by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC
For all our talk of freedom, we Americans LOVE rules…
- Our favorite sport, football, has the most rules of any sport on the planet.
- Poker players make up new rules with every hand (“threes and hearts are wild except for the Queen, which you can pass to the right if someone sneezes during play”).
- Our institutionalized belief systems — whether Rastafarianism, environmentalism, or even Libertarianism — bristle with rules of what can and can’t be done.
- The August issue of Wired features an entire section on rules, “How to Behave: New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans,” which includes a few illuminating ones by Brad Pitt (“Don’t take a picture of your wife’s butt. That’s silly. Take pictures of other people’s wives’ butts.”).
- And, of course, as its name indicates, this here blog occasionally lays out rules for marketing and media as laid down by a higher authority (me).
Want more proof that most of us are rule-snorting junkies? Take this here Internet, where many users routinely cry “net neutrality!” and “information is free!” and “hands off, Feds!” — YET first-comers to any new website, network or medium are quick to impose rules that newbies must follow or die. (more…)
