By Will Burns
[PG-13]
Recently, it was brought to my attention that the Mental Warlock with Adonis DNA had decided to open applications for a paid summer internship to work for Team Sheen. After the heavens had finished parting, world hunger and poverty momentarily resolved, and Joan Rivers had reclaimed twenty years of her youth (without surgery), I decided to submit to the wisdom of Charlie Sheen and put in the initial application. Clearly I have no expectation of actually being Charlie Sheen’s intern for social media, not because I lack any sort of faith in my own abilities and clearly not because I have any doubts in the judgment of Charlie Sheen (more on this later), but because hundreds of thousands of people in this world are vying for the same position, and I wonder if it is possible for true wisdom to overcome the noise of mediocrity.
On March 14th, 2011 I heard what can only be described as a rave ongoing in my email inbox, and as the sort of person curious to such dealings (not to mention wondering at what point Google added the Party option to my gmail), I opened the message contained within.
Seeing this in my email inbox, I immediately began to understand what it must have felt like for Dr. Horrible when Bad Horse sent his cowboys out to deliver the message from the Evil League of Evil. Except in this case, Charlie Sheen is not a horse (unless he wants to be), and the message was delivered via his hat (which I can only assume quantifies a small fraction of his awesomeness suitable for not negating universes or my inbox) though you can clearly see the remaining similarities.
The next part of the process was fairly straightforward, and has a deadline of March 16th, but what caught me as interesting is a single part of these entries which ask -
I should be the Social Media intern because: (75 characters or less)
Now, the first round application I decided to stick to the format and simply wrote “I’m a virtual environment specialist. Win the future”, but on the second round I decided to do something very different. It is my contention that when you are a winner, most (if not all) of the rules no longer apply to you, and any hint of constraint should be casually disregarded if you are capable of demonstrating why your awesomeness cannot be defined under such restrictions.
On round 2 of this application process, the same field is present (with the same 75 character restraint), except this time I have opted for a more direct reason:
Because winners have no limitations: [this blog link]
I have absolutely every reason, justification, and experience over many years of technology involvement in virtual environments, social media, research, academic authorship, and marketing to justify why I am a shoe-in for being Charlie Sheen’s Social Media Intern. I am willing to wager that there is literally no other person on earth more qualified for this position than I am who has submitted an application.
No other person who has submitted an application to Team Sheen is part of IEEE Virtual Worlds Standards group, helping to literally define the worldwide standard for virtual environments in the future.
No other applicant to Team Sheen can say that they have collaboratively written a major college/professional reference book with a chapter title of “The Future of Virtual Worlds and E-Commerce”, outlining the future of marketing, social media, and virtual environments with a breadth and depth of understanding (and acknowledgement of Accelerating Returns) as I can.
While the rest of the world was trying to measure Twitter metrics and sell clients on the notion that more followers means better return, I submitted the only metric that actually counts and is now widely acknowledged as the base standard: Level of Engagement. Quality over Quantity for higher impact and reach, under the sociological aspect of Level of Empathy (as defined by Jaron Lanier). It’s not how many people are listening to you, it’s how many people positively act on what you say. Millions of followers is impressive, but amounts to filler if you can’t motivate and leverage them. Very few people in the world know how, despite claims and seminars to the contrary.
No other applicant to Team Sheen can say that they’ve won multiple awards for virtual environment excellence in the creation, detail and technological innovation of a virtual environment space.
No other applicant can say that they’ve not only outlined the present, but years into the future when it comes to companies, social media, and marketing. The industry is still playing catch up to ideas I put forth ten years ago, and even the likes of Atari fell prey to ignoring my insights haphazardly, nearly costing them their existence. It was through acknowledging and enacting many of the recommendations I left behind for that company that they finally found their footing again and stayed afloat.
While other applicants can submit their Bachelors, Masters or PhD in communications or technology as proof that they are a qualified candidate – none can say that they are writing groundbreaking research papers that the industry will adhere to. In fact, those very same people are likely learning what they know from people like myself, and never truly grasping the implications or understanding what is required to stay ahead.
There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom, and I bring only the wisdom of many years of hands-on experience (15+ years to be precise) to the table, where others only have regurgitated knowledge they’ve read in a book, stale facts that were outdated long before they were committed to the paper and published. When others tell you the future is social media and tell you how to leverage Twitter, I’ll tell you how to leverage the future of global communications as a whole – from social media to virtual world environments and everything in between.
As with an elegant game of chess, only the winners can think many moves in advance, and winners know they have no limitations.
Charlie Sheen’s Judgment
Here is where it gets interesting. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I have a distinct understanding of what level of insanity Charlie Sheen is under in all of this. In the world there are two types of crazy: Crazy as in batshit, and crazy like a fox.
Charlie Sheen exhibits the latter, he’s crazy like a fox. He is also telling the honest truth when it comes to the whole idea of "Winning” – in that there is a level of success you can reach whereby it is nearly impossible to lose from that point on. Take into account people like Bill Gates, and say what you will about him, that man clearly has won the game inside and out. He is one of the few people who can give away 20+ Billion dollars to a charity and still remain the second richest man on earth.
Acting nonsensical and chaotic isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, in the case of people like Robin Williams, we didn’t immediately say that man needed medication or was somehow impaired. We took it as an asset, and much more so than we do today. But these are examples of what I believe Charlie Sheen is attempting to illustrate to the public. Much like the Old Spice Guy, but with a twist of reality – Charlie Sheen is showing us that we are all capable of being insanely awesome and enjoying life to our own elevated level of standards. To aspire to be whatever the hell it is we believe we can be – whether that means keeping pornstar concubines, partying like there’s no tomorrow, or just being happy with your life and striving for excellence.
There’s a point to it all, and I believe Charlie has hit the nail on the head with such force that the inventor of nails received a crushing blow to the head by his cosmic enchanted hammer made from the crystalized tears of joy from the wild jungle cats in an alternate dimension. He parties like a Rock Star and lives like a King, and now is telling you to aspire to greatness in everything you do.
Your pinnacle may not include porn stars and parties, but whatever you think that mountain is to climb – you need to aspire to climb it and plant that flag at the top, then crush that mountain into sand using your fiery fists of bad-assery to melt it into glass, shaping that glass into a bong with only your platinum thoughts and spark that epic bong, getting high on life.
You never know until you try, and you just might end up the next Ferris Beuller or Parker Lewis when you get there. You just can’t lose.
Charlie Sheen is just the living embodiment of Courage Wolf. He may have Adonis DNA, but I have Archimedes DNA – and even Kings acknowledge the need for true innovation and wisdom in their court.
Whether or not I am chosen to work alongside Charlie Sheen, I will still take this lesson to heart and strive to be the absolute best that I can. I will aspire to reach a level of winning in my life wherein there is nothing that can stop it. Let’s hope the message rings loud and clear with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment