• Meeting my new nephew
• Traveling to New York City
• Being a bridesmaid in a steampunk wedding
• Working on the Side Project™
• Overindulging on McDonald’s Happy Meals (seriously, within a week of the last blog post, they started offering My Little Pony toys)
• Trying to drop down my search engine rank for the phrase “My Little Pony Porn” (crap, it just went up again)
• Inching ever closer to death (aka turning 30)
• Replaying Kingdom Hearts

…which leads to a tolerable transition to the meat of this post. A year ago the marketing team decided we wanted to write an article about video games for our monthly e-magazine. As the gamer in our small team, I wanted to make sure that gaming was presented fairly. This then led to not just one article, but three rather hefty ones dealing in-depth with the risks and rewards. In general, I think I left the articles in an empowering place for parents – it’s about judging each title individually, not just being all like, “Video Games Are Teh Evil!”

And with that said, it’s time for me to post the links to these articles. After all, Donald and Goofy are waiting for me so we can go rid Hollow Bastion of the Heartless.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 

One of the coolest things about where I work is the mission. We’re talking truly life-transforming and belief-shaping. Pornography is the easiest example. Before I started at my job, I found it morally objectionable but was personally ambivalent for non-Christians. (This is my default stance on many issues: I may find a behavior objectionable, but I’m not going to force someone who doesn’t share the basic tenants of my faith to live under my moral code.) Now, almost two years later, my opinions on porn are much more closely aligned with my opinions on drugs. In short: “NOOO DON’T DO IT YOU’RE RUINING YOUR BRAIN YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP STOP WATCHING IT NAOW!” Seriously. There’s a ton of science behind why it’s just about one of the worst things you can do to yourself sexually.

*climbs off soapbox*

So the point of that whole tirade is really to say that I get to dig into a lot of really fascinating issues regarding the brain and social trends. For example, 9 months ago or so I wrote an article about advertising. Fun fact: A lot of advertising standards changed in 1983. I was one year old. So I’m a member of a generation raised under Pavlovian advertising conditions. Advertisers got their hooks into me (us) at a young age and built brand loyalty into us before we even knew what it was.

See also: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If you know me at all, you know I have a great affection for this show. In fact, it’s one of only two shows I watch (the other is NBC’s Community, which totally deserves its own blog post because it is Just. That. Awesome.)

Anyway. My Little Pony. I have fond memories of the old show. Some of my favorite toys were My Little Ponies. I have a traumatic memory of giving away my favorite My Little Pony ever because I had a misguided concept of sacrifice when I was 8. (By the way, if anyone ever wants to give me a vintage Glory My Little Pony, you’d be my hero for, like, ever.)

And now, as an almost-30 adult, I still watch My Little Pony and buy the toys for myself my niece myself and my niece. And next time McDonald’s offers them as a Happy Meal toy, I am totally going to buy a bajillion Happy Meals. (Also, a hamburger happy meal with Diet Coke is only 13 points on Weight Watchers, so it’s sort of healthy. And cheaper. And comes with a toy.)

Again, I degress. My point is this: A 29-year-old single woman should not be going out of her way to watch a show for 7-year-olds. Yet here I am. Why? Because, in part, advertisers got their hooks on me, saying if you like this cool product you should give us all of your monies forever in order to buy derivative products forevarz. (The fact that current-gen My Little Pony toys are kind of ugly has saved me a ton of money. No joke.)

Is it fair to blame advertisers for my personal desire to own every cool fan-made My Little Pony or Community t-shirt ever created? No and yes. There’s personal responsibility, certainly. On the other hand, my admittedly limited research leads me to the conclusion that there’s something to be said for the whole idea that kids these days have a horrible sense of entitlement. We’re the boomerang generation; we stay with Mom and Dad well after the age our parents would have married and had kids; we waste our lives playing video games and buying toys and stupid t-shirts. And advertisers are at least partially to blame in a very Pavlovian sense.

Without further ado, here’s the article that I wrote for the June 2011 issue of Pure Minds Online.

Sold for Life: How Advertisers Influence Children, and What You Can Do About It

You’ve no doubt seen the kid in the grocery store, throwing a temper tantrum because his parents wouldn’t buy him the new toy or candy he wanted. Maybe you’ve even been that parent, and you know the sting of the dirty looks for not giving up and buying your child the treat, just to get him to calm down.

Or maybe you know a boy whose love for Spider-Man extends so far that his bedroom is decorated solely in that theme, and he’ll only eat Spider-Man mac and cheese because it “tastes better.”

Perhaps you’ve even seen a group of 5-year-old girls celebrating a birthday with pedicures at a salon.

The common thread to these is not bad parenting, as some people may be quick to assume. The common thread is advertising. Marketers are doing everything in their power to influence your purchases through your children.

Read the rest of the article…

I’ve actually done quite a bit of writing over the last year, mostly for work. Since this website was at one point supposed to be a portfolio, I figure I’ll cross-post some of the pieces I’ve written for anyone who’s interested.

So! Since it went live on Monday, here are my thoughts on singleness via my workplace.

4 Reasons Accountability is Critical for Singles

“It is not good for man to be alone.”

If you’re at all familiar with this verse, you’re probably used to hearing it in the context of marriage. Perhaps you’ve heard it in a sermon or during a wedding ceremony.

And if you’re living in prolonged singleness, perhaps every time you hear it, you feel somewhat less-than-sufficient for not having somebody. Or maybe the opposite is true, and you have a sense of smug superiority, and you think to yourself, “Relationships are for other people. Me? I can do it all on my own.”

But this verse is about more than marriage. Nobody, not even those who choose singleness, is ever called to do life alone. Jesus always sent the disciples out in pairs, and Paul always traveled with companions. Or consider James 5:16, which says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.”

In reality, we singles need to stick together. Those of us who live alone are especially vulnerable to temptation simply because there’s nobody there to walk in on us. So whether our temptations are to watch pornography or to waste our lives on TV or video games or to wallow in bitterness over our lack of relationships, accountability is critical for us to continue growing in Christ.

Read the rest…

One of my workplace’s traditions is a Christmas decorating contest. We’re encouraged to go all out on decorations, and one day at lunch the executive team will wander through the office, freely accepting bribes. The winners receive things like free bagels for the department.

Here’s the thing about our Marketing department. We are a busy, jaded bunch who manage to squeeze in more stuff than we can probably technically handle. We’ve had a surprising number of bonding experiences and enjoy each other a lot, but we also don’t really know how to justify “fun” (e.g. “decorating”) when we really have about 20 things to do within the next 5 hours. Last year we pulled together a last-second haphazard Star Wars Christmas theme (complete with a tree topped with a cutout of the Death Star), but our judges being the wrong kind of nerds, we (deservedly) did not even remotely place. Last year’s winners were our Customer Service Representatives (they completely wrapped their desks or something); our User Experience department for creating an interactive event focused on the execs’ experience; and the Developers, for going with a “We’re Developers” theme and doing things like a Christmas tree made out of Mountain Dew cans.

So how would a marketing department compete with that?

A depressingly accurate artistic rendition of the Christmas Ball

Fast forward to this year. Our Project Manager came in carrying something the Internets tell me is called a “Kissing Ball.” This green garlandy thing had silver-painted bells and holly pinned to it and a loop for convenient hanging. It jingled when you moved it. It was also pretty dang ugly when hanging like that. On the other hand, it immediately garnered several unique reactions.

“It looks like intercontinental ballistic mistletoe.”

“It’s the Death Star masked in shrubbery!”

At some point in there, we started discussing what we would actually do for our Christmas decorations.

“You know what would be great?” our blogger said. “We should just leave it at this one decoration and do a full presentation on why the Christmas Ball is the ultimate decoration.”

From there, an idea was born. We started gathering reaction quotes from coworkers (“What do you think of our lovely decoration?” “It’s lovely.”) The blogger and I brainstormed some of the features of the Christmas Ball, which we fleshed out in a PowerPoint presentation. The Christmas Ball even invaded my dreams. I woke up at 4:30 last Thursday morning and couldn’t stop giggling because of the way the blogger was presenting it in my dream.

I then got up and created a landing page and lead nurturing campaign.

Oh yes. You see, we’re good little marketers after all the training we’ve had this year. We can spit out stats like none other and run successful presentations in our very dreams. We are marketing machines.

This landing page was followed by two more nights of insomnia (long story), the result of one of which was a brochure. The night before, the Project Manager had the awesome idea of buying some dollar store flashlights to shine on the Christmas Ball, and the day of the judging (12/20), she added the idea of doing a singalong to that great Christmas classic, “O Christmas Ball.”

And the presentation? You can see it for yourself. (The password is MarketingBall79.)

All in all, it was a success. We won third place (coffee and pastries), and we got to make fun of ourselves in the process. For what’s the fun in life if you can’t have a little madness every now and again?

So this post by danah boyd popped up in my RSS feed. Go read it – it’s short – but the gist is that a girl who is forbidden from using Facebook by her parents but uses it anyway has a therapist who (a) lets her use Facebook at her office and (b) actually talks about what she’s doing online.

Now, there are a few things to say about that. First, the girl should have obeyed her parents as long as she’s underage. I mean, it’s one of the 10 Commandments. Even if you don’t agree from the moral perspective, they still have years of experience (and theoretically wisdom) on the girl, and are looking out for her. Second, I don’t think the therapist should have allowed – and actively encouraged! – the girl’s disobedience, even in a controlled environment.

That being said, there’s a remarkable amount of good stuff to glean from such a short article:

1. Parents (probably) shouldn’t forbid their kids from using social networks. danah rightly points out that such parents “don’t understand that they’re pushing their kids to choose between social status and parental obedience.” This girl chose disobedience, which I suspect contributed strongly to her depression.Now, no parent will ever be perfect – my own, for example, in trying to teach me to make wise food decisions, tightly controlled what I ate, and thus made food a bigger deal in my life than it should have been, which partially led to my overindulging and current weight problems. (I think they did an excellent job in most other areas, but fully admit I’m biased.)Point being: prohibition, especially of things other people do commonly (whether it be keeping candy around the house or going on Facebook), may actually encourage disobedience.
2. Parents should talk to their kids about what they do online. The therapist is actually doing the parents’ job for them – “They have discussions around her photos and her friend’s status updates.” This is exactly what parenting is about (and what Covenant Eyes provides) – actually talking through decisions. “Is this photo appropriate for a profile pic? Why or why not?” “How much personal information should you share?” “What privacy settings do you have set up? How can we change those?”

The marketing professional in me says it’s now time to sell you on Covenant Eyes. However, since most of the people who I expect to read this aren’t parents (and since this is supposed to be my personal blog, not a corporate one), I’ll spare you the pitch and instead, close with danah’s final thought:

If you’re a parent, please think twice before you get all control-freak on your teen kids. They need space to engage with friends in a healthy manner. And regardless of how you grew up, that means the Internet today. Exclusion isn’t a solution.

And having coworkers like me and Alaina, whose souls have been revealed to be the color of “dark, dark evil,” is never easy.

Alaina has, of course, written up a full report of our shenanigans. In brief, it involves erasing his penguin artwork and stabbing things with a vampire spork.

Again, I kind of feel bad for him. I know what it’s like to be the office scapegoat. (I’m actually surprised I haven’t fallen into that role…yet). And really, I should probably try to minimize the torment of the guy who’s doing much of the coding for the new website at work.

If only he wouldn’t make himself such a darn easy target…

Alaina wrote up a full post about it (warning: contains me), so I’ll just direct you there for pictures. I would, however, like to add my own little postscript to the adventure.

1. You know you have a good job when your shenanigans are executively sanctioned. Our VP wandered through while Alaina and I were in the conceptual stage and gave approval to it. He even offered use of his iPhone to take photos if we needed it.
2. Our bathrooms are scary, scary places and would be fascinating case studies of material rhetoric. The picture with the cherubs was taken in the ladies’ room. Put it this way: the cherub is but one example of the accoutrements. Flowers and statuettes everywhere. Definitely not my tastes. Though the awesome thing is, in showing these photos to a few people around the office, I learned that the men’s room is decorated like a hunting outpost (camouflage and all). Personally, I’d rather have the camo. But at least we now know where to go for weapons when the zombies attack.

I love my job.

The Fill the Bus project is being run by the Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement. We needed a very fast turnaround for this. I think it took me about 20 minutes total to create this image in Illustrator.

Interestingly enough, the font (Ravie) was a random pick. I wanted a font that would be fun and bouncy and chose it because it sounded like it might fit. Normally I’m pretty obsessive about font selection, but this time the first try actually worked well. I love it when things work out in my favor.