My theory: Blogs and cell phones: It's mostly about likes and locations

It strikes me that I spend a great deal more time talking about things I like than I used to. I wonder whether this is true. A friend at a party today was talking about a specific kind of foil. I just did the same thing, recommending a kind of stain soap I like (this really simple bar soap called Stain Soap (imaginative, eh?) by Carbona.

That brings me to the core of my theory: That most bloggers and people who actively post on message boards spend a great deal of time talking about stuff they like with the specific goal of identifying themselves and sorting themselves and each other into groups. On the message board where I'm most active, I see people do this all the time. Someone asks, "What's your favorite local band?" and in answering, people sort themselves into groups of shared affinity within and across musical genres and locations and all sorts of random connections. On cell phones, the vast majority of conversations involve location. "Where are you?" "Where should we meet?" I find that people on cell phones often like to disclose where they are, regardless of whether their conversational partner has asked (unless they are Jayson Blair types).

The willingness to state preferences for specific brands of things has been on my mind because of all the hype I've been hearing and reading about "buzz marketing" of late. Marketing often seems to me it's storytelling of a kind that has an easy common denominator. For example, everyone uses aluminum foil, so people know what you are talking about when you recommend a specific kind. And lately I've been going around town advertising a "listening party" I am hosting for the band Gomez. I've had great responses, for the most part, because many people are now familiar with the band around this area. Yet I can't tell how much of the enthusiastic reception to my posting flyers has to do with the band and the event and how much it has to do with me being a polite and relatively presentable person. I guess I'll find out on Friday.