really struggling with it.

i think what I’m coming down to is that social media has moved from being about joy to being about utility.

while tools (utility) can bring joy (music instruments, cooking utensils, etc.), it’s a fine line, and once something tilts towards utility, there seems to be a diminution of joy.

clearly, sm is – for both users and marketers – a tool. the joy has – in large degree – gone away.

Thanks,

George

Our understanding of social media is evolving as social media itself evolves from our understanding of it. And it evolves so fluidly, almost unnoticeable, that as soon as we think we have something intelligent to say about it, we’re wrong, and we feel disillusioned, even disenfranchised. The same “waiting for the hand of God” syndrome that you talk about so much in the music business has plagued us in social media and left us butt-hurt about the whole thing. Facebook is so NOT like the confused, solipsist dating service we all wanted it to be, and instead it is a really fucking great trapper keeper. It is an elegantly organized filing system. But as long as we keep judging it with the criteria of a dating service, we ourselves are going to stay confused as to our role. To the extent that I can say this without undermining the importance of social media, we are making much ado about nothing.

A ‘social network’ is little more than its literal definition: a societal intersection of horizontal and vertical lines. Or an elegant catalog of how we interact. Sometimes quiet and sometimes loud (depending on your privacy settings) of what exists in real life. Still, it’s upon US as people to DO SOMETHING. That’s what gives it value. Either social media amplifies (bigger screen, louder voice, more readers) what already exists, or it is a self-serve station where we can choose to take something that exists online with us offline, to do something with back in the real world. But to think that social media is itself some kind of solution to a problem, or some kind of value-generating machine, is absolutely false. It is nothing more than a trapper keeper. A fucking great one, but still a tool which needs a function. Is an empty trapper keeper valuable unto itself? Without people actually DOING stuff, well…it’s the sine qua non of social media. I think we all generally tend to ignore this elephant in the room. There’s nothing happening in social media that isn’t happening in the real world. And there is much in the real world not happening in social media. Our reconciliation lies somewhere in between.

I feel like I’m just fumbling with words here, but I hope I can add to this conversation…

Best,

George

George