I’m an “Internet Junkee” as many of you know. A national clothing store chain uses a slogan “An Educated Consumer Is Our Best Customer.” Many of us are on information overload. Many people are addicted and can’t stop. The information keeps coming, more and more sites are created every day. We keep adding our thoughts and knowledge to our own sites and or contributing to others.
From a marketing guy like myself with all this information, it’s never been easier to target our marketing efforts. You can track your efforts as to how many people looked at your ad, how many clicked on it, what time of day did they click and where were they from. Even more in-depth information is available so you can improve your marketing efforts even further and get a greater return.
Anyone can start their own business online and without much expense. The American dream is now more achievable than ever before.
But at what cost? We use to go out to the movies and socialize. Now entertainment has come into our homes and we don’t have to leave. We use to go out and shop more and now we go online and click at amazon.com or walmart.com and shop to our hearts content without having to talk to a single person and they ship it for free. Some people don’t even go to the grocery store themselves they go online to peapod.com and shop without having to see their noisy neighbors.
It used to be that we knew all our neighbors very well. It used to be our kids would play outside all day. Now they stay inside and play their online games for hours on end. As a kid we use to have adventures for real, now their adventures are fake and online. Are we becoming an unsociable society? What skills are not being developed in the children of the today because of this new way we are living our lives?
Our parents use to say when they retired they were going to slow down maybe retire in the middle of nowhere and we couldn’t understand wanting to escape like that. Well, maybe things haven’t changed that much. In a few years, I will retire and I’m thinking of unplugging, escaping, getting away from it all, going up north, going overseas. Wait I better ask “Siri” to help me with that!