There are few things more ironic than a conscious effort to be different. And it’s not just the people who dress all in black or tattoo their entire bodies that I’m talking about. Every time somebody does something just for the sake of setting themselves apart from everyone else, I cringe.

It’s obvious to me that the people who so consciously try to be different are reacting in an extraordinarily predictable way. It’s the Tom Sawyer effect in action — a parent, or more likely society-at-large, implicity or explicitly, forbids something, like destroying one’s appearance. The response is to do exactly what is forbidden. The choice to be different is irrational precisely for that reason. In this case, the person is not rebelling against society’s ideology but against its expectations.

Similarly, I know of one case in which the sibling of a friend consciously made a decision to be different. She came from a family that loved red meat and would eat steak or something similar most nights. The person decided to become a vegan. A more rational decision would have been to just cut back on red meat, but she had decided to be different at all costs.

Of course, the irony of such a decision lies in its hypocrisy. Entire groups form whose sole mission is to be different from everyone else. In the end, trying to be different just pushes people from one organized group into another. In that sense, they fail to achieve their goal every time, but they succeed in alienating a whole bunch of people.

So why do I care? People should be finding ways to do things that work for them, not do things specifically because they don’t work for other people. If people deviate from the social norm for a legitimate reason, then I accept that, but people who do things just to be different are living a life of hackery. The problem is that people in the second category believe themselves to be in the first category.

I look forward to your comments!

Negative ads are not limited to political campaigns. In fact, this post does not reference any political campaign ads. I’m talking about regular, everyday PSAs. If I listened to everything I’ve been hearing from these commericals I would make the following conclusions.

• The world is going to Hell.
• Animals are being so often it’s become a sport.
• The summit of Mount McKinley will soon be waterfront property.
• TV ads have become so negative, we’re in a living Hell.

So I present to you exhibit A. This commercial is from an ad campaign entitled “Divided We Fail” because people don’t have enough to be negative about. This commercial is on television screens everywhere, courtesy of the AARP.

My biggest problem is the title. How about “United We Stand” instead of “Divided We Fail“? In essence they mean the same thing, but the ad would be a lot more powerful if the entire commercial didn’t end with the AARP logo reminding people that their healthcare is terrible. I agree that the issues they discuss in the “Divided We Fail” series are important, but for that very reason, it’s important that people watch them. Everyday we’re bombarded by sad, depressing news. If this commercial was positive, I think there would be more support for the issues it deals with. Sad and depressing is more of the same. Interesting and unique creates support.

This next ad is courtesy of the ASPCA.

This commerical is even worse! At least in the last commercial they waited until the end to give you the whole negative “Divided We Fail” message. This one starts off with music that should probably be played at a funeral and an image of a sad dog in a small cage shortly followed by a dog with one eye. Once again, this is an important issue, but I don’t think this ad is going to generate the kind of support this issue deserves. First of all, I think they should replace the music. I’m not suggesting they get Up with People to sing a special song, but something that doesn’t scream “MORE SADNESS!” would be excellent. Something with a warm and fuzzy tone would be good, particularly since we’re talking about dogs and people like dogs. Or I like dogs anyway.

The final thing is slightly outside my field. I’m not the marketing director for ASPCA or AARP so I can’t speak to their ad placement, but I think they’re choosing the wrong channels that reach the wrong audience. I saw the ASPCA ad for the first time while watching a Star Wars movie on Spike TV. The juxtaposition of science fiction and furry, tortured faces doesn’t exactly work well, nor does it work well with any of the other things that Spike shows. Perhaps they should try CNN, NBC, and the other major networks. Not to be sexist, but from an advertising perspective, I think they would do well to advertise on WE and Oxygen.

I look forward to the comments. Positive comments.

Being a blogger isn’t as easy as it seems. There are about a thousand different considerations that go into blogging and not a single day goes by that I don’t wish I couldn’t spend more time blogging and podcasting. There are quite a few topics that I would love to be talking about - copyright, the election, the Bush legacy, and stuff that’s ten times more interesting but I don’t want to mention until I’m ready to talk about it.

But it’s not a perfect world. Last week, View from a Farley featured zero blog posts (except for this one), zero podcasts, and zero updates of any kind. This is largely because I spent a good part of my week dealing with technical problems. The site has been down four times in the past week (just twice yesterday), switched hosting three times, and has been the subject of many e-mails. At the time of this post, the site is being hosted by Hostgator. Everything indicates that Hostgator will be a much better host than any of the others. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and everything is loading much faster, so no more waiting for a minute for the page to load or seeing all sorts of errors when you try to come to the site.

But even the transfer wasn’t easy. Wordpress (the popular blogging engine View from a Farley uses) is extremely easy to use under normal circumstances, but not when trying to seamlessly transfer from site to site. The basic site files are easy enough to transfer, but making sure that all of the old posts get to the new site is hard.

So this is what I think: Someone should create an easy-to-use, reliable hosting service with a dedicated support team just for bloggers to help with problems unique to bloggers. It should be cheap enough for people starting out, reliable enough so that contact with support is minimal, and dedicated support with a real number you can call, unlike DreamHost. Bloggers should concentrate on what they do best: blogging. Technical stuff should be minimal and handled by people who like looking at stuff bloggers could care less about.