Feeding Authenticity
Now everything gets put into the same feed. Current events from around the world, and hopefully, our blueberry pie recipe. But why should knowing what a friend ate for lunch come right after world news? Because I care about my friend and what they do, and I also care about the world.
But to know how to filter the feed, to know what to allow in and what not to, takes a rectified sense of taste. In Kabbalah, this sense of the soul corresponds to the sefirah of da’at (consciousness), the same sefirah that we discussed in our article about Native Advertising.
As mentioned there, ideally Native Advertising should be renamed Conscious or Authentic Journalism. This means that the “advertising” that I allow into my feed shouldn’t be advertising at all, but genuine content.
Ostensibly the primary reason that media companies want to control the filtering process is to also have a say over the advertising. While they want to keep you interested in the feed, they also want to make money from advertisers. But the better approach is to encourage the advertisers to make their “advertisements” more genuine and authentic.
Even if the visual presentation of the ad is unobtrusive — as is the intention of native advertisers — there is nothing “native” or homey about an advertisement that falsely presents itself as meaningful.
Does it make a difference whether you are selling a product or message?
The TechCrunch article that we linked to above says that:
“News outlets and others that publish their real product to Facebook, like news articles, tend to see more reach than Pages that merely publish marketing messages for their products…”
We are experiencing a shift in the world of products. While we may know about the new Kickstarter campaigns coming out, we do not often follow up to see what actually happened to the successfully funded products down the line (unless we backed them ourselves). This is not to say that there aren’t sites that keep track of this for us. But what makes the headlines most often are the campaigns themselves.
The lesson is that when speaking about the excitement generated by the power of the ideas themselves, is that there is no conceptual difference between a company that sells news and one that sells products. Both have real-world effects that are felt over time, yet find themselves making headlines most often by the power of the idea itself.
Finding what’s new about you
TechCrunch explains the five main criteria Facebook uses for filtering our content. But since our blueberry pie recipe wasn’t let through, there is still work to do.
The primary factor (not mentioned in the TechCrunch article) is what we call the consciousness of Abraham. When connecting with this consciousness, we become enabled to sort through new content on our own. To say it another way: By connecting with the authentic character of Abraham, we heighten our ability to connect with authentic content.
A person with Abraham consciousness experiences God’s recreation of reality at every moment. This comes as a result of one’s continual work to recreate oneself.
People with this consciousness are also always able to come up with new material, because they view themselves as newly created material … a work in progress.
What we are now adding is the context. The Torah’s contextual landscape for this praise.
Here’s how to Passover clean your feed
Abraham said “I am but dust and ashes,” yet he is the father of the Jewish people. To be a rectified, authentic leader, takes a connection to dust. Both to Abraham, and to the sefirah of malchut (kingdom) and the existential lowliness of King David that is the archetypal personality of this sefirah.