Reflect, don't project
One good thing about the media's Twitter mania is that some provocative people are starting to comment on the behaviour behind social media tools. Cue psychologist Oliver James in the Times:
"Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity [...] To ‘follow’ someone is to have a fantasy of who this person you’re following is, and you use it as a map reference or signpost to guide your own life because you are lost. I would guess that the typical profile of a ‘follower’ is someone who is young and who feels marginalised, empty and pointless. They don’t have an inner life."
Within the polemic, there's some truth. Many Tweeters have a strong identity, but in a crowded and competitive digital world, constant reinforcement and broadcasting of that identity has become default mode; it happened with texting long before microblogging. Many more than the 'young' and 'marginalised' feel that if they're not visibly sharing and speaking, they don't exist. In the same piece, Alain de Botton also notes that the mundanity of Tweets only reflects our age-old offline behaviour, by emulating the intimate, meandering small talk we indulge in with our closest family and friends. Basically, we want to feel that the big public world of social media is our living room (or even, as de Botton claims, our womb).
So underpinning most of social media's chatter and creation is a deep craving for security. People will continue to talk as if their identities depended on it, but those who learn to listen will be richest in the attention economy. For both brands and individuals, listening well, rather than constantly opining, will prove to be the real art of social media. This doesn't imply passivity; any actor tells you that active listening is an incredibly powerful tool, and that mirroring, acknowledging and asking for more will draw people closer to you. Making others feel heard, and reinforcing their identities - not imposing your own - garners the trust and, paradoxically, the attention that we all crave.
What was it that dude Shakespeare said? "Hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature", or some such guff...
Comments
Great stuff, Molly.
The other side to this is the question of whether such social media behaviour is healthy or not.
Personally, I find it hard to concentrate on the world around me if I spend to much time in the Virtual world.
'spose, like anything, you can be have too much of a good thing.
Posted by: Dan | February 23, 2009 12:14 PM
Thanks Dan. I think there are lots of natural, healthy things going on in social media... but of course also we usually chase the less healthy things with even more vigour, because they comfort the gaping holes in our souls. Or something like that.
Posted by: Molly | February 23, 2009 05:40 PM
Molly,
I really liked this perspective. If used effectively, these tools have incredible power. But there is a spectrum of usage, much of which may be harmful.
For children, where this debate was most recently reignited, there are a complex set of dangers that do need to be explored. These are a continuation from issues surrounding TV. Bruno Frey has shown that TV weakens the will of active people. I suspect too much social media does the same although, unlike TV, it can also mobilize us to do stuff.
Tim
Posted by: knackeredhack | February 25, 2009 03:26 PM
Tim, really interesting thanks. I suspect that the danger also lies not in changing us - making active people passive, for example - but in heightening or indulging certain personality types i.e. people who already find it difficult to build more self-restrained or less reactive opinions and ways of expression. And the children angle is very interesting - how will this change the generation now being born, who have no memory of a world pre-2.0...
Posted by: Molly Flatt | February 25, 2009 03:37 PM