than propaganda. I very much want to leave my world a better place for having existed here. The web offers possibilities for that.
Forums, Lists, Blogosphere, Website-Surfing are all different communities with intersecting boundaries. So far, blogging is the wave of now. It is where you are most likely to find truly intelligent commentary and genuine respectful interaction. There’s lots of hooey, too, but that is life, you know?
Anyway…. enough blogging.
I never knew how you landed up at ExWitch! I got there on my first day, lured by a discussion on Nietzsche 😉 And from thence onwards…
I know what you mean about certain forums. My membership expires in July, I’ll not be renewing it. The bloom went off the fruit 😉 most of the characters and interesting people stopped hanging about there and the discussions are now very same-old same-old. Like you, I’m getting more caught up in blogs than forums.
Anyway, it wasn’t “pity” and “being kind” as you know fine well ;)At first I thought you were one of these types, common online, who will stick to a belief in the teeth of all the evidence against it. You probably thought I was very arrogant (and male, if I remember rightly ;)) I think you decided to go in in fire mode, like your SN. Also I was having my own issues with regard to Christians which were really not being helped by the ones I met online and off.
But luckily I got to know you better after the bad start and realised I had misjudged your character badly.
With regards to your religion, of course we hold very different views but I have a lot of respect for your position. This will probably sound a bit daft but there’s one part of the Bible which reminds me of you – “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”. That’s a fragment I remember so I might have it a bit wrong. I read the “working out” as “working out a problem” not “working out your notice.” 😉 That might be wrong too.
Anyway, what I mean by that is that you’re sitting working Christianity out day by day – its applications, what it is, what you and God are. It makes me sure that you really do believe it, and it’s not the lazy collection of half-understood maxims it seems to be for so many people online. Some of them seem to have God as a best pal who hates everything they hate and the Bible as a big book which proves they’re always right. They don’t even need to read that book, or only selected passages.
So I think you are a *good* example of fundamentalist Christianity. Maybe you are like they used to be in the olden days, before telly made us all lazy and in need of soundbites.
I’d better stop with that, because if I offended you in the first part I’ve probably just dug the hole deeper and fallen further into it!
Anyway, your label-description of me was quite accurate. I don’t think I can add much to that, I’m an atheist and a socialist. 😉
..so do I have your permission to keep talking about “us”?
How could I find anything offensive about all that stuff I find so glowing? ….maybe I should look over it more carefully;) JK.!!
*** for the readers information: My Delphi persona was named FireForNow and desirous of building little fires under people’s comfort zones.
My first impression of this “Vashnevskaya” was why can’t he/she leave me alone? Everytime I turn around my comments are flayed off the bones. But it made me think, and carved my ego down to size a bit.
And it is always nice to trade solutions for all the worlds problems…if only they would listen to us:) HA!