Nowadays, if you tell someone to be grateful for electricity or Internet access, you’ll probably get laughed at. Most people, especially tech savvy crowds like online entrepreneurs or domainers, tend to take these things for granted. But just stop for a moment and think about what would happen if you’d end up let’s say losing Internet access for one week. That’s it, just seven days.
I don’t know about you guys but I for one would be extremely affected. Even if you don’t earn a living online, you still won’t somehow be “immune” to the catastrophic effects of something like this because nowadays, way more aspects of our lives are dependent on the Internet than people realize. What about electricity? I don’t even want to imagine what the world would look like after just one week without electricity.
People are considerably more likely to “behave” when everything works as it should but after a week without electricity, let’s just say you’ll understand first-hand just how violently primitive some of our reactions can be. I’m writing this because we, as domainers and/or online entrepreneurs, have basically grown accustomed to the idea that everything related to electricity and/or the Internet will *always* work smoothly.
In my opinion, we have to understand one thing: the fact that we are so dependent on electricity and Internet access represents a vulnerability and we should be grateful for the fact that lots and lots of people are working hard to ensure that our “comfortable” lifestyle is in no way disturbed.
Unfortunately, most of us do the exact opposite: when everything is working properly, we don’t even think about being grateful. On the other hand, should something stop working… watch out 🙂
As I’m sure the ones who work in the industries in question can confirm, just one negative incident is enough to make customers forget about the multiple years during which nothing bad happened. To such customers, the electricity/Internet providers are now the bad guys. Forget about the fact that everything worked flawlessly for years, who cares right?
I used to be like this as well, I admit, but as time passed and as I started working with customers as well, I ended up understanding just how wrong I was. Nowadays, I like to think that I’m a *considerably* more reasonable customer than in the past and a person who understands that taking things for granted is a huge mistake.
I encourage you guys to do the same, life’s too short to be ungrateful.
April 9th, 2014 at 6:12 pm
I find that being unforgiving about electricity/internet stems from the fact that it’s a service we pay big money for and so expect a level of service.
Same goes with domaining, imagine I had a broker, let’s say his name is Coby Tlements. Now, Coby for years sold domains for buyers and always paid up quickly and had great communication. Now imagine that Coby just stopped paying people & no longer communicated where all the money has gone!
Well, all those years of good service really don’t matter anymore because Coby is a fraudster and the quicker we forget the past good deeds the quicker we can raise the alarm that there is a lying, cheating & stealing scumbag greedily gobbling up peoples assets to fund his lifestyle!
April 10th, 2014 at 4:26 am
@Mr Domainer: there is however one fundamental difference between the two scenarios. In your scenario, a service provider (brokerage services) did a good job up until a certain point but as of that point, the services went downhill and didn’t recover.
When it comes to glitches with electricity or Internet providers though, we’re usually just talking about a relatively small problem which can and will be fixed soon as opposed to a huge problem which won’t go away.
Therein lies the distinction I’m trying to make. Now sure, if the service deteriorates and doesn’t improve then of course, that’s a completely different situation. But in most cases, we’re simply talking about small glitches and in those cases, I for one am considerably more reasonable these days than in the past.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:09 pm
Life wouldn’t be that difficult without the internet or electricity for 7 days. Perhaps domainers should focus more on living more fulfilling lives and do things that they love to do. A terrific post that highlights the “sorry” state of affairs with most working professionals living in today’s world of technological and mechanical slavery. It’s sad that people don’t take breaks nor spend enough time on rest and relaxation. Dependency on facilities like electricity and the net doesn’t just cause our lives to deteriorate but it slowly kills us as well.