Blogging and Dial Up Internet Don't Mix

Don’t try this at home. For your own sanity do not attempt to post a blog using dial up internet on a computer that is so overloaded with pointless programs and saved crap (no other word is suitable to describe the content of this computer). After four tries on this ancient machine I have given up and resorted to stolen Wi-Fi. So here I am blogging in an environment ten years behind the modern world. Right now I am in Terre Haute, Indiana in my stepmother’s restaurant in downtown. I am visiting my father and his family for the Labor Day weekend, and after not checking my email for three days I feel so relieved to be back in touch with the modern world. Driving through Terre Haute feels like you’re driving during the mid 1990’s. I don’t feel that I am exaggerating either. After being so immersed in the changing ways of the world and new technology, it feels so strange to be in an environment with dial up internet. My father’s computer literally takes half an hour to load the internet, and that’s when it’s playing nice. You type in an URL and come back twenty minutes later after doing something completely different to see if the page has loaded. To say the least, it is a different lifestyle up here. It presents a challenge to those savvy PR professionals with their newest and greatest social media. I asked my stepmother if she knew what a blog is, and she responded, “Ehhh, kinda?” How do you communicate using the latest and greatest strategies with consumers who don’t know what Facebook is or who have never read a blog… ever? Social media is an incredible strategy, but only when consumers actually know what it is and how to use it. And the folks of Terre Haute, Indiana prevent a special challenge. I told my father that he needed to wipe his hard drive on his computer to get rid of all the crap that is making his computer slow. He responded, “Well I’ve got too much good stuff on here.” That example about sums up the challenge that we are facing in rural Indiana.