Here we are in the last weeks of June… Summer has officially arrived, school is out for the season, the days grow a little more lazy and for the second year in a row I continue partaking in my daily blogging exercise, marginally focused along a question-and-answer theme I’ve simply called Those 30 posts in June. Still no planning. Still no writing of these words days in advance. Still just this: each day a meanderingly vague prompt drives a meanderingly vague post… and today that post just happens to be:
June 23rd // Something You Want To Read
Despite raving the other day about “Feeling: Social” I must admit I have something of an irrational hate-on for most social networking sites. Okay, sure I’ve been playing nice with Google Plus and Twitter lately. But many of my feeps on Facebook will notice that I don’t really participate on that site much anymore.
Why?
Frankly, I don’t have a good reason besides this: I’m a social media snob. Yeah, that’s right. I fully admit it. I’ve come to conclude that after four years, the likes of Facebook and its ilk has left me nothing of digital worth. It’s vapor. It’s nothingness. It’s lost data.
Let’s compare; I’ve been writing this blog for eleven years, give or take. Whether or not YOU’ve been reading for any significant portion of that time, I can pretty much guarantee you that I have been present for all of it. And, despite my sporadic participation currently, I will lay claim to the fact that my early forays into Facebook were pretty much in the realm of a last wave of early adopters. I think I have a good idea what I’m talking about.
So, I dig through my archives on all my social sharing sites, this blog being the primary site, and what do I find? Hmmm… Facebook, is a linear collection of my stream-of-consciousness drivel. Twitter is short and even more drivel-esque. Google Plus is still pretty recent, but mostly more drivel. And then — to keep this simple because I could list about thirty more sites here — my blog is a fairly neat and orderly collection of some very well fleshed out… well, drivel.
It’s all drivel. But my best drivel is on my blog. And the rest? If it disappeared tomorrow I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
But the problem isn’t that it’s lower grade drivel. The problem is that everyone has fallen into that drivel trap. Sure, there are a few people posting moderate quality stuff on social media, but — look deeply into the mirror and admit it to yourself — you’re probably not one of those people. You’re writing drivel, too. And you’re plus-one-ing, liking, or retweeting everyone else’s drivel. And… ug!
So, I’m left with a bunch of people who have interesting lives and interesting things to say about their lives swirling around my various social circles and most — too many — of those folks are dumping fragmented pieces of their thoughts into the net as Facebook drivel or Twitter drivel instead of taking advantage of some AMAZING communications technology to write and share and think aloud in a vast international space.
I’m trying to set an example here.
And every so often I kind wish more people were writing more stuff, rather than just brain-farting into the vapid social media spaces, and ultimately doing little more than feeding the corporate content giants getting rich of your mind gas. I set an example because I really do want to read your stuff. You just need to write it first.