On Social Networking and Impersonality

Where once there were battle lines and territory markers, now there are only cross-feeds and re-posting. Put into more concrete terms, Social Networking sites have shifted from loyally supported communities to amalgamated rehashings of eachother. Somewhere along the way people lost the notion of having their own personal corner of the internet, and instead began striving for a broader audience. Now there are many people who not only post trite facts about themselves on one site--they Tweet it, and Status it, and Blog it, and any number of high-tech buzz verbs.

The first blog I ever tried was a LiveJournal account, and by choosing it I put myself in with a more purist crowd which championed content over personality in MySpace. This wasn't totally intentional--I just wanted to be part of the crowd, and viewing peoples' livejournals didn't require me to listen to their music. Looking back on the archives, there are only posts of any real substance months apart. The vast majority of the blog was taken up with Quizzes, Tests, and boring recounts of unevenful days. I remember asking a friend once why he never comments on my posts (even though I commented on his.) He responded with an insightful "Because I don't care about what you accomplished in Final Fantasy XI today." Thankfully I was able to move past the idea that the bland things of my life are more important than the bland parts of everyone else's lives.

What's the point of this? I think the majority of the internet either disagrees with me, or hasn't yet come to that conclusion. I don't think I'm the only one out there that only reads quizzes that other people post if I'm mentioned in them. The interesting thing here is that instead of trying to produce solid content which may engage their friends, people instead just try a new audience. There are plenty of tools available for the average person to post something, and then have it simultaneously posted on X different websites to try and fish comments from the populace.

As an unemployed person, I often go onto Craigslist.com and recently in the "Writing Jobs" tab I've seen advertisements for a person who is proficient enough to build up steam for their company over a bunch of different websites. This gives me the image of a man, hunched over his computer, and just typing the same garbage over and over onto any social media site that will have him. For some reason there's this idea that if you spit nonsense enough times in enough communities that someone will like you.

The moral of this story is that I wish people would try to just write more engaging content. A while back there was a big hubbub about Sports Bloggers because they could say anything they wanted...and people assumed that they were real reporters I guess. The reality is that the internet is a true meritocracy--if you write like a 5th grader, you'll get about as much attention. I can only aspire to be a good enough writer that I'm engaging enough that I can get comments without random name drops.

Define Hypocritical: Cross-posted on my facebook account.