In 2007, I was sitting in an office trying to think of different areas to grow the interactive agency that had just acquired my agency months prior. I knew that there was money in the usual places: search marketing, web design and the like. I was chatting on IM with a friend of mine that had run afoul of Elliot Spitzer (long before the whores were made public), and there was a blog post about him that ranked #1 for his name.

“Dude, its not that bad,” I said, “the number one result for Micah Baldwin is a kid at Georgia Southern University that wrote a paper about why pot should be legal.”

My friend proceeded to explain to me that he had spoken to several companies about his issue, and at least one had offered to get the offending blog post off the front page of Google.

“They charge $10,000 per spot it needs to be dropped.” He told me.

My jaw dropped.

And, as a test to see if I could do it, I started to blog and tweet.

Since then, the Georgian pot loving Micah Baldwin and I are friends on Facebook, and his paper is nowhere to be seen in the top 10 results on Google, and I have found myself something I love to do, and a member of a community I never knew existed. Bloggers.

Since then I started working with Lijit and traveling the country meeting with really smart people, speaking in front of really smart people and finding that community was something I found really interesting.

Take that with the fact that one of my apparent pluses was that I am “authentic.” Its something that I have never really understood (if I am authentic, and its treated with such positivity, does that mean others are not authentic?).

Today, a friend of mine was at a panel discussion around online reputation management that made me think of the Free Pot Paper, and my place within this larger community. So I tweeted:

and soon followed that up with:

Which, of course, caused a few eyebrows to be raised.

Communities have to have very specific structures and rules to survive. Think about it. A community must have an internal way to police itself and to filter out potential members. Communities that survive and thrive have these two elements in place.

For communities to really grow, they must demand a level of conformity from its members. Similarity is rewarded by increased acceptance within the group. Conformity allows for a certain level of dependability and reliability from each member of the community.

Conformity make communities comfortable and drives growth since it makes for a clear understanding of what type of members succeed within the community. Conformity creates the expectations required of each member.

Authenticity, the act of “being real,” implies that to a certain extent the individual has placed himself ahead of the community. “I am being myself, which may, or may not be beneficial to the community.”

Is authenticity bad? No, for the individual it creates a level of trust that doesnt exist naturally. Authenticity rightly so creates the expectation that the individual will place openness and truth above the needs of the community.

The authentic individual, while potentially being praised by the community is also by definition excluded from assuming a true position of power within that community.

Certainly, the suggestion is not that the lack of authenticity grows a community.  The reality is that the community itself has to be authentic, and the members need to conform to the expectations of the community. When each individual works to conform to the greater community, there is some distinct loss of authenticity.

Conformity breeds consistency, reliability and trust. Authenticity breeds credibility and believability. Conformity is about belonging, and as an individual, to truly be authentic, you must be willing to stand slightly outside of your chosen community, and accept the possibility of not being fully belonging.

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