Putting Fake Spin On Your Own Work

October 23, 2012 By David Griesing 2 Comments

If your readers on Amazon aren’t writing enough glowing reviews about your books, what’s an enterprising author to do?

Well if you’re British crime writer R.J. Ellroy, you start anonymously writing and posting those glowing reviews yourself. And why stop there? While he was busily embellishing his own critical commentary, he also was posting anonymous slash’n’burn lines about authors and books he viewed as competitors—for over 10 years, apparently—until he was outed recently by a fellow author.

Submitting a bogus review in your favor is so common these days that it’s been given a name: Sock-Puppeting. When you’re not getting the reviews you wish you were getting from real people, you “anonymously” give yourself the review you’d like to have.

A few words about Ellroy. He wasn’t a new writer, looking for a fair shake and a couple of kind words (although just starting out would hardly take him off the hook). Instead, he is the author of many highly successful books, some of which have won major book awards. So even successful people can be fakers if, for whatever reason, they still don’t think they’re being held in high enough regard.

How highly regarded did Ellroy want to be? For a glimpse of what he wished others were saying about him, take a look at an excerpt from one of those “anonymous” reviews he posted.

I don’t need to really say anything about the plot of this book. All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Some of it was chilling, some of it raced along, some of it was poetic and langorous and had to be read twice and three times to really appreciate the depth of the prose…it really is a magnificent book.

I’ve got to admit. If I read that customer review, I might go out and buy Ellroy’s book. That’s because we often trust what supposedly “regular people” have to say about a book or restaurant or hotel stay more than what the “experts” are telling us. Which, of course, is why Sock-Puppetry is so rampant: it seems so credible, and the puppeteers rarely end up being caught.

There are fines and penalties imposed for writing fake reviews by regulators like the Federal Trade Commission. And if your colleagues already view you with suspicion (some already thought Ellroy was “self-aggrandizing” and “chippy”), they may provide the kind of policing that recently brought Ellroy’s mischief to light. Experts are also getting better at detecting suspicious word and phrasing patterns in on-line reviews through linguistic analysis. But this isn’t principally about being caught. What I’m wondering is: why aren’t all the fake reviewers stopping themselves before they put those socks on their hands?

Because, of course, this not just an isolated instance of an author like Ellroy extolling his “poetic and langorous” prose. It’s faker after faker, with lots of writers being exposed for submitting bogus reviews. And that doesn’t begin to capture all the “non-professional writers” who are anonymously celebrating their own “amazing” products or “kid-glove” services.

While some review-hosting organizations like Expedia are trying to reduce the problem by ensuring that the reviews they post are by “real” consumers, the questions remain. Why is there a near epidemic of fake customer reviews today, and what’s to be done about it?

Why it‘s happening is because in book selling (as in all forms of retail), we’re in a period of rapid market change. Authors simply have less control over their books and their income as the traditional publishing model breaks down. Indeed, every bricks-and-mortar store or restaurant or salon is facing new challenges when a customer’s smart phone can scan for more competitive on-line prices while she’s standing in your store, or be guided to your supposedly “five-star” establishment while she’s walking down the street. In a retail climate like this, the pressure is on to give yourself every advantage you can get.

During anxious times, those with a weak grasp of their moral compass find it easier to cast ethics aside and do whatever they can get away with in order to succeed. So what’s to be done about this?

Almost everyone writing his first fake review must wonder at some point: “Should I submit it?” It may be a split second of wondering, but it’s a pause that leads to a soul-search in almost all of us whenever we’re presented with an opportunity to improve the odds in our favor in a dishonest way. Sometimes we don’t come up with much when we dive into our souls—but in and of itself that may be the wake-up call that gives us pause. An empty soul search can also plant the seed that it’s a skill (like lots of others) you can acquire.

In my childhood days at the shore, taking those first dives down for the striking shell or scuttling crab, I always came up empty handed. But with practice I learned. Soul-searching is like that. It takes practice to understand what the choices are, and thereafter, how to make them.

You probably won’t be caught if you submit a fake on-line review, despite Ellroy’s experience and that of a few of his fellow sock-puppeteers. But better to refrain from doing so altogether because you’ve made the most out of that pause before you hit “post.”

(This piece appeared as an Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 14, 2012.)

Can There Be Redemption in Armstrong Tragedy?

October 18, 2012 By David Griesing 6 Comments

Who do you turn to for advice when your integrity is called into question? Is it a spouse, a trusted friend, a professional advisor? Is it a stranger who might tell you the truth that others aren’t telling you, because they’re too close, too afraid, or too self-interested?

As the Lance Armstrong saga unfolds, I continue to feel sadness for this falling hero, and as I wrote a couple of days ago, for many of our falling heroes. But today it’s also worth asking who these heroes call upon—indeed who any of us reach out to for guidance when our darker side has put us between a rock and a hard place, and we’re trying to find a way out back out while still holding our heads up.

Armstrong announced yesterday that he was stepping down as chair of the Live Strong Foundation that he founded as one cancer survivor supporting other cancer survivors. While the Foundation needed greater distance from its controversial founder long before this, there are reasons it stuck with him. Live Strong saw a big spike in contributions last summer immediately after Armstrong announced that he would no longer defend the doping charges that were accumulating against him. But it was about more than just the money.

We support you, Lance. We’re with you while you tough it out—one more time!

But today, after so much damning evidence, what do these supporters–and indeed all of us who believed in you—want to hear you say?

The USADA’s doping charges, bolstered by the confessions of many of his teammates, are swamping the boat where Armstrong still sits, protesting his innocence. When you’re rich and famous, there are plenty of people on hand to talk to about your press releases. But who, if anyone, is Armstrong talking to about what he should do next to replenish his soul?

© 2008 Robert Seale Robert Seale Photography www.robertseale.com 832-654-9572 — photo by Robert Seale

Is the next act a cornered Armstrong admitting to the flashing cameras that “you finally got me,” or can it be something more consequential than that? He’s given powerful lessons to other cancer survivors. Maybe he can find a way, is trying right now to find a way to give us something we can learn from him about this battle too.

Is that too much to hope?

In all probability, Lance Armstrong will only be able to look us in the eye again if the people he’s talking to, and bringing into his internal dialogue, are helping him to reach a note of genuine redemption from his current struggles. At best, they will not only help him to face his particular truth but also the find the most productive ways to respond to it.

There are times in our lives when we all need to have these kinds of conversations, but find ourselves with no one to talk to.

I hope that the protean survivor in Armstrong has those people, that he has enabled himself in this way too, and that they are helping him today.

For the rest of us, it’s really much the same.

Wisdom is making sure that we all have the right people to talk to when we need to find a redemptive way to move on after being trapped by our own tragic flaws. They are relationships that truly matter.

Links:

Thinking About Lance Armstrong

October 14, 2012 By David Griesing 3 Comments

A month or so ago, we learned that the world’s most celebrated cyclist had decided not to contest charges that were being brought against him by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). This week, the Agency set out its case against him. The power of Lance Armstrong’s decision to stop fighting the USADA’s “witch hunt,” together with the startling indictment of his behavior that has now been presented, make it difficult to know what to think—or even how to start thinking—about what has happened here.

Before reaching the question of who is “right” and who is “wrong,” there are several related questions worth thinking about.

Heroes are inspiring. They teach us lessons about fortitude and sacrifice and making the most out of extraordinary gifts. An individual like Lance Armstrong, in the lead and pumping up that final incline, certainly seemed to be the distillation of all of those things. A true hero’s quest influences each of us in different ways, but the influence is almost entirely positive. We vicariously join him as he reaches up and touches the stars. No one ever thinks he should be doing the kinds of regular things the rest of us are doing.

On the other hand, our media driven culture is often as relentless in its drive to pull our heroes down as it was in elevating them in the first place. When Armstrong said in essence, “I won’t dignify these charges with one more minute of my defense,” some who rallied around him at the time also voiced their opposition to the reckless way that we create and destroy our heroes.

As a culture, we build these men and women up (often way too much) only to tear them down (sometimes way too far) when they begin to reveal that they were only human after all. It’s the modern version of ancient Greek tragedy. But as part of the entertainment cycle, to treat our heroes like this time and time again is just plain wrong. It would be far better to view them from start to finish as the mere morals that they are.

On the other hand, the rule enforcers who are front and center when our heroes are torn down often seem entirely too mortal. When lecturing giants about their ethical obligations, they tend to look small, and come off as a tad repressed. Moreover, it used to be common knowledge that monitors of virtue not only did their enforcement work in secret, but also had laundry that was as dirty, if not dirtier than those they passed judgment upon. Given these lingering doubts, what should we make of bodies like the USADA who are trying to maintain ethical standards by staying one step ahead of the cheaters?

What reduces our doubts is the largely transparent way in which the rule enforcers go about their business today. In the Armstrong investigation, the USADA’s findings were published in major newspapers, and most of the underlying “facts” were made available to the public. You and I get to review as much or as little of this record as we want before reaching our own conclusions.

The more transparent their decision-making, the more legitimate the moral judges become. Openness also makes it easier to argue for how essential their role can be. Even during the ritual murder of our heroes, we can all learn something about what is “right” and “wrong” when the ethics monitors invite us to think about issues of social consequence along with them. Transparency allows for a teachable moment, that is, as long as we are open to being taught.

I don’t know whether Lance Armstrong did what the USADA says he did. “The alleged facts” seemed overwhelming until I recalled Armstrong’s very public participation in marathons and Iron Man competitions over the past couple of months. If you really had done all the things he has been accused of, would you be able to make highly publicized appearances like this, while talking up your good work at the Live Strong Foundation? Can anyone really be so brazen—or so deluded? If Armstrong’s not the victim of trumped-up charges, what has our Hero Machine helped to produce here?

In a decade long factual record supported by the confessions of his teammates, the USADA accuses Armstrong not only of concocting an elaborate blood doping scheme to bolster his individual performances, but also of using his stature in the sport and the power of his personality to browbeat his teammates into cheating as well. Why? So they would be deterred from ever calling him out. According to the charges, the many ways that Armstrong doped his way to victory are almost swamped by how relentlessly he enforced his code of silence.

When the cheaters can (even allegedly) act like this, those charged with maintaining our moral standards need to be at least as resourceful and steadfast as those they are trying to deter.

Because we all deserve to have a fair shot—and because our true heroes require it.

On Being Part of Something Bigger Than Yourself

October 7, 2012 By David Griesing 4 Comments

For your work to be fulfilling, it should further goals that mean something to you.

Of course, goals that are important to you have everything to do with your values. Do you want to be more generous to others, more productive, more creative? Is your work goal to become richer, improve your status, give your family a better life, or heal the world?

You may want all of these things, but some of them you want more than others. Personal ethics ranks what is most important to you, so that you are able make decisions with real consequences even when your values are competing with one another.

In several posts, I’ve argued that it’s essential to develop your ethical decision-making skills before you have to use them (e.g., posts on preparation for life and work in school and how to respond to child abuse). It’s far more difficult to learn how to weigh your values and act upon them when you’re facing hard choices, under pressure.

One way is to have conversations that reproduce what some families used to have around the dinner table: regular talk about morally ambiguous situations that arise everyday, and how your personal values would lead you to respond to them.

For some, religion also provided a regular framework for considering how values should play out in our lives, although for many of us this is no longer true. But the line between being religious and non-religious is rarely a bright one. Some of us believe more during the holidays, around birth, illness, or death, or during transitions in our lives. Looking at it this way, many of us are still tied (at least somewhat) to a community of shared values that enables our decision-making.

On the other hand, when you cut your ties to a believing community altogether, where does that leave you?

This past week, there was an extraordinary article by Hanna Pylvainen, reacting to a new reality show about a group of Amish young people “as they forgo horses and buggies for New York City’s taxis and subways.” The show follows in the wake of earlier programs like “Jesus Camp” and “Sister Wives” that aimed to shock, mock, and entertain a “more enlightened” audience about the oppression of religion. The article’s aim was not to provide grist for that mill, but to give voice to what these young people had given up when they left a community of shared values.

The author herself had left a fundamentalist community. As a child, she chaffed against its rules and when she could leave, she did so. She’s now recalling the “comfort” she had once gained from being “unshakably tied” to “these people.”

In leaving the church when I was in college, I soon saw I had not stepped into anything else. My admittance into a dubious form of atheism merited no special membership. Atheism seemed, if anything, a community that eschewed community, that strove to preserve the strength of the individual. Thus I clung to anything that might provide stability—a boyfriend, school friends, professors. But these relationships, good as some were, were largely transient—friendships that swelled and faded in response to the changing mileage between us.

This isn’t to say the world has not been kind to me in its own fashion, that I have not found my own freedom valuable—but it is a lonely place, bound to nothing but what I bind myself to. And I find myself worrying, always, that these ties will not be lasting enough. (emphasis added)

To put it simply, Hannah Pylvainen’s experience made her sad for the Amish boys and girls in the new TV show.

Communities where there are shared values about what to do and how to live come in different colors and flavors, in religious as well as non-religious versions. At their best, they are extensions of those dinner table conversations described above.

When you bring your values into your work, the support of a community that shares your values where you work, play and give thanks can mean—quite simply—everything.

If you are still connected to a community like this, appreciate what it is giving you.

If you are not, think seriously about building one around the values that you have brought into your work.

Take More Control of Your Next Job Search

October 2, 2012 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

To get many jobs today, you have to fit a pre-determined mold—if only you can figure out how to pour yourself into it.

It’s no longer: submit your resume, have an interview, establish personal chemistry, get the job. These steps are simply irrelevant for many positions today, particularly those you apply for on-line. Instead, it’s far more likely that you’ll provide information about yourself via some personality testing, and that the employer’s algorithm will decide whether you get the job.

No surprise. It’s answer will almost always be “no.”

Of course, it’s nearly impossible to participate in a meaningful way in this kind of process.

How can you determine beforehand whether you have more or less of what an employer is looking for? Do you answer their personality questions truthfully or try to give them the answer you think they’re after? When you don’t make their cut, how do you find out “why you didn’t” so that you can make a better pitch and present yourself in a better light the next time?

In this brave new world, applying for any job on-line is increasingly a “shot in the dark.” When you don’t know their rules, it’s nearly impossible to figure out how to succeed at their game.

Well maybe it’s time to start making the job search more about your game.

These posts are about taking control of your working life by, among other things, helping you find the job that’s right for you. The goal is work that empowers you when you’re doing it, and helps you to make the kind of difference in the world that you want to make.

As a result, these posts won’t help you to get better at pouring yourself into some job computer’s pre-determined mold. But the increasingly common ways that jobs are being filled today do suggest something that everyone in the job market can do to take more control over where their careers are going.

My advice is to learn more about who you are, and what you’re best at, by giving yourself your own personality test. They are tools for self-discovery as well as for filling many jobs today.

There are plenty of tests out there. They’re easy to find and relatively inexpensive to take. And while an expert will always be able to tease out more nuance from your test results than you’ll be able to, there is still plenty that you can learn from them about “how you like to operate” and “where you might find your best fit” in the working world.

It may not be where you’ve been looking for jobs at all.

To get a better sense of the direction that’s right for you, there are tried and true assessments you can take on your own. Examples are the Myers-Briggs (to help you identify career choices that are compatible with how you make decisions, draw conclusions, arrive at judgments and relate to others) and the Strong Interest Inventory (how your personal interests compare with the interests of people in particular careers). Determining your “preferences” will sometimes confirm what you already know, but could also surprise you. Talking to others about what they like and don’t like about their work can provide some additional ways of thinking about your test results.

And that’s the point: to think about your results with an open mind, and start to put together a career path that’s right for you. For example: how have your “preferences” already contributed to your success? And how do the successes you have under your belt qualify you for what you really want to do next?

Let your head and your heart ruminate on what you discover. Sleep on it, dream about it. Do some research about possible jobs that are out there. Make some notes. Test your conclusions with friends and family. Dream about it some more. But most of all, take what you’re discovering about yourself and your unique value in the marketplace seriously.

Then you’ll be ready to start looking for jobs where they’re playing “your game” with “your kind of rules.” It’s about taking control of your working life.