The Differences Between Facebook and LinkedIn

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business, Facebook, humor, lifestyle, linkedin, list, social media, Stephen Roth

On Facebook, you would never consider connecting with that export manager in Beijing you’ve never met before. But on LinkedIn, why the hell not? She might get you a job one day.

On Facebook, people are delighted when you post photos of your cat basking in a patch of sunlight on the living room carpet. On LinkedIn, not so much.

On Facebook, when you want someone’s friendship, you send him a request. On LinkedIn, when you want a connection, you have to explain how you know that person, whether he is a friend or a colleague, what company you worked at together, how much capital gains he reported in his 2013 1099-DIV, etc., etc. Otherwise, LinkedIn gets kind of bitchy.

On LinkedIn, you can tell how many people have viewed your profile and, in most cases, who they are. On Facebook, you have no idea who has been clicking through your photo album, “Let’s Go Crazy–Cancun Spring Break 2009.”

On LinkedIn, your post announcing that you have successfully negotiated a truce to the civil war in Syria will garner two or three likes. On Facebook, your pronouncement that you just ate Count Chocula cereal for the first time since the early 1980s will get 46 likes, 13 enthusiastic comments and two shares.

“Awesome! My thesis on how to end our dependency on foreign oil got two likes!”

On LinkedIn, your profile pic is a corporate photo of you in your best business suit. On Facebook, your profile pic is an iPhone photo of your kid running through the sprinkler in his diaper.

On LinkedIn, you can ask your top connections several times to please write a recommendation for you, and they never will. On Facebook, you can ask your friends what kind of dishwasher you should buy, and within minutes you will get 25 lengthy, detailed, unique pieces of advice.

On Facebook, you can rant and rave about your pet political issues as much as you want. You can do that on LinkedIn, too, if you think you will never have to look for a job ever again.

With Facebook, you might scroll through your newsfeed and even post something while sitting on the toilet. You would never do that with LinkedIn. It wouldn’t be professional.

Finally, on Facebook, you can visit a friend’s profile and immediately know their politics, how many kids and pets they have, whether or not they are divorced, and whether or not they are mentally healthy. On LinkedIn, all you know about a person is they worked 11 years at KPMG LLP and they like to share articles like “10 Can’t-Miss Accounting Software Solutions.”

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“We Would Be Honored if You Would Join Us”

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darth vader, empire strikes back, han solo, movies, satire, star wars, Stephen Roth

There’s a scene from The Empire Strikes Back that has always intrigued and fascinated me. If you are my age or younger, you may know this part of the movie by heart. Han Solo, Leia and the gang have just arrived at Cloud City, and Lando Calrissian is playing the good host by taking them to dinner. They arrive at the dining room and the door slides open to reveal Darth Vader at the end of a long table. Han fires his blaster a couple of times at Vader, who deftly blocks the shots.

Vader says, “We would be honored if you would join us.” Lando gives Han and Leia some lame excuse about the Empire arriving in town just before they did. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“I’m sorry, too,” Han replies. Han, Leia, Chewbacca and Lando enter the dining room, Vader sits at the table, the bounty hunter Boba Fett walks in behind him, and the door closes.

I have always wondered what happened right after that door closed. Most likely, the Storm Troopers rounded Han, Leia and Chewie up and took them immediately to the detention center. But Vader’s remark haunts me: “We would be honored if you would join us.” Maybe the Dark Lord planned some chivalrous gesture by treating Han and his friends to a nice dinner before hauling him off to be frozen in carbonite. I know that would be out of character for Vader, but that is what I want to believe happened. I mean, they had food and drinks laid out on the table as if they were getting ready to entertain. You can’t let that much food go to waste.

And if they did, in fact, sit down for a last supper, as it were, this is how I imagine the dialogue:

VADER: This is a day that will be long remembered.

SOLO: (Not looking up.) Could someone please pass the rolls? (Boba Fett passes a basket of rolls and Han takes one.)

VADER: The Emperor will be most pleased.

LEIA: You really think this is the end, don’t you? You may have caught us, but there are thousands out there just like us. Hundreds of thousands. I may not live to see it, but your empire will crumble someday soon, Lord Vader.

SOLO: (Placing a hand on LEIA’s arm.) Honey, now is not the time.

VADER: (Leaning back in his chair.) No, please… Let her speak. I find her lack of tact amusing.

CHEWBACCA: WRROOOAR!

SOLO: Chewie, stop it!

FETT: (Checking his watch.) I say we end this charade and freeze him.

VADER: The Empire will compensate you for your time. Has everyone tried the green bean casserole? I obviously can’t eat it, but I sense that it is very tasty.

LANDO: (Taking the dish.) Thanks. Want some, Han?

SOLO: Sure, why don’t you hand that over? Just like you handed your friends over to the Empire.

LANDO: (Whispering.) I had no idea you were coming. I hadn’t seen you since, what, since the Kessel Run? Then you just show up. (Taking a sip from his wine glass.) Look, I did the best I could.

SOLO: Oh, I get it. You’re a real hero.

LEIA: (Leaning toward LANDO.) When Luke hears about this, he’s going to blast your little floating city out of the sky.

VADER: How is Luke anyway? Has anyone seen him lately? What’s he up to?

(Everyone stares silently at their food.)

VADER: I only ask because, well, I do have a certain fondness for the boy. He clearly has talent. The emperor and I are quite certain that he can be turned.

LEIA: (Almost spitting.) He’ll die before he joins you.

VADER: (Lifting a gloved finger.) We shall see about that, princess. We shall see.

SOLO: You might have fooled us, but Luke’s too smart to fall into one of your traps.

CHEWBACCA: WRRAOOR!

LEIA: (Picking at her lime fluff jello salad.) Can I have another roll? Please?

FETT: Solo ate the last one.

VADER: (Lifts his hand, and a roll rises from the basket and lands on LEIA’s plate.) No…there is another.

(LEIA nods to the Dark Lord and takes a bite from her roll.)

– END –

A Night to Remember

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a plot for pridemore, barnes & noble, fiction, kansas city, Stephen Roth, the kansas city star, the writers place, writing, zona rosa

The line was long at times.

On Saturday, we hosted our much-anticipated book launch party for A Plot for Pridemore at a venerable Kansas City mansion called The Writers Place. Attendance was around 70 people, we sold 31 books and I signed even more copies than that. We had two chocolate fountains, lots of wine and beer, and a wonderful, oversized projection of the book cover looming over the event. It was an exhilarating, exhausting night, one my wife and I will never forget. We also got to take home two coolers of beer and several Tupperware containers of strawberries, pineapple and melted chocolate. I guess we will be having a pool party soon just to get rid of the stuff.

To everyone who has purchased my book or attended any of the Pridemore events in the past three weeks, thank you so much for your love and support. It is amazing to me the range of people who have taken the time to tell me how excited they are about my novel. I am truly humbled and blessed to have such wonderful friends.

One thing I have learned in the past few weeks is that almost everyone who approaches me about the book asks the same question: “When is your next one coming out?” The answer is, I don’t know. I have completed about 80 pages of a new book, and I hope to concentrate more on it this fall. I’ll post more about this work in the future as I become more certain about its potential.

I have one more book signing scheduled in the very near future:  1 p.m. this Saturday at the Barnes & Noble in Kansas City’s Zona Rosa shopping center. After that, I have a few weeks off before the next event. My book continues to sell as a sporadic pace, according to the numbers I am seeing on Amazon.com. On Sunday, The Kansas City Star featured this little review about Pridemore and several other new books by area authors. It is always nice to get some positive local press.

That’s all the news I can think of regarding the book. I promise my next post will be about something different!

First Event for A Plot for Pridemore

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a plot for pridemore, books, fiction, mercer university press, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

My first book signing was Saturday at the Barnes & Noble in Overland Park, Kansas. Several friends showed up and we sold 19 of the 20 copies of Plot for Pridemore that the store had ordered. Thanks to all of you who showed up. If you had not been there Saturday, it would have been a long two hours of making awkward eye contact with shoppers. I hope I didn’t write anything too embarrassing or indecipherable in your copies of the book.

Here are few images from Saturday’s event. It was a lot of fun feeling like a rock star for an afternoon. Thanks for having me, Barnes & Noble.

One of my many star-struck fans.

The big banner will travel with me this summer as I share the good word about Pridemore.

The author, in a quiet moment of reflection.

Next stop for Pridemore is a book launch party this Saturday and a book signing at another Barnes & Noble in Kansas City on June 21.

June 6

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1944, allies, d-day, invasion, june 6, normandy, omaha beach, world war 2

I cannot even comprehend the idea of landing at Omaha Beach under heavy artillery and gunfire on June 6, 1944. I feel very fortunate and blessed for the American and Allied soldiers who put their lives on the line and stormed Normandy 70 years ago today. The world would be a very different place if they had not.

The Reviews are Coming In…

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a plot for pridemore, fiction, forewordreviews.com, reviews, Stephen Roth, trina carter

Here’s a very nice review of A Plot for Pridemore by Trina Carter of ForewardReviews.com:

Exaggeration brings humor to the publicity stunt this mayoral main character has in store.

Machiavelli would have admired Monroe Tolliver. He isn’t a prince, just a mayor, but he has a plan to save his town. The fact that it involves explosives, kickbacks, and trickery is all part of the plot to get Pridemore, Missouri, going again. For if there’s one thing Tolliver has learned in his nearly fifty-year span as mayor, it’s that real goodness can be a liability, but the pretense is always very effective.

Set in America’s heartland, A Plot for Pridemore is a send-up of small-town politics. Pridemore is in danger of dying out. The new bypass has funneled traffic away from what was once a prosperous place for tourists vacationing in the Ozarks. The mayor seizes on the fact that Lewis and Clark passed close enough that way to turn a natural bridge and network of caves into a roadside attraction. Like Br’er Fox constructing a doll out of a lump of tar, the mayor dresses up his plan with enough made-for-television sensationalism to lure the media to Pridemore to cover the rescue of a slow-witted kid trapped in the cave.

It’s a sticky situation all right, and Roth spins his tale with a sure hand. He uses omniscient narration to keep his plates in the air with multiple viewpoints even as the publicity stunt goes awry. He uses exaggeration to poke fun at civic pride with almost Twain-like humor, like when he calls the town hall “one of those brick monstrosities that had all the charm of an East German dormitory.” He also creates characters to root for, including a jaded young newspaper reporter fresh out of journalism school, and characters that defy easy stereotyping, such as an aged skateboarding spelunker and beer-buzzed engineering expert brought in to save the day.

Some of these same characters are never fully developed, however. For example, the reporter remains the hapless onlooker, the kid in the cave is the clueless victim, and the old mayor stays the villain masterminding the whole fiasco (though he is the most complex and interesting character). There are also a few inconsistencies regarding the high-tech era in which the story supposedly takes place—battered maps rather than GPS, bedroom phones rather than cell phones, among others.

This is the kind of novel that begs to be read.