Family Asked me What I do...(It was Awkward)

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Traska

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May 7, 2008
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Fuck...

I just had dinner with my family at my aunt and uncles house.
The discussion drifted over to where I am currently working & I briefly explained my internet marketing & how I do SEO for businesses.
Their reactions were confused and distant even though I put it all into layman's terms.

I know there is no reason for me to feel awkward but my family of doctors, teachers and craftsmen pretty much looked at me like I was an alien from another fucking planet! :ugone2far:

Next time anybody asks me what I do I am just going to say "advertising" and then change the discussion to them and their "career"...


Have any of you guys had similar experiences?...
 


To me that would seem easier to explain calling yourself a small business marketing consultant then an affiliate marketer. Whatever the case may be most people just don't "get it" and probably never will. Your best bet is to just do like you mentioned in the last part of your post.

I don't do any of this full time yet, but trying to tell my dad about it was pretty brutal. He sort of understands because he deals with "SEO firms" calling his business all the time offering their services. He was more along the lines of get a real job there is too much competition in that stuff.
 
Yeah,

I know I didn't need to make a post about this, it was just really bugging me.
I'm the odd one out in my family...

Oh well!
 
Neighbor - So what do you do?

Me - I build websites.

Neighbor - Oh really? That's interesting. Any sites I know?

Me - Have you ever heard of Google?

Neighbor - You work for Google?

Me - No. I just wanted to know if you had heard of Google. The last site I worked on was Yahoo. Do you know what that is?

Real conversation
 
Yea it's always hard to explain to people, I always just say "marketing consultant". But if you think that's bad wait until they find out you "work from home" so you must have all the time in the world to babysit their kids and run errands for them.
 
I say "I build online campaigns for fortune 500 companies" sounds fancy and super simple. Cause hey... we do work with blockbuster and eharmony. The more fancy you make your shit seem.... the less questions they ask. They don't want to look stupid.
 
Why not be lowly and humble and say you're a web master for a gay forum? Or a virtual jack off artist?
 
It's kind of disturbing that over the years, "what do you do?" has lost its meaning and slowly has been replaced by "where do you work?" or "who you workin for?"

Even more disturbing is that these same people are the ones who bitch about all the "foreigners" who own hotels, gas stations, nail salons, etc. People around here are beginning to forget that from the outside looking in, this country is still the place to go when you want to make your own way. But as long as there is plenty of "programming" to watch and a pill for every occasion, then they don't mind being told what to think.

There's nothing wrong with running your own shit; we're not ants, nature intended for our contributions to be diverse because we need more than just a hole in the ground for us to do what we are put here to do (whatever that may be). It is not impossible to provide a service to someone without them owning every aspect of your life; and vice fucking versa. You keep listening to this shit on the TV and going to work with 50 other people who do the same fucking job and eating things out of cellophane, then your ass is in that hole and the least of your concerns should be who the fuck I am working for.


^ Tell them that the next time they ask. ^
 
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Damn my Grandma and my extended family always grill me on this every time I see them.

They don't understand "internet marketing" even if explained too. They don't understand that products can be sold online. In fact all this rebill shit has hit the news pretty hard around here (where they can't cancel) and it's even taken a bigger credibility hit, yet it isn't associated with online. I'm basically at the point where I'd just rather tell them to go fuck them-selfs and worry about their own non-existent career. Hell when in doubt, just ask them if they ever seen the ads on google, and tell them you're that guy. Seems to work for the most part. Throw a little jargon around (the basics will do) and they'll probably either be really intrigued or (most likely) they'll drop it in fear of thinking their an idiot and not up with the times.

But yeah, never easy. People honestly don't know they are being marketed to.
 
I honestly don't even tell people what I do anymore, even when they ask. Let's be honest, it's not like they give a fuck anyway and they only ask these things when there is nothing else to talk about.

I also notice that people respect you a hell of alot more when you remove yourself from your "job". You are not your job.

..and when they finally do learn what you do, people are glad you stayed humble and
didn't act like you are some rock star who uses money to calculate self-worth.
 
My family lives in the stone age. I've tried to explain it to all of them but the only one that understands a thing I say is my brother. My mom was pretty much in awe when I showed her a landing page I was working on.

"You created that page? So my 19 year old son is behind one of the sites that pushes anti aging pills?"

I guess when you think about it, if you weren't in touch with this whole business, you'd expect that some big company would be behind anti-aging and diet pill sales pages. Young people making money? Crazy! She also keeps asking me if it's even legal for me to promote rebill offers.

My dad is so behind the times he refuses to let me transfer money to his bank account directly because he doesn't trust "that damn internet." It might steal his money.

They both think I'm going to turn out to be a 25 year old homeless guy, because I don't have a "real" job and I spend a lot of time on my computer. Despite that, some years, I've made more money than they have by just chilling at my computer, I'm still a failure to them.

But someday I'll send each of them a nice fat check for them to just go crazy with, it can serve as a bit of a wake up call and a nice present :) I look forward to that day.
 
I just tell people I'm a web designer & companies pay me to build their site and maintain the upkeep and advertising for a monthly retainer, conversation normally stops there.
 
Well when the day arrives for me when I can leave my 'respectable' day job, and sit at home pushing random offers to idiots for a living, I will have no problems telling anyone who asks.
Last month I spent about 15 hours working on mini sites to make the same amount of money that I work 2 weeks for in my dayjob. Whats to be ashamed about?

LOL ^^ that sounds like the title for an ebook, is that Digital Point calling?
 
Amazing how quickly technology changes and creates new jobs or fields that never existed before...

It seems like whenever I meet someone for the first time and the conversation drifts into "what do you do for a living?" and I tell them I build websites, its almost like I told them a funny joke. The consensus among people that I say that to assume some shitty geocities-esque website, but if im around a computer, I will show them specific sites. Even then they dont seem to grasp it when I tell them that I built the ecommerce system for this site, or created the user management system for something else, it seems like they go into a state of shock or something and the conversation usually ends right there.
 
I mentioned this once already, I think.

Right in the dotcom bubble in Hamburg, one of my colleagues would just say "I am a garbage man." Whenever a hot chick would ask him what he does (They could not STAND "I work in IT/web/startup")
When they got confused/flustered he'd just be all nice and ask "Why? You got a problem with that?"

The amount of girls he pulled with that was unbelievable.

::emp::
 
When I tell people what I do online, some of them feel the need to make some remark on how much money they made with BUX.to but there was a problem with their account and they never got paid.
 
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