When Zuckerman said: “The world will be better if you share more”, I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that every excruciatingly boring status update on Facebook would somehow make the world better. Or did he?
Interesting research out of Australia last month about narcissim and Facebook users. It’s not that everybody on social media has narcisstic tendencies – it’s more like those who do absolutely love Twitter, Facebook et al because these sites make them feel important and recognized.
Good point! Both areas can be, and no doubt are exaggerated. And there also can be no doubt the media shape the message–like you said about McLuhan. He sure seems prescient now, doesn’t he?
2.23 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.
Perhaps, we return – once again – to McLuhan’s medium-is-message. His conception may be a better ‘picture’ of the true nature of social media – that it is neither social nor phony, but just pure medium.
Yup – lots to think about.
Concerning people spewing vitriol – that too could be ‘phony’ in the sense that the medium may not reflect what the true nature of a personality. In other words, it could go both ways.
I’m not sure either that the media are ‘phony’, but the media definitely shape how a person is conveyed.
Ricoeur reminds us that human action can only be narrated, within the social web or anywhere else, because it is always already symbolically mediated by the signs, rules, and norms that filter our lived existence as we picture it (although I’ve made that sound more like Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, but never mind).
If my social brother/sisterhood consists mostly of dissenting voices, then I suppose that is their (and my) reality, and forms the locus where our virtual and IRL conversations elide. We bring our discontent to the social web, and perceive it to have a latent potential to (hate to use the word, but I’m keen to reclaim it) disrupt.
It is perhaps that sense of real – not phony – discontent with facets of actually existing human arrangements and their outcomes (say, in the lousy design that hobbles the delivery of healthcare) that make us seek out other voices in order to hear echoes of our own, and to subsequently call upon each other collectively to let change speak out in the world, through us.
Wow. So much to chew on here I hardly know where to start. I do notice quite a bit of upbeatness & niceness on Twitter–keeping in mind it’s my individual stream, of course. That sense of community is the last thing I expected when I finally jumped in. I can see where we might have the urge/feel peer pressure to be our best selves. But a) I don’t feel like I’m not being myself out here; I really am one of those glass half-full types and b) I think some take it too far in the other direction and use SM as an excuse to spew vitriol at anyone who challenges their belief systems. (I see that more on FB & in blog comments.) I’ll take nice over vicious any day.
So, I don’t necessarily agree it’s phony media. But I couldn’t agree with you more that we need to speak up against what’s clearly wrong or be willing to swim against the tide in other ways. Some of my favorite people online do just that.
Good stuff, I’m going to be thinking about this for awhile. Thanks!