10 thoughts on “Meabh’s Social Media – 5 Screengrabs from Facebook, 17 from Twitter”

  1. It was very vague to me what Meabh’s company does – Foresight Factory – so I did a little reading. This would be a very simplistic interpretation but it looks like they analyze trends for people to see where to take their business needs to grow and expand them, provide career guidance, help you get clients and customers, but their vision statement might say it best: “to make trends a ‘must have’ by predicting a unique future for each client through analytics, algorithms and human expertise.” Former names of their company are “the future foundation for research” and “advanced (Nvision) limited” and unlimited.

    I don’t want to put down something I know so little about, but in some ways this sounds like a multi-level marketing type of direct sales company – if there are more of them out there. Yet I do know that many times employers use testing devices to weed out the kind of employee they are looking for based on some data dug up for them by some company that shows them how to frame their questions to find the perfect fit for their job on the basis of a test result so they will not be wasting their money on someone who won’t be the right fit – and so it’s data-driven. Foresight Factory provides the data but it’s vague just how – through “analytics, algorithms and human expertise” tells me very little. Social Organizational Psychology or Disorganizational Psychology as we liked to yuck it up about, was a trend in the Psychology field in the late 1970’s to mid-1980’s that provided many a Psych major with an M.S. into a consulting field analyzing business models for companies to help them put their most valuable asset, the employee, into the right task for their skill set and encourage work communication among departments – and flow charts, lots of flow charts. Is the organizational psychologist now being replaced by computer generated analytics?

    In the long run can we predict our futures, really? Could Meabh and Sebastien have predicted that the resort they picked in the environment they were in would have had the outcome that it did? Could Shan’ann Watts have known that the very thing MLM’s propose to give their participants – which is the finer things in life, money, nice houses, cars, would have drained their finances to the verge of a second bankruptcy, that only 1% of all who struggle in those companies reach the top of the pyramid and most are doomed to fail? Do disenfranchised troubled youth think joining other INCELS online give them power? Just where are we trending and where are we going, and can it be found in an electronic box called the internet.

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    • No, it’s not MLM. The name says it all – Foresight Factory. They’re a marketing consultancy that advises brands and marketing agencies on how to target consumers, specifically in the area of future trends. So, in short, they try to accurately forecast consumer, marketing and media trends.

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    • Hi Rosie – I know it is. No offence meant. Was just being a bit flippant about the work economy now and some of the language that describes some functions and tasks. A future forecaster for example makes me think of a medieval soothsayer.

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      • Well the future-telling came up extremely short in Nora’s case didn’t it? Not only was the soothsaying wrong on Day 1, but right through the 10 days of the disappearance. One could say something similar about the McCanns. Held in high esteem as doctors who knew better than everyone else, but in terms of their daughter’s disappearance were they more medical doctors or witch doctors recasting reality?

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  5. The thing is, I’m sure Meabh researched their vacation with the same gusto she speaks about future trends in the digital world, such as people needing unproductive leisure time and barriers to traveling abroad – yet the resort they picked may have been suitable for a few of their family members but not for all. And I have to wonder what they would be doing there for the time they had planned to be there. Nora had a difficult time keeping up, and what was involved there -navigating through hiking trails, waterfalls, rocks, wouldn’t be leisurely or easy. One parent would have to lag behind and help her. They would all have to shop for food and prepare their own food as the resort only offered one or two light meals. Would they all go to do this or two at a time. Was Nora a good swimmer? Likely not, yet there were two infinity pools close to the compound, sometimes not lit at night. We are all consumers, but these consumers did not do a very good job of predicting what kind of resort would best suit the needs of a family member who had disabilities. I’m sorry to say that as I’m sure their hearts are aching.

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    • Yes I agree. I totally get that you wouldn’t want to limit the horizons for a girl.like Norah or live completely risk free – you’d want her to have different experiences and to gain confidence and as much independence as she could notwithstanding her condition. But this place seemed to be unsuitable with bells on and to me looks like potentially a very stressful holiday of having to continually mind the dangers both in and out of the house that could have befallen her and needing to compromise on what they could participate in – as most of the things to do there seem to rely on a degree of being fully able bodied. Yet also as you say this must have been a personally researched and chosen holiday – not somewhere you end up accidentally.

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  6. And I still can’t get a fix on where everyone’s assigned sleeping arrangements were. If Nora was given the downstairs master bedroom, why would mom and dad sleep upstairs with the two kids in the other bed adjacent to their bed. It wouldn’t have been practical to put her upstairs, yet they said she was in her own room. The best place to put her would be to have a trundle bed, or a cot of some sort next to their own bed downstairs. Where else do we see beds moved all around and not really understand who was sleeping where – the McCann’s. The twin bed up against the window looked more rumpled than the bed Madeleine was supposed to have slept in.

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