I shake my head. Just when I think we’re really staring to “get it,” even one of the most social media savvy resources is talking about “managing” social media .
Forget it folks. The world IS NOISY. It’s a messy place. We are a messy species. As much as we try to organize/manage/filter/etc we’re doomed to failure.. it doesn’t work.
Woe to you who think you can make your life orderly. Instead, I say unto you, “Accept the messiness of your own life.”
This doesn’t mean succumbing to chaos and crazy levels of interactions. You do have choices. Each of us – whether we take our sociality via broadcast (news, sports, soap operas, advertisements for the Empire, etc) or via the new user-generated networks – we have a choce: We can turn it off.
Farmville and its discontents: This is NOT real life
If you’ve got a dozen friends and they’re all Farmville addicts: deal with it (ie. “hide” FV). If you’ve 2000 friends and half are Mafia Wars keeners, hide MW. If you’re watching endless repeats of Canucks and Yankees killing or being killed by desperate foreign nationals… turn the f**king thing off.
TV is not real life. But social media (SM) is. TV is noisy because you wouldn’t pay attention if it wasn’t. SM is noisy because it really is like real life. Noisy. Messy.
Ever been to the proverbial cocktail party? Or the theater or art show opening? Or the general store? Or the neighbourhoood coffee shop? Lots of folks with nothing to say but saying it anyway.
Grow up dude and dudette. Put on your big girl panties/big boy tighty-whities and just deal with it. Don’t be afraid of Facebook or Twitter or the TV. Don’t pretend you can hid behind fake filters. They just cut you off from what’s really happening in your circle.
What to do? Get a life; junk the junk food diet, junk the “management-isms”
Cut out the Mafia Family and FarmVille garbage for sure. Cut out the broadcast sports and news and soap opera most immediately. That’s basic mental health maintenance (and if you’re older than 40 you’ll notice your younger friends and your kids have already pulled the plug on that bit of spiritual junk food, thank Christ Allah and Buddah!).
As you cut out the junk food from your media diet, notice that amongst all the random silliness that your “friends” are posting is the “stuff” of your life. Real stuff. Their happiness. Their silliness. Their trials and tribulations.
We’re not talking soap operas here folks, though sometimes it’ll look that way. We’re not talking self-help or new-agist pap – though sometimes it’ll look that way too. These are your “friends.” Your acquaintances. This is, in a nutshell, your life, dude and dudette. Be BIG enough to take it in, this conversation about or around your life.
I’m against the idea of “managing” this conversation. We spend too much time managing and directing and facilitating this and that. Social media of all kinds – from Facebook to conversations at the cornerstore to dancing and cocktail parties – isn’t “real” if it’s managed. And folks, let’s get real. Let’s admit that, as a species, we are a messy bunch. And that’s OK.
When it comes to my “expertise” about communications or social media, it’s NOT about “management” or “filtering;” it’s about you and me, as real people, taking responsibility for who we are as social beings. Grow up. Be BIG enough to own who matters to you. Listen. Learn. Keep moving.
REV 3.0
The doors are getting kicked open. Let it happen. Let the wind blow through our hitherto protected and insulated lives. Let’s see who we really are – or at least, who we really want to make ourselves out to be – and deal with the consequences.
This, to paraphrase and perhaps (mis)appropriate Bev McPhee, is Revolution 3.0: where we come go grips with what this tech is helping us to understand about ourselves.
hanspetermeyer
20 June 2010
