You meet the person and visit for about fifteen minutes. Enough to call it a friendship? No. Acquaintance? Yes, so you write them a short email, tell them how much you enjoyed meeting them, and you hope there’s a next time.
The next day, no answer. Same thing the rest of the week. Two weeks go by and still nothing. You rationalize. They’re busy like you are, so that’s okay. You get it.
Three months later, you’re taking care of email and one address looks familiar. It’s from your now not so new acquaintance. They acknowledge how much you know about a particular subject and would greatly appreciate your answering some questions concerning a major purchase they are about to make.
Yes, they are correct. You really do know what they think you know. Feeling honored you’ve been asked, you logically tackle the questions. Some answers come easily. Others require you to hunt for, find, and properly apply the information. It takes you almost two hours to finish the list. You then send them along with a few sentences in which you tell them you’re glad you could help them and to let you know if any of your answers leave them wanting.
A week goes by. Nothing. You wonder if they received your email. Finally, an email from them pops up. Good. As you click on it, you are hoping what you told them was helpful. Their answer, however, amounts to only one word — “Thanx.” You stare at it and wonder why you ever bothered to spend all that time and effort only to receive one misspelled word.
That one experience doesn’t smudge your fundamental belief that information is of value only when shared. Nor do you allow it to poison your desire to be truly helpful, especially those times when it’s asked for. It is, however, disturbing enough that in conversing with a friend you mention what happened and that if there is a next time, no matter who it is, you won’t be so eager to help.
Your friend understands how frustrated you are, then caps it off by saying, “Well, guess what. That’s TNN. You know, The New Normal.” So, you tell yourself that like it or not, you must accept it for what it is. There really isn’t any alternative, not unless you just want to just give it all up and spend the rest of your life feeling as if you are a lonely pioneer, a hopeless and useless “has been” of no value except to occupy space.
Where reality ends, twisted fantasy begins. What’s coming next? A process for making dry water? What a hoot that would be. In getting ready for an outdoor party, you hose off the deck, and voila! In less than two minutes, it’s bone dry. The new process-product takes the country by storm. Dry water becomes TNN without anyone ever thinking of the consequences. Spraying it on a building to protect it from a furiously burning fire next door, the water evaporates so quickly it no longer protects. It’s called the “fireman’s curse.”
At that point, you catch yourself. Forget the fantasy. You must return to reality.
You access a corporate website to get information about the company’s products only to come up empty-handed. So you click on “Contact Us.” A form pops up and asks for your name, address, email address, phone number, and the reason for your inquiry.
Immediately, you go on alert. Because you’re only asking a question, your email address is enough. The company could and most likely will sell all that unneeded personal contact information. Even worse, there’s no option; you must use their form. Then you wait a day, a week, two weeks, then forever. It’s like they never heard from you.
You lose, they lose, and in the end everybody loses. So what if it was only a fifty dollar deal. If the company was to give it even a second thought, they’d realize the potential—fifty times a hundred is five thousand, but times a million is fifty million. Widgets aren’t made. Hours aren’t worked. Money isn’t made. Good lives aren’t lived.
In both examples, the corrosive and destructive side of TNN was demonstrated, the good and instructive side was inferred.
Whichever your choice, it will count toward the future awaiting all of us.
