Popularity Breeds Contempt

Last year I talked about The Koolaid Point -- the point at which enough users become passionate that others accuse them of "drinking the koolaid." I offered no ideas for what to do when it happens other than "celebrate" and--the focus of yesterday's post--be brave. Don't give in was my main point then. But there is something else we can do when detractors start criticizing our users. Something so simple I was too thick to see it.

The tricky part is that the criticisms aren't always wrong. It really might be all hype. It might be BS. It might be just a fad, or the same s*** with a new name. But things are rarely that black and white. Where there is passion (not just fad or fashion), there is something real there. Something that some people see and feel. But the key point to keep in mind--and the one that offers a simple solution--is this:

People will sometimes diss things they know very little about.

They'll diss things they haven't tried.

They'll diss things based on sketchy, incorrect information--or the equivalent of urban-legend data ("My sister's friend's brother's girlfriend tried it and it was a disaster...")

Most importantly, the things people diss most passionately are often the things that challenge beliefs or ideas they're heavily invested in. They'll diss things because embracing those things might force them to re-examine thoughts and assumptions they care about, or because those things represent a change they don't want to make. And yes, sometimes they diss things simply because they are jealous, although most of us tend to dismiss critics as "just jealous" way more than we should. [Note to critics: snarky slams are far more likely to get written off as "jealousy" than specific, less emotional critiques.]

How do you deal with this challenge? The challenge faced, for example, by Seth Roberts, whose Shanri-la diet I've helped hype. The challenge our books have faced, where one prominent tech book author said--to my face--that the only reason my books were selling was because all the smart programmers had already learned it somewhere else. The challenge faced by Pat Parelli, whose "Parelli Natural Horsemanship" program drives intensely polarized fights in forums, where followers (or non-followers) are often outcasts at their stable, and where a Google search on parelli+cult returns over 1,000 hits.

So, I asked the guy who knows a whole lot about it--Pat Parelli. "What do you when your users are accused of being card-carrying, koolaid-drinking, Parelli cult members?"

He offers two simple suggestions we can use:

1) "Give users the tools to represent what you do accurately." (He gives his users a free-for-the-asking DVD that clearly demonstrates what the program is about.) "Don't expect--or ask--your users to defend you."

But the most important one--the simple 'doh-slapping-the-forehead' one for me--was this:

2) Ask the critics, "How long did you try it before you came to these conclusions? Because the feedback is really important to us."

With the Shangri-la diet, it was obvious how many people were slamming it without having read all of his research (or tried it themselves). With our books, we found early on that the strongest critics were those who had never actually tried to learn something from one of them--they'd never experienced it as a target-audience reader/learner would. With Parelli, 95% of their harshest critics have never actually tried it. Or perhaps someone has tried something, but in the wrong context--not in the way it's meant and designed to be used!

This "how long did you try it?" question will be met with, "I don't need to try something to know it's wrong." And for a ton of things, that's true. But as a sweeping statement, it doesn't hold up for most of the koolaid point, because until you've tried something or at least gotten all the facts, you cannot fully understand what others have found so compelling or practical or effective or engaging or productive or delightful or...

And I'm just as likely to be a koolaid accuser as koolaid drinker. I have never golfed, for example, and I cannot imagine why anyone would spend that kind of money and time hitting a stupid little ball with a ridiculously expensive stick on grass that in Colorado costs a fortune in natural resources (water, in most cases) to keep green. To which my co-author Bert says, "You just don't get it." ; )