Social Networking and Insanity . . .
Do you care about the people you're connected with online?
If you answered Yes, how deep is that caring?
I ask because we often need a shock to wake up to realities—to bring us to our senses—to cure us of electronically-induced ills.
Recently, a well-known social networker committed suicide. Those he was connected with thought they knew him………
Certainly, there are cases of folks in non-electronic relationships who shock their friends with actions completely unexpected but I would venture they're fewer than the shocks from social media "friends".
Jay Baer recently wrote a blog post, Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy, in which he talked about that social media suicide.
Jay is a man who proudly displays his book about social media at the top of his blog and says, in his profile, that he's a "hype-free social media strategy consultant and speaker" and "a digital marketing pioneer".
Yet, in the blog post linked-to up there, he says: [There is] "…the underlying premise that interacting with more people is inherently better than interacting with fewer people. I have always believed this to be true, and in fact have delivered the lines above in presentations and on this blog. But today, I'm no longer convinced. Instead I wonder, what if we have it ALL wrong?"
A bit later in the post he says: "Maybe we should be focused less on making a lot of connections, and focused more on making a few real friends?"
Ever since I began a push to connect with more people on-line, well before I began to write my recently-published book, I wondered about the quality of the connections.
As I was digesting all the information about "building an author platform"—working to increase my "friends" on FaceBook and my "followers" on Twitter—I struggled with the lack of Relationship in the connections.
I finally dumped FaceBook and Twitter, joined Google Plus. It didn't take long to feel the struggle against what felt like wasted time.
I've most recently joined Diaspora and I'm still struggling…
I'm an author (a poor author) with a book to promote in a world that publishes over 2,000 books a day and I need to make connections.
I may eventually dump Google Plus and Diaspora if the Relationship Factor declines much further…
I feel more comfortable right here, inside this composition box on WordPress, writing from my heart and knowing that, of the 50 or so people a day who arrive here, a few of them read what I write and Relate to it.
Naturally, I post teasers with links to my posts on Google Plus and Diaspora—sometimes they spark discussion…
In Alcoholics Anonymous there's a definition of Insanity: Doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different results.
I've tried to do Google Plus and Diaspora differently than FaceBook and Twitter but I'm starting to feel the signal-to-noise ratio is still too low.
Perhaps this blog is my most sane response to making on-line connections, even if I may not know I'm connecting due to the fact that most folks who read a post never comment, even if they liked it…
I'm actually finding more meaningful connections in my work as Events Manager on Book Island in the virtual world, Second Life.
Curious how the most "unreal" thing I do gives me the most Real Relationships………
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Tagged: Diaspora, Facebook, Google Plus, Second Life, social media, Social network, social networking, Twitter
