Darkside Dreamland

The Man in the Box has a very important message for you… People who memorize lots of useless details are all geeks, no matter how much cooler you think your niche is.

That’s right, knowing Babe Ruth’s favorite color and Sunday meal is no better than knowing how many times Frodo and Sam have awkwardly gay moments and what they were wearing at the time.

Want to be original but don’t have money? The Get Out Clause did just that. However, the Telegraph can say it better than I can:

Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.

With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.

They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras.

Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act Data Protection Act.

When you piece it all together, you get the above music video which seems incredibly creative rather than a cheap solution to a video crew. While filming from the perspective of security cameras is no new thing, as far as I know this might be the first use of the actual security cameras for filming.

When can you do good things for completely wrong reasons? Well, I suppose there are many answers to that question. The reason I to be discussed here is doing the right thing because of your resume.

There are many organizations that do great things - the Humane Society and Boy’s & Girl’s Club come to mind - that many people may be participating in for all the wrong reasons. That very wrong reason is to build a resume. I get questions from younger co-workers like “Hey, do you think working for the Boy’s & Girl’s Club would look good on a resume?” I want to address these questions.

What I always ask when I get these questions is simple. “Do you like working with kids/animals/the elderly/etc.?”

I typically get a blank stare. They aren’t even thinking about why they would join an organization that does great things for people, only what that organization will do for their paycheck down the road. So with just a slight pause I tend to finish the sentence with a less kind line that sounds a lot like “they would be better off without you.” because it is the simple truth. If you want to build a resume on the back of a less fortunate group they will be better served by you forgetting the idea.

You might think that is a negative attitude on my part. Indeed the reaction I usually get is: but I/they would still be helping!

I would like to remind you that tapeworms are a great help for losing weight. The problem is the results are not healthy. And the same goes for helping kids for a resume. They will get attention and maybe some laughs, but the fact is that they are being helped by someone who doesn’t like kids. The difference in quality of care and energy is obvious.

The other side of the coin are people who are looking for organization to do good with. Their questions are almost as stereotyped, but in the opposite direction. They ask, “Do you know of a good organization that works with kids?”

When the question gets spoken, that person is thinking about kids, not about the royal Me. It also gets a much different response from me, I open an internet browser and start looking for groups they could join, asking follow up questions that are always met with answers, and knowing that when it does show up on a resume later it will be record of service and virtue rather than a record of greed and vice.