Icky Cigs & The SEO of Me
Episode 11:06:2023 - Prompt: Image
Where Image took me…
If I were to run for public office or some kind of position that required a background check, there would be images uncovered that I’d have to explain.
Floating around on the internet, deep in the Facebook & Myspace archives, are photos of me smoking… cigarettes.
I don’t smoke. And there is no ‘cig to my lips’ in any of the images.
But… was a time when the image of smoking felt cool to me.
The opening scene of Mad Men is one of my favorite of TV pilots.
Don Draper asks a waiter what cigarette brand he smokes. The waiter says, Old Gold. Draper asks if he’d ever smoke another brand, like his Luckies.
“I like my Old Gold. It’s a habit, I guess.”
The scene is laden with subtext: racism (a white waiter intervenes assuming the black waiter is bothersome), government collaboration with corporations (giving soldiers a free box of Old Gold every week), and the influence of a good tagline: I love smoking.
My dad was a smoker. He didn’t smoke your run-of-the-mill 20-pack of tobacco.
He smoked a brand called Erik, which only had 10 in the pack.
Erik was a filter-tipped cigar.
It was the same shape and size as a cigarette, but the paper was light brown with a thin gold band at the darker brown filter.
They just looked elegant in his hand.
My dad could stop mid-stride and tie his shoe with the Erik in his mouth, smoke coming out of his nose, like an ancient circular breathing practice.
He smoked for fifty-years until cancer got him. The first cancer was unequivocably due to smoking.
Larynx & Lung.
He beat it after loads of chemo & radiation and a lot of help from his wife and my sister.
He then spent 8-years living in the brittle shell of his former body, grateful for every day, before the cancer got him again… and got him worse.
Subconsciously, I had always wanted to be as cool as my dad.
It’s why I thought…
A cigarette might be a good prop.
But smoking never stuck with me. Something about the inhaling of toxins?
The contrasting image of my dad with his Erik and my dad emaciated on the sofa after a chemotherapy treatment is enough to know it ain’t cool.
Which brings me to image as a searchable identity…
I wrote about Al Gore Rhythms last week.
Algorithms can work for us if we trick them, or maybe, if we play along.
I bought my name as a URL in 1997 to create an online portfolio of my films, photography, and paintings.
Images that, when together, represent me.
A good friend was a web designer – there were no templates – and he offered to build my website for free.
There was one other Michelle Cutler, a make-up artist in New York working in film, like me, and pushing at my algorithms.
I felt protective of my name as a searchable identity, but…
It took a year to understand who I was as michellecutler.com.
For 20-years, I survived on word-of-mouth and my business card exchange. I didn’t need to be found on Google through search engine optimization (SEO).
My website went through a series of design updates - templates and DIY - but always functioned as an extension of meeting me or hearing about me: an image created by the referral.
Until I needed to make more money doing exactly what I like to do, which had changed, and it didn’t fit with the image of my 2019 site.
After a meeting with a business strategist & SEO analyst, I realized there are people who will never find me if they don’t search for my full name because I had little SEO on my website.
In revisiting the ‘online identity’ self-examination process, I had to generate content that defines me in ways people search for what they need.
The web is not linear.
Writing content “Google likes” is awkward and redundant, and creating content that makes my business searchable felt gratuitous and very unlike me…
Until it didn’t anymore.
There are a few more Michelle Cutler’s out there than in 1997, and they are much savvier in their use of content to stimulate the algorithms to their businesses, but I am the only Michelle Cutler who owns the URL.
According to DROA, it’s worth $7,000 if someone wants to buy it!
YOUR TURN: I had thought about writing about a woman I lived with when I was young, someone who was beautiful in a timeless way, but was never happy.
I would watch her put on her make-up to become even more beautiful, and she’d say to me,
“Michelle, you’re so lucky you don’t need to wear make-up.”
I didn’t wear make-up because I didn’t want attention.
I guess I could write more about Onyx, but for now…
Where does IMAGE take you?
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Happy writing!
I have no clear self image. I know myself to be uninhibited but full of second guesses. I have a huge heart and can be extremely selfless but say ridiculously stupid things sometimes and can be extremely awkward and inappropriate. Over the years, I've often wished that I could send out an anonymous survey for folks to complete honestly which would indicate how I present to others. It doesn't worry me as much as I am dead curious to know. Despite all of my uncertainty, I have been referred to time and time again as “so confident”, which tickles me. It's an act, you see. I am definitely not good at public speaking or, by extension, acting. I get a facial tick in front of cameras and my voice is extremely warbly at a podium. I have, however, developed what I assume is an acting technique to get through situations where I am “in the spotlight.” I imagine I'm Juliette Binoche in Chocolat. The character Vianne is unapologetically but pleasantly direct and is not easily bullied by her adversaries, eventually providing them guidance to fulfilment and joy. The first day teaching, a job interview, first date – doing my best to portray her has gotten me through and evidently convinced audiences.
I’m sixteen and looking at myself in the bedroom mirror, studying my image. Who am I? I strike a pose. Am I pretty? I dance with the mirror and flip my long, mousey-brown hair. Will people like me? I smile. What do they see in me? Now decades later, I know most people weren’t looking, and I, captivated in self-centeredness, was mostly looking at my shallow self. Starring in my own video. An exhausting performance. When I look at my image in the mirror these days, it’s to see if my hair is combed. I smile to check for bits of food debris in my teeth. And before I leave the house, I stop by the full-length mirror. Yup, fully dressed. Funny thing is, when I quit worrying about my mirror image, I am able to see others much better.