Now that Cyber Monday has reared its ugly, annual head, I can’t help but think of how the word “cyber” had a very, VERY different connotation when I was growing up. Here’s what I mean:
As a kid growing up in the mid- to late-90s—as probably the last generation to not have a childhood plastered all over social media—the Internet was not the Internet money and fame machine that we all know and love (to hate).
(Some call the small sliver of time I grew up in the “Xennial generation”—where kids had an analog childhood but became digital as late teens.)
Instead, it was a place you to “hang out.” Specifically in AOL chatrooms and Yahoo! groups that, after spending the last half hour trying to dial-up into (if your mom wasn’t using the phone), you could use you can make friends with Internet strangers and talk to them on now-extinct mediums like MSN Messenger and ICQ.
(I for one exercised my on-point HTML skills on a heavily cultivated AOL Instant Messenger profile.)
Of course, those older than me are probably rolling their eyes already (I know my INTJ is) and those younger are wondering how I ever survived.
Thing is, the Internet (with a capital I)—as those who remember, and those who have heard the tales—was largely the Wild West. And that’s not talking about the little to no regulation of Internet marketing.
I’m talking about cybering.
Where, when sequestered away on private messenger… or right out in the middle of the IRC chat…some creep would inevitably ask:
“You wanna cyber?”
Of course, I was around 16-17 years old at the time—and this was before Chris Hansen made a living off of pretending to be a girl like me, to rope-a-dope men like those who were asking.
Because, by asking me to “cyber,” they were asking me for Internet secs.
And, even if you look up the term “cybering,” the first Google hit is the Urban Dictionary definition, which describes it much more succinctly (and graphically) than I just did.
Which is why, every Cyber Monday, I can’t help but laugh.
BUT, 90s-kid jokes aside, it is an astonishingly apt description since this is the time of year when suddenly ever email list you’ve ever joined (or were forced onto, GDPR be damned) lights up like a single girl’s text messages during the holidays:
Suddenly everyone with a product to sell suddenly slides into your DMs like it’s Yahoo! Messenger all over again you for some digital tail out of the blue, when you barely remember or even know them.
Out of integrity, I’m not going to pretend I’m the best emailing daily. (You can blame my personality type for that…which I do.)
But I will shout from the rooftops that, even though sometimes weeks can lapse between email spurts—I don’t treat my list like a five-dollar ho. Or, like an Internet stranger I can have a one-night cyber stand.
Which is why I haven’t cobbled together a last-minute Cyber(ing) Monday product…or I’m not slashing my prices by 47384839% for “one-day only” (until Cyber Tuesday becomes a thing).
I’m not Black Friday-bashing (which has also become suspiciously popular), mind you. There are plenty of marketers who are making bank this weekend.
But, it doesn’t work with my personality type—by going with the sales grain because “I have to” and forcing myself to compete with 4737273840 other marketers doing the same thing, at the same time, I’m going well against the grain of my ENFP personality type.
Which is something I tell my clients or my subscribers of my membership site Biz Typology to never, ever do, much to their greater peace of mind (and, in the end, bigger piece of the sales-making pie): to never go against their very brain mechanics just because the marketing sales calendar says so.
Even if it’s cybersecsy.
Anyway, on to the ripe, juicy pulp:
To learn more about what makes your personality type tick, and how to leverage it in your sales and marketing—including whether or not cybering your customer list is something you want to do for the holidays—I have about 50+ videos that are primed and ready for viewing all on how to identify your personality quirks and use them for your (and by extension, your client’s) advantage.
To join—without any discounts, percentages off, or any cybering flimflammery—go here:
Stefanie Arroyo