There’s too much ME-ME-ME in social MEdia.

I’m clearly in the wrong field.

See, though some may say I’m rather outgoing, the truth is I’m an introvert. Meaning, while being out and around people is nice and all, I can only take so much. I prefer to be by myself (always have), and usually I’m lost in a deep cloud of my own thoughts. I’m highly analytical and have an uncanny ability to remain objective in most situations & not get too caught up in the thick of things.

In other words, I have a very finely tuned bullshit meter.

So when I say “I’m clearly in the wrong field,” I mean that from my observations, I’m not nearly as social as I should be, nor am I able to sit and be spoon fed the latest ideas, buzzwords, and thoughts du jour without throwing up in my mouth. I just can’t surround myself with people beating dead horses, talking more about the tools they beat them with than the strategies they have to do so.

Unlike the majority of the people I see in this “field” of “social media” online and off, I do not want to be in the spotlight. I understand that to some extent I have to be sometimes, but I don’t go out of my way to win contests, speak at conferences, get my mugshot in the pages of Fast Company, the local newspaper, or what have you to talk about my field or what I do.

Why?

Because I understand it’s not about me.

I got into PR initially because I enjoyed shining the light on others. I don’t need to be on center stage; I’m very happy being a “behind the scenes” person. Enter what we now know as “social media,” the ethos of which is to be social online through various media (plural of “medium” — in case you forgot). Then businesses caught wind.

Suddenly everybody’s a “social media consultant/expert/strategist/ninja/guru/swami/etc.,” thinking they can cash in and help businesses navigate the SM waters, experience and track record notwithstanding.

And suddenly, everybody’s clamoring and practically bashing each other in the knees for the spotlight, because hey, everyone wants to be “famous,” right?

It reminds me of the lyrics in that old Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones”:

We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for that…

The recent “Influencer Project” experiment/stunt by Fast Company has done wonders for vetting the attention whores from those who are are able to call a spade a spade. If anything, this has become loud and clear:

The majority of this field is more social ME-ME-ME-dia than it is about marketing, than it is about PR, than it is about community, than it is about, well, being social for the sake of getting to know other people and helping them.

What ever happened to that?!

I’m not the only person to notice and point certain aspects of the social ME-ME-MEdia phenomenon out. I certainly won’t be the last.

However, it’s enough to make me want to duck out of it all, keep my head down, mouth shut, and nose to the grindstone and just do my job to the best of my ability. Many valuable people in the “scene”/field have done this rather quietly, and I’ve tried to, but I can’t stay silent on this any longer.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, maybe I’m not, but it should be pointed out that in everything in life, those who make the most noise are rarely doing much of the real work.

Social media is not about you, your agenda, or your ego, and likewise, it’s not about me. It can live without me. But if you take “me” out,  as the Latin words will tell you, it becomes “social dia,” which translates loosely to “social day,” which I’m not sure makes much sense. Maybe it would mean that hopefully there will be a day people realize that it’s about connecting with people in genuine, meaningful ways, whether that’s as a person or assisting a brand making that connection to create brand loyalists.

Maybe I’m not in the wrong field. Maybe I’ve just kept myself at a far enough distance from the “social” to recognize the ME-ME-MEdia and finally say something.  Either way, we all need to get back to our roots and figure out what exactly it is we’re doing here and why, else more valuable contributors to the space will be lost.

Image by Anyaka.

I can quit Twitter, but Twitter can’t quit me.

Between friends getting married, friends passing away, getting used to a new schedule, and just overall life things, you could say I’ve had a lot going on lately. Sometimes, one can only take so much before wanting/needing to pull the plug on some things that cause more noise than signal in life.

The other day, after attending the funeral of a friend, I decided to quit Twitter for a while.

Many didn’t think I could do it. I’ve tried to “take a Twitter hiatus” before, and have only lasted a few days, at most. This time, however, I was pretty sure that I was done spewing <140 character blurts into the ether for a while. I just needed my “Stacy time,” my time to be lost in my own thoughts without the internet bugging me or me bugging it.

I really thought I could do it.

Fat chance.

It didn’t occur to me until after I had posted the above that even when I have no intention of tweeting, I tweet anyway. I’ve integrated so many webby things with my Twitter account that it’s nearly impossible.

Hitting the “Tweet this” button at the top of an interesting blog post or article after reading it has become second nature to me. BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I subscribe to a YouTube channel? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I just “like” a video on YouTube? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I check in somewhere on FourSquare? You got it — BOOM! There’s a tweet.

You get the idea.

Not to mention, that if somebody chooses to retweet (RT) or reply to one of my auto-tweeted tweets, it’s usually appropriate to say something back to them.

Oh sure, I could manually go and remove all of my Twitter connections/integrations on each app, but really, that’s a lot to go though if I’m only planning on a temporary hiatus. Plus, I’d have to re-hook it all back up when I came back.

So I guess I’m stuck tweeting, whether I intend to or not.

I guess I just find it funny — these days, there are still hoards of people trying to figure out HOW to use Twitter and why; meanwhile, I’m so enmeshed in it that I can’t easily quit using Twitter, even if I wanted to.

Has anybody else had this problem?!

A road trip down memory lane reveals the absurdity of what we now call “social media”

. . . or “The post in which I really date myself.”

Gather ’round, kids, Grandma’s got a story to tell. Get comfy …

So I’ve been in a funk lately, as you may or may not have gotten from recent posts and encounters with me in person (or lack thereof). Common wisdom says that if you’re in a funk, a change of scenery will always do you some good. Saturday I found myself with a bit of cabin fever and some time on my hands so I did what any self-respecting redhead in a funk would do — I took a road trip.

Totally on a whim, I pinged a long-time online friend of mine, Lindsay M. Allen, who just moved from Mt. Pleasant to Midland for a job. Lindsay and I had been meaning to meet for a very long time and that day seemed as good a time as any. In a direct message via Twitter, I said, “I’m feeling spontaneous & need to get out of the house. whaddya doin’ today? I’ll come up & meet ya for coffee …”

Within an hour I was on the road, embarking on an 80 mile mini-road trip to Frankenmuth (sort of midway between us) to meet my online friend for the first time in person and have pizza.

The spontaneity was refreshing, as was the feeling I had when I got off the expressway and had to drive through the country to reach my destination. Wide open spaces of cornfields sprinkled with red barns hither and yon, this country girl felt right at home. I had almost forgotten that just driving around in the country was one of my favorite things to do.

Meeting Lindsay was great. We had lots of fun having conversation over pizza and amazing dessert, and walking around what is arguably the most touristy town in Michigan.

On my drive home, I couldn’t help but think about how much things have changed in our culture the past dozen years or so, especially with the maturation of the internet. These days meeting someone in person that you met online first is no big deal. We do it all the time, and with careful planning. We organize events on Facebook, have tweetups, sometimes sell tickets on EventBrite, give everything a hashtag, etc. and it’s all organized. Today, this is called “social networking,” and the organization of it has made it rather mundane (for me, anyway).

I remember when it wasn’t always that way.

That reminds me of back in St. Olaf . . .

A dozen years ago, it was hardly this organized or widely accepted. A dozen years ago, to meet up with somebody you had only interacted with online was usually called “Are out of your goddamn mind?!” That was back when people on “the other side of the computer” were all assumed to be axe murderers and child molesters.

Yet, a dozen years ago, I did it anyway.

In 1998ish I made many friends online through Yahoo Groups, BBSing, chat/IRC, AIM, and good ol’ fashioned email. Usually the common thread we all shared was a favorite musician or band. From there, other common threads were found and friendships were formed. I would fly (or drive) out to the Washington D.C. area many times to hang out with my friends, go to concerts, and even have road trips, some more spontaneous than others. It was not uncommon for me to have a few days off and just hop in my car and drive 12 hours to Baltimore for a concert and a gathering with my friends just because I missed them, and because they were just as crazy as I was.

This was “social media” before social media as you now know it.

We didn’t have the convenience of Twitter and Facebook – if we wanted to organize something, it was all done through email lists and IM correspondence. There was no such thing as a hashtag, no such thing as a blog (although LiveJournal was just around the corner), and we actually talked on our phones to each other, because texting didn’t exist. Even having a cell phone was more of a luxury than a necessity, and those that had them had to carry them in bags. Without the convenience of the social networking tools we have these days, we were able to coordinate and meet up via our available technology, have plenty of road trips, parties, good times at concerts, and form long-lasting friendships, many of which we still maintain today, twelve years later.

Were we crazy, perhaps naive by doing all this back then, or were we early pioneers in social media/networking?

Yes.

In many ways, I think it was more social that way. We didn’t call our methods of communication “social media,” nor did we make much of a big deal about it. It was just the way we communicated. We called our gatherings “gatherings” and “parties” and “concerts” and “road trips” — because that’s exactly what they were. There was no need for sponsors or anything fancy — it was just what we did. And we had a blast. (I still have at least one book about those days to publish — I’ve still got the manuscripts.)

Had we known then, that a handful of years later, this would evolve into a big movement called the “social media revolution” to emphasize communication over the internet and forming relationships, doing business through the internet via those relationships, and events would be organized through the internet to celebrate that we did these things, complete with sponsors and labels (hashtags) for each one — we’d have laughed our asses off at the absurdity.

Now that I think about it, I kinda do.

My pioneering social media days further validate that if you’re really out to “form relationships” in this digital space, your tools really do not matter. People will always be social, using whichever tools/media available as only a means to an end.

And you know what? Most of my best memories, best friends, and most amazing adventures back then were the product of not really planning or organizing online at all — I just got up and went.  Much like what I did on Saturday when I drove 80 miles to meet Lindsay.

That night I stumbled upon a series called “Remember Who You Are” that cartoonist and author Hugh MacLeod is running with a bunch of guest bloggers. “Remember Who You Are” is his new theme, and each post I read struck a resonating chord.

I couldn’t have found this series at a better time.

What I did that day — spontaneously going on a road trip to meet an online friend, no planning at all — helped me remember who I am. I’m a dozen years older now but I’m still that random redhead that doesn’t think twice about a spur-of-the-moment road trip, that loves driving in the country with the windows down and the radio up, that loves live music and will drive to the ends of the earth to see a good show.

I’m still that damn redhead that maintains close friendships she made twelve years ago by having the audacity to to meet people via a strange medium called “the internet,” that while strange, scary, and unfamiliar to most, was simply the way she communicated with people then, just as it is now.

… and I still think that people make way too big of a deal about it.

Social media is way too smurfy these days.

[If you know me in person, chances are you've heard this before, but I'm at the point now where I feel it just needs to be written down.]

I hate the term “social media.” Really, I do. Why? Because it’s too hard to define. I’m definitely not the first person to blog about this, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. But here’s the truth:

All media is social media.

Media, at its very ethos, is social. Cavemen didn’t paint cave paintings and not talk about them. Egyptians didn’t carve hieroglyphics just because they were pretty pictures — they told stories. Radio never really was one-way — it encouraged interaction with people calling in. TV may seem one-way but do people not sit around the TV and watch it together? Do people not talk about their favorite shows with each other?

All media always has, and always will, encourage social interaction. Whether it’s immediate as what we understand “social media” to be nowadays or not is a different story.

The only difference between “traditional” media and “social” media is that “social media” makes two-way (or one-to-many, or many-to-many) communication a helluva lot faster. And let’s just face it – this is simply the way the world communicates now.

However, like those folks I linked above, I understand that there is no one, true definition of “social media,” and that alone is a problem, illustrated by a story a few friends of mine relayed to me recently:

A colleague of ours, a rather big name in the “social media world” and a bigwig at a rather large, world-famous company, was to speak about social media at a local event. I did not attend said event, but my colleagues did, because they wanted to hear what he had to say about how he’s used “social media” in/for his company. Based on the questions from the audience, however, it became more of a Twitter 101 class, and my colleagues admitted they were a little embarrassed for him. This was not a marketing fail, as the event was promoted appropriately. Or was it?

My colleagues’ definition of social media was and is much more complex than that of the audience. They were expecting how this guy applied “social media” for marketing/PR purposes. The audience was apparently expecting how to use a tool or two, which is a lot different.

Social media is the new smurf.

Smurfs used the word “smurf” for just about anything, and it was understood without question. Or they used it when they couldn’t think of any other word for something, which is where we are now with “social media.” Hell, any kind of interaction via the internet or mobile now can be considered “social media,” and I can’t believe that for a society as chatty and as articulate as we are, we can’t think of any other words for what the heck we’re talking about.

We need to expand our vernacular.

I was taught that you shouldn’t complain about something without proposing a solution, but honestly? I don’t have one. What I do know is that the more we use “social media” as a term for just about any kind of communication these days, the more confused people get, and the more smurfy things become. I like to be more specific when I speak of expedited communication through ever-changing technology, but I realize that sometimes it’s easier smurfed than smurfed. I know that many times, I still go over peoples’ smurfs and they still don’t smurf what I’m smurfing about, even when I think I’m smurfing on their level.

So what do you smurf? Is “social media” too smurfy these days? Should we be more specific and throw that term out the smurf? Or is it fine and smurfy? Leave your smurfs in the smurfs.

25 Words of Social Media Wisdom Project: COMPLETE!

Wondering what that post with the Gonzo picture was all about? Liz Strauss did a “25 Words” project with a bunch of us SOBs, collected them all, and put them into a wonderful presentation. Enjoy!

Many thanks to Liz for putting this together and to all the contributors who made it so interesting!

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