Marketing Perette

Perette is a loser that lives in the City of Rochester, near East High. She's no longer using her college degree, instead spending her out-of-work life mooching off her boyfriend. She makes money by taking her clothes off for art students, and occasionally does other stuff that pays better. She's not even very good at being a housewife, and doesn't vacuum nearly as often as she should; but at least she fixes things, because there's not much money to replace all the aging things that are breaking down in her life. She's moody and often mad at the world.
Perette is a dynamic individual living in the North Winton Village neighborhood of Rochester, NY. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, she enjoys writing both essays and software, exercising, and generally making the most of life. She supports her life via frequent figure modeling; custom software, database, & web development; and by having a generous boyfriend. In addition to cooking and cleaning (which she is a bit lax about) her extended homemaking skills include fixing outlets, repairing plumbing, changing mufflers and brakes, and generally addressing a lot of miscellaneous things to minimize expenses so she doesn't have to work hard and to keep her and Dave happy.
Perette Barella is a 1994 graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. She worked briefly as a system administrator before turning to software engineering, working for 9 years in industry developing telephony systems, NASDAQ trading software, and scientific microscopy equipment. In late 2003, she resigned from a position developing UNIX kernel components to start her own business. In the successive years, she has built a thriving development enterprise providing software, database, and web consulting with over 1M in billing in 2009.1  In addition to her business pursuits, she is actively involved in the local art community and a meticulous homemaker, a devoted companion, and a skilled writer.

The above descriptions provide an opportunity to examine the reality (or lack thereof) in our world today. All three descriptions say substantially the same things. What has changed is the selection of wording and the value judgments placed with each version.

An unfortunate reality of our world is that exploits have been found in human perception, and advertisers take advantage of these opportunities every day. If we were computers, virus and spyware scanners would be available to locate the vulnerabilities and close them off. But we aren't machines, and so we're succeptible to:

I don't believe any of the above, although I nevertheless find myself victim to these follies from time to time. Despite the third description of me being the one most suitable for landing another job, it's not real: it presents me as a 2-dimensional caricature whose sole purpose in life is to develop software (or maybe make money, using software development as a means). Yet in this crazy world, it's become expected we'll present ourselves this way.2 

Unfortunately, most people are so busy trying to live within the system that defines their life that they don't consider whether or not this way of life makes any sense. And therein lies a crux of the problem: Our current way of life has become so complex, that most of us spend most of our time either (a) trying to get by in it, or (b) recuperating from living within it. Our lives, our behavior make no sense when examined, but we're so busy doing the behavior we don't have time to realize this. And as things spiral even more out of balance, we're left with even less time, even less energy to study what's wrong or to do anything about it.

I'm not sure how we revise the system we're in. But I am sure that we're not happy with it—and rates of anti-depressant use agree with me. The thing about depression is that it most often afflicts while there appears to be no resolution to a situation. Find an opportunity, a way out, and depression disappears. My conclusion, then, is that many others feel this same pressure too—even if they are too distracted to acknowledge or understand it.

What I am certain of, though, is that it can't go on this way indefinitely: we'd all be better off dead, than living lives of duldrums and toil. Whether it's a change in our lives to counter the insanity of the American way of life, or picking up arms and slaughtering the people who are the problem, something needs to give.

Related Reading

Bullshitting: Speaking Politically (bullshit.html)
An exploration into saying things in different ways, and how it's as much what you say as how you say it. But what if you don't want to play the game?

Footnotes:

  • 1.   'M' is as in the roman numeral.
  • 2.   Not because it's right, or accurate, or good: but simply because we have to "play hard to win." How can we feel good about ourselves when we're forced to misrepresent ourselves to get a job? It's a zero-sum game, and we'd all do equally well if we all acted truthfully. Instead, because a few lie and cheat, we are all expected to lie and cheat—despite knowing in our hearts that its unethical to do so. How did employers ever decide this is acceptable in applicants?