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Go Jump in a Lake, Katniss Everdeen

Posted by
in Facebook, Social Media
March 29, 2012

When I was a kid and I wanted to do what all my friends were doing, after she said no, I could always count on my mom to say, “If your friends were going to go jump in a lake, would you want to do that, too?”

Following the crowd. Jumping off a cliff like lemmings. Groupthink. These pejoratives for going along with the masses deliver that age-old wisdom that a gang can lead you to some pretty bad places.

That’s where I ended up this weekend. A bad place.

I went to Panem (the future nation the United States becomes in Hunger Games) with 200 fourteen year old girls. I definitely followed the wrong crowd.

My movie review:  Hunger Games stinks. Save your money. Don’t go see it.

Now that we have the communication efficiency and power of social media at our disposal, we regularly see instances where “crowds” elevate a cause, take it viral, and produce some great good.

Think crowdfunding, or crowdsourcing. An amazing idea or project that could never be done by an individual or a small group gets done in a flash by a large group. Many hands make light work.

These amazing outcomes that come from joining the crowd seduced me, I guess.

And now for the rest of the story.

My book review:  Hunger Games is fantastic; entertaining and disturbing. I really enjoyed it. As soon as I finished it, I immediately purchased and read the sequels Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

The funny thing is, while I recognized these books from the bookstore, I had no idea what they were about until a friend of mine (in real life) raved about them on Facebook. Based on those comments from someone in my close circle of friends, I happily bought the book.

I read all three books in the trilogy before I learned they are aimed at and rabidly consumed by young teens. My 17 year old daughter clued me in. She still hasn’t read Hunger Games and wanted nothing to do with it…until Saturday.

When she saw her Friends’ comments on Facebook, she decided she wanted to satisfy her curiosity too.

That’s how I ended up with 200 14 year old girls in a dark theater this weekend.

My daughter hated it too.

So even though it’s easy, don’t follow just any crowd. I was pretty happy when I followed a tip from someone close to me.

The Katniss Everdeen I met in the book was inspiring. I would follow her…and jump right into a lake.

 

Kevin is a blogger and account manager with KimberMedia. And he’s a no slouch with WordPress. So he’s in on our website maintenance projects, too. Kevin has a long history as a project manager. He schemes, then gets things done. He’s a small business owner, an association executive, a registered lobbyist, a yoga teacher, a biologist and a word nerd. He likes to sing in the choir at church, travel, and laugh a lot. Google