{"id":44,"date":"2017-01-14T16:22:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-14T23:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2017-01-14T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T23:24:58","slug":"snake-educators-stop-saying-herp-preach-beyond-choir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/science-and-education\/snake-educators-stop-saying-herp-preach-beyond-choir\/","title":{"rendered":"Snake Educators: Stop Saying \u201cHerp\u201d and Preach Beyond the Choir"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Herp. What does that word mean to you?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who knows about and enjoys reptiles and amphibians<\/strong>, it\u2019s a great word. It\u2019s short for \u2018herpetology\u2019, duh. It\u2019s synonymous with an obsession you probably developed before you learned to tie your shoes.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anyone else<\/strong>, this isn\u2019t the case. It\u2019s a place in our language already reserved: a sexually transmitted disease, or counterpart to \u201cderp\u201d, meaning stupid, doing something stupid, or a stupid-looking face.<\/p>\n

We all suck at talking to the right audience.<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s a documentary I saw years ago, about the (still) ongoing debate between Creationists and everyone else in our century, called Flock of Dodos<\/em><\/a>. With the amount of overwhelming evidence in support of evolution, how can a debate still exist in 2016? The answer isn\u2019t as easy as blaming religion and blasting conservatives for classroom politics. The real culprit is that scientists often suck at talking to people<\/strong>. The documentary makes this pretty clear: science education suffers from the assumption that being correct matters.<\/p>\n

The same is true for activists and educators who operate under a false belief: factual information makes a difference, when given to an audience that does not value facts. There seems to be an idea out there that, to the person who blasts every snake he sees with a shotgun purely for the fun of it, a few well-placed facts will change his mind\u00a0\u2026 that to that personality, citations will make a difference, and that if these particular facts don\u2019t do the trick, more facts<\/em> will for sure. Education certainly matters, but the singular tactic of preaching to the uncaring does nothing. To this individual, education must be sold<\/em>. How do we sell<\/em> information to an audience that doesn\u2019t care? Marketing.<\/p>\n

Think Like a\u00a0Marketer<\/h3>\n

Bad marketers assume. They guess what people are interested in, what they want, what they care about, and why they care about those things. I see so many educational communications and groups making the same mistakes. These groups never ask the simple questions: what is the reason<\/em> why people don\u2019t like snakes? What<\/em> fears do they have? Why<\/em> do they have those fears? None of those questions would be answered by providing interesting information about snakes\u00a0\u2026 people don\u2019t kill snakes because they don\u2019t know much about them; they kill them because they are worried about their pets, livestock, and probably quite a few ego-driven issues. If the information that we have is not packaged in a way that directly addresses those concerns, it is a useless action.<\/p>\n

The details of this topic could go on forever\u200a\u2014\u200abut I\u2019d like to address perhaps the most obvious case of bad education communication in the herpetological community: \u201cherp\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cDat\u2019s a nasty STD, yo.\u00a0Ew!\u201d<\/h4>\n

That\u2019s the first entry to a survey I put out awhile back, just to dip my toe in the obvious: \u201cherp\u201d is a really stupid word to use in our educational communications.<\/p>\n

What does the word \u201cherp\u201d mean to you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I posted the question on a Reddit community with no context. Granted, this is a single audience, but more diverse than I thought. Out of 237 respondents, most were in their 20\u2019s. Almost 25% were in that impressionable \u201cmy world-view is starting to cool like Hadean-era crust\u201d age range of 18\u201320, and just under 9% were in their 30\u2019s.<\/p>\n

As predicted, the results are a pretty fun read. While a very small portion of the responders actually recognized the term as one synonymous with reptiles and amphibians, most associated with the more famous pairings.<\/p>\n

Either short for \u2018herpes\u2019 or \u2018herp de derp\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know, but \u201cherpes\u201d came to mind, so I think it may have something to do with disease or bacteria?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It means dumb or herpes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

meaningless filler word for talking about something dumb<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stupid, a less offensive version of \u201cretard\u201d. Usually used as a noun to describe an action rather than a person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The results to the question \u201cWhen you hear or read the word HERP, what is your first reaction?\u201d are just as fun:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I assume someone is making fun of someone else\u2019s appeareance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Herpes. Sores. Weeping sores.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think of someone saying \u201cherp de derp\u201d when mocking someone for being stupid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

keep your distance<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ew<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow, so when we\u2019re coming up with communication pieces or starting an organization to educate people who aren\u2019t already in-the-know about reptiles and amphibians, we should definitely use the word \u201cherp\u201d, right? I\u2019ll base my answer on the responses to the next question in the survey: \u201cIf an organization\u2019s name includes the word HERP, how would that affect your initial reaction to the organization?\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of 5 choices, the most popular was \u201cI would find the organization funny or not take it seriously.\u201d <\/strong>with ~38%. Next, with ~26%, is \u201cI would assume the organization is a joke or satire.<\/strong>\u201d At the bottom, with 1.23%, is \u201cI would be excited about this organization.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is this even the right audience? To the question, later in the survey, \u201cIf you see a rattlesnake in the wild, what do you do?<\/strong>\u201d (Also, the first mention of anything that could give away the purpose of the survey, beyond the ability for the user to change answers), ~67% answered either \u201cRun away as fast as possible.\u201d<\/strong>, or \u201cDo nothing; you have no interest in the snake one way or another.\u201d<\/strong>. Fortunately, only 1.68% selected \u201cKill the Snake\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want a fun read, or you\u2019re not convinced that naming your brand new education group something like \u201cHerps 4 Ever\u201d or \u201cEveryone Loves Herps\u201d, this PDF is for you:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/_downloads\/Use-of-HERP-in-Herpetological-Communications.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

And if you think that Discovery didn\u2019t pour many thousands of dollars into market research before pooping out \u201cVenom Hunters\u201d, you may not really understand the game. If our best collective response to a ball python peddler entertaining the masses by searching for \u201cliquid gold\u201d is to tell that same group a thing or two about an STD, it\u2019s no wonder we are losing this fight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herp. What does that word mean to you? If you\u2019re someone who knows about and enjoys reptiles and amphibians, it\u2019s a great word. It\u2019s short for \u2018herpetology\u2019, duh. It\u2019s synonymous with an obsession you probably developed before you learned to tie your shoes. If you\u2019re anyone else, this isn\u2019t the case. It\u2019s a place in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rattlesnakesolutions.com\/snakeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}