Note: This really needs to be hosed off, but I'll probably wait to do that till I get the Belief part up. And thanks to His Illustriousness rolygate who was sweet enough to point out the typo. I guess I had adapters on the brain. I can't imagine why...
A lot of people, in fact most people, will look at anything new with some degree of hestitation, even wariness, hence the term "early adopter."
If you're reading this, chances are you're one of those.
If you're active on other internet forums, and talk about e-cigarettes there, someone who reads your message might be a cigarette smoker, or have a loved one who is.
Because the universe works in mysterious ways, and the internet is a big place, just a few words about how e-cigarettes are helping you and a link to ECF could result in somebody or several somebodies you'll never meet having more time with their loved ones - or just being more comfortable.
You could be doing a Good Deed and never know it!
Sometimes, though, you'll run into people who who are "against" e-cigarettes.
Generally, those people can be divided into four oversimplified, broad-brush painted categories:
The Uninformed
The Hesitant
The FauxPosed
The Opposed
Understanding why they feel the way they do can help you protect your Good Deed opportunities and avoid unpleasantness.
The Uninformed
This group is easy cheese. Announce the Glad Tidings, now they're aware, make information and resources available - Give them the ECF url - if you're a goer and doer, and want to do Good Deeds offline, you can even send off for free business cards to hand out!
Now they're informed. Good Deed accomplished, yay you!
The Hesitant
A healthy chunk of Team Hesitant will also respond to Operation Glad Tidings n' InfoDump.
That's because a healthy chunk of hesitance about anything new is of the simple "don't know much about it" variety - Uninformed with an Attitude.
You'll run into a lot of people who are hesitant for reasons we not only understand, but share - Fear of Marketing!
Just doing a little clicking and lurking, I've seen several instances of people voicing this outright when the subject of e-cigarettes came up.
Although "viral marketing of the internet forum kind" is a relatively new thing nested into yet another relatively new thing (the internet itself), message board posters bearing Glad Tidings of a new product has already established itself as a classic technique employed by entities who are selling something.
It's become so classic, in fact, that our own Serene Management here has spent many a sleepless night developing and implementing strategies to protect us all from it!
Of course, you're not selling anything, you're just sharing your experience, and doing a Good Deed.
Unlike marketing, viral or otherwise, Good Deeds have established themselves as a rarity, online and offline, on a species-wide basis.
So it's to be expected that another healthy chunk of the population of any community you visit, the minute you begin to wax enthusiastically about e-cigarettes, will immediately assume that you're there to sell something.
The bad news is there's not really anything you can do to combat or vanquish that.
The good news is that it's a self-limiting condition. After you're there for a while, openly, blatantly, and consistently not selling anything, most of them will shake their heads in bewilderment and concede that whatever you're doing, you don't seem to be selling anything.
Because that distaste is a virtually universal sentiment, those bewildered head-shakers will include the whole range of opiners on e-cigarettes, from people who are delighted they exist to those who believe they are of Satan.
There's no question that technology has dramatically impacted the typical "arc" of new product acceptance on the part of "mainstream" consumers, and I mean mainstream in the "neither early adapter nor borderline Luddite" sense, nothing to do with demographics.
It's not instant, though. What this means to you is that a lot of people who say they "just don't know much about them" really mean that they're not even going to be interested in the idea of an e-cigarette until they become so ubiquitous and widely used that someone in their circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances offers them a hit of the one they're notsmoking right there before their very eyes.
(If we were among that person's circle of friends, etc, we'd remember that they didn't have anything even internet connection-inspired until the fin de siècle, when their youngest child came home from school bearing one of those pretty holographic coffee table coasters from AOL, whereupon they proceded to believe AOL was the internet until the company itself finally admitted to its customers and itself that in fact, it wasn't).
The FauxPosed
I have a tendency to want to divide things up in two neat piles, and say it's about either information or belief.
That's a big mistake, because it ignores the very large and vocal group who lives over there on Feeling Street, at the corner of Human Nature Avenue.
In actual fact, the FauxPosed may run the gamut with respect to both information/lack thereof as well as belief, but in actual practice and the immediate present, they're not driven by either, but by emotions.
The Caught-Unawares
Sometimes, people may consider themselves to be a little more Informed and Up-To-Date with things than they really are, and are therefore put a little on the defensive by something that claims to have existed for several years without their having been aware of it.
Their FauxPposition, their driving emotion, is just a little bit of embarrassment, which will go away by itself as they look around and see how many other people are wearing the same color name tag. They just need to do some harrumphing.
I have a special place in my heart for these folks, in a sort of there-but-for-the-grace kind of way, because while there are plenty of young ones, typically they're folks who are a little bit older, and haven't quite gotten used to how much more there is to be aware of and keep up with these days!
Social Butterflies, People-Pleasers, and Old Faithful
Within any group, half of this subgroup will be FauxPosed. They don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other about e-cigarettes, but they do have a strong affinity, sense of affiliation, pre-existing comradeship, or simple desire to be "socially accepted" by one or more people who are Opposed, so they go sit by them.
The other half, of course, will be FauxPro, and they'll go sit by you!
The Righteously Indignant
e-cigarettes are new, so there are plenty of people who, at great personal cost, managed to stop smoking before e-cigarettes were available - or worse, were available but neither they nor their Shaman knew about them, or worst of all, those who had Shamans who knew but deliberately witheld the information - and they're .......
After all they went through, here they are sweating out their one day at a time lifelong not one puff struggle, in a place they may be using as their support group, which is supposed to be their safe and happy place, and in stomps some young turk or loudmouth old codger or codgeress, announcing that nobody needs to suffer like that any more, here, just have one of these. YumYumGood, huh?
This group is driven by extremely strong - and understandable - feelings, from resentment to envy to sheer rage. They feel ripped off and deceived, ill-used, passed over and generally stomped on, and they have every right to feel all those things.
These are the people who, in the freshness of their grief, are most liable to say things that hurt our feelings - those "trigger" things that invoke our worst fears about the scariest element of humankind, and gets into primal stuff that has jackpiddle to do with smoking or e-cigarettes.
They may make the loudest noises of all, but in reality, they're so FauxPosed. If they'd had the opportunity, they'd be you right now, scampering around the doctor's office - and the internet - doing Good Deeds while contentedly notsmoking their electric hookah-doodles.
Because they aren't bad people, just hurt and angry ones, once their grief subsides, and their rage gives way to their true nature, they WILL be you.
As people of goodwill, they'll be just as eager as you are to see people everywhere reap the benefits of this blessing.
Coming Soon: The Real Opposed: Belief is Their Co-Pilot
A lot of people, in fact most people, will look at anything new with some degree of hestitation, even wariness, hence the term "early adopter."
If you're reading this, chances are you're one of those.
If you're active on other internet forums, and talk about e-cigarettes there, someone who reads your message might be a cigarette smoker, or have a loved one who is.
Because the universe works in mysterious ways, and the internet is a big place, just a few words about how e-cigarettes are helping you and a link to ECF could result in somebody or several somebodies you'll never meet having more time with their loved ones - or just being more comfortable.
You could be doing a Good Deed and never know it!
Sometimes, though, you'll run into people who who are "against" e-cigarettes.
Generally, those people can be divided into four oversimplified, broad-brush painted categories:
The Uninformed
The Hesitant
The FauxPosed
The Opposed
Understanding why they feel the way they do can help you protect your Good Deed opportunities and avoid unpleasantness.
The Uninformed
This group is easy cheese. Announce the Glad Tidings, now they're aware, make information and resources available - Give them the ECF url - if you're a goer and doer, and want to do Good Deeds offline, you can even send off for free business cards to hand out!
Now they're informed. Good Deed accomplished, yay you!
The Hesitant
A healthy chunk of Team Hesitant will also respond to Operation Glad Tidings n' InfoDump.
That's because a healthy chunk of hesitance about anything new is of the simple "don't know much about it" variety - Uninformed with an Attitude.
You'll run into a lot of people who are hesitant for reasons we not only understand, but share - Fear of Marketing!
Just doing a little clicking and lurking, I've seen several instances of people voicing this outright when the subject of e-cigarettes came up.
Although "viral marketing of the internet forum kind" is a relatively new thing nested into yet another relatively new thing (the internet itself), message board posters bearing Glad Tidings of a new product has already established itself as a classic technique employed by entities who are selling something.
It's become so classic, in fact, that our own Serene Management here has spent many a sleepless night developing and implementing strategies to protect us all from it!
Of course, you're not selling anything, you're just sharing your experience, and doing a Good Deed.
Unlike marketing, viral or otherwise, Good Deeds have established themselves as a rarity, online and offline, on a species-wide basis.
So it's to be expected that another healthy chunk of the population of any community you visit, the minute you begin to wax enthusiastically about e-cigarettes, will immediately assume that you're there to sell something.
The bad news is there's not really anything you can do to combat or vanquish that.
The good news is that it's a self-limiting condition. After you're there for a while, openly, blatantly, and consistently not selling anything, most of them will shake their heads in bewilderment and concede that whatever you're doing, you don't seem to be selling anything.
Because that distaste is a virtually universal sentiment, those bewildered head-shakers will include the whole range of opiners on e-cigarettes, from people who are delighted they exist to those who believe they are of Satan.
There's no question that technology has dramatically impacted the typical "arc" of new product acceptance on the part of "mainstream" consumers, and I mean mainstream in the "neither early adapter nor borderline Luddite" sense, nothing to do with demographics.
It's not instant, though. What this means to you is that a lot of people who say they "just don't know much about them" really mean that they're not even going to be interested in the idea of an e-cigarette until they become so ubiquitous and widely used that someone in their circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances offers them a hit of the one they're notsmoking right there before their very eyes.
(If we were among that person's circle of friends, etc, we'd remember that they didn't have anything even internet connection-inspired until the fin de siècle, when their youngest child came home from school bearing one of those pretty holographic coffee table coasters from AOL, whereupon they proceded to believe AOL was the internet until the company itself finally admitted to its customers and itself that in fact, it wasn't).
The FauxPosed
I have a tendency to want to divide things up in two neat piles, and say it's about either information or belief.
That's a big mistake, because it ignores the very large and vocal group who lives over there on Feeling Street, at the corner of Human Nature Avenue.
In actual fact, the FauxPosed may run the gamut with respect to both information/lack thereof as well as belief, but in actual practice and the immediate present, they're not driven by either, but by emotions.
The Caught-Unawares
Sometimes, people may consider themselves to be a little more Informed and Up-To-Date with things than they really are, and are therefore put a little on the defensive by something that claims to have existed for several years without their having been aware of it.
Their FauxPposition, their driving emotion, is just a little bit of embarrassment, which will go away by itself as they look around and see how many other people are wearing the same color name tag. They just need to do some harrumphing.
I have a special place in my heart for these folks, in a sort of there-but-for-the-grace kind of way, because while there are plenty of young ones, typically they're folks who are a little bit older, and haven't quite gotten used to how much more there is to be aware of and keep up with these days!
Social Butterflies, People-Pleasers, and Old Faithful
Within any group, half of this subgroup will be FauxPosed. They don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other about e-cigarettes, but they do have a strong affinity, sense of affiliation, pre-existing comradeship, or simple desire to be "socially accepted" by one or more people who are Opposed, so they go sit by them.
The other half, of course, will be FauxPro, and they'll go sit by you!
The Righteously Indignant
e-cigarettes are new, so there are plenty of people who, at great personal cost, managed to stop smoking before e-cigarettes were available - or worse, were available but neither they nor their Shaman knew about them, or worst of all, those who had Shamans who knew but deliberately witheld the information - and they're .......
After all they went through, here they are sweating out their one day at a time lifelong not one puff struggle, in a place they may be using as their support group, which is supposed to be their safe and happy place, and in stomps some young turk or loudmouth old codger or codgeress, announcing that nobody needs to suffer like that any more, here, just have one of these. YumYumGood, huh?
This group is driven by extremely strong - and understandable - feelings, from resentment to envy to sheer rage. They feel ripped off and deceived, ill-used, passed over and generally stomped on, and they have every right to feel all those things.
These are the people who, in the freshness of their grief, are most liable to say things that hurt our feelings - those "trigger" things that invoke our worst fears about the scariest element of humankind, and gets into primal stuff that has jackpiddle to do with smoking or e-cigarettes.
They may make the loudest noises of all, but in reality, they're so FauxPosed. If they'd had the opportunity, they'd be you right now, scampering around the doctor's office - and the internet - doing Good Deeds while contentedly notsmoking their electric hookah-doodles.
Because they aren't bad people, just hurt and angry ones, once their grief subsides, and their rage gives way to their true nature, they WILL be you.
As people of goodwill, they'll be just as eager as you are to see people everywhere reap the benefits of this blessing.
Coming Soon: The Real Opposed: Belief is Their Co-Pilot
