MWK sent me this article about how social media are turning us into some kind of giant hive mind. I don’t disagree, I just wonder if the ability of social media to make us all start inserting LOL cats into blog posts is an unalloyed good thing.
Yes, the social media can be powerful, and useful, and they can create community and foster the exchange of information and do all kinds of really good things. I have experienced this. More often, however, they seems to turn us into attention whores – we’ve got lots and lots of people to connect with in trivial, low grade ways.
I think it’s cool that Facebook lets me find out what a whole bunch of old friends are doing. I don’t mistake this for actually being with those people, talking to them, catching up with them, or otherwise having real live interactions.
You can have a million friends and be lonely. You can take part in all those little online “marches” and accomplish less than ten minutes spent phoning a representative would accomplish. You can be part of a big movement in which you’ve never actually met any of the other participants, and if they tripped over you at the local Starbucks they’d ignore you and keep going.
The problem with connecting us all into this “hive mind” is that it seems to be an especially stupid, trivia-obsessed hive mind that can’t support thought processes that require more than 140 characters.
Often, after I spend a little time with something like Facebook, I want to turn it all off and wait and see how long it is before a friend calls me on the phone or makes plans to actually do something with me. I don’t hold my breath. It all feels like social anaesthetics, making us mostly numb to each other.
But what do I know? I’m old. I have outdated notions about what human contact is, according to which Facebook status updates and instant messages are the equivalent of eating stale dinner roll, while actual human interaction is a tasty main course.
I’d rather not fill up on the bread, but increasingly it seems the bread is all anybody wants to share.
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Ha, funnily, I had another article on social media open in another window. I’ve not read that one (which I found via BoingBoing) yet, nor yours, but plan to do so….shortly. After a nap.
http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/MSRTechFest2009.html
I’m reminded of a line from a Simpsons episode I recently caught — Flanders goes on some Xtian website to complain about a swear word he heard on TV, and his kids ask what he’s doing — “Imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw, that’s what I’m doing!”
More to the point of your post, I also am amazed at the ability of “social media” fanatics to think they represent the norm. There are millions of people out there who don’t give 2 shakes for Facebook, or Twitter, etc. Frankly I’m one of them. If the Twitterati want to go off and cross new horizons, heck, become some alternate subspecies of human, fine; just don’t assume that those who aren’t on board are somehow worse or inferior for it.
I resent the Borg metaphor. The Borg are far cooler than the retarded people who Facebook/Twitter while out at a bar or club. This retardedness is at epidemic levels in DC. The Borg were never retarded.
True enough – the Pakled, on the other hand… “We find things. Things that make us go. Make us strong.”
Yep, you’re right. We’ve never even met ye we are facebook friends. It seems a little ridiculous, no? Let’s get some sort of alcoholic beverage sometime and actually meet face to face…and defy the networking expectations.
Borg and Pakleds and Binars, Oh My!
I use and enjoy both, and obvs they are not replacements for actual socializing. I have never met most of the people I yap with on Twitter, but they’re funny and smart and not the stereotypical New Media Douchebag or “OMG I HAS A BAGEL” types nor do they waste time with minutiae. Well, not too much anyway.
It does take awhile to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Yeah, I think somewhere along the way I decided it was too much sorting…
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