Uhh…
Someone just asked me if this makes me a little intellectually inconsistent as I’ve suggested in the past, a lot, that it’s not necessarily the content that matters, but the conversation.
To that I say conversations that are well reasoned discussions, debates, intellectually challenging, and so forth, are more interesting and valuable than chatter. We should strive for the former rather than constantly settle for the latter.
But many in social media don’t have time to carefully think out their arguments so instead they often resort to snark, or just being “controversial” for the sake of it because it gets them a pass.
Well reasoned and carefully formed remarks take time, so that means you don’t get to have your say about the latest celebrity event, or Mac rumour right away, this second, if you insist on saying something well thought out. And that, my friends, is the point.
UPDATE:
Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America and Jordan, Jesse GO! just wrote a thoughtful post about Kanye West’s antics at the VMAs. Agree or disagree with his points, at least he has valid arguments to make. He’s well reasoned, calm, and approaches the situation logically. This is the sort of discussion we could use more of. Now, of course I think it’s a little silly that someone’s coming to the defense of a mult-millionaire who should obviously know better and not act like such a child, but at least some interesting, challenging points are made.
Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!
So today on Video Monday I thought I’d just talk briefly about well, what was going to be my topic for my Podcamp Montreal talk, but it ended up that I’m not going to be able to make it there this weekend so I thought I’d just take some of the things I was going to talk about there, at least the focus of it, and just make some video posts, or some other posts throughout the week about that.
Anyway, the title of the talk was called Get Over Yourselves. Which might be a little surprising thing to talk about, people have suggested that’s something I should do from time to time, and they’re not wrong. But anyway, what it was is just trying to look at what people are doing on social media, how people are using Twitter and Facebook and whatever else.
You know, and a lot of it, as a good friend of mine has said from time to time, a lot of it is just people trying to out-snark each other, or just whining about something. And I think that there’s a lot more potential in these tools being able to connect people than is being used right now.
So just one thing that I was thinking about today is that I just saw a post on Twitter from one of the, you know, the social media celebrities I guess, that was suggesting that people don’t have time anymore for real content of substance. He said that people only have time for snacks, not meals. Or at least he was posing that as a question. Potentially he doesn’t actually believe that himself.
People just have time for snacks, like snippets, quick blog posts, not, you know, things that take a long time. And my, my argument to that is that I don’t think that’s true. I think that people have allowed themselves to become content with snacks. Because that’s all you can… if you’re at work and wanna jump and read a couple of blogs and get through your RSS reader I mean yeah, you don’t have time for a lot of long blogs. Now that assumes that there is some utility in reading lots of nothing, instead of one or two, you know, real things.
You know, lots of cotton candy isn’t as good as one real meal. Yes you’ve done more of a thing, but was it worth doing in the first place? And I think there’s a latent, or potentially not even latent, there’s just this desire or craving for real actual substance, and I think anyone who taps into that is gonna do something pretty interesting.
You know we’ve told ourselves we need to be on these update schedules like I do, that you have to always be producing some thing, even if it’s not worth doing in the first place. And like with Twitter you just have to be there. You have to be whining about working on the weekend, or you have to be you know trying to make some sort of witty remark about some celebrity who’s died.
Maybe you don’t. Maybe you could, well, but then again I’ve said, I’ve said before if people were to start thinking carefully about their tweets the whole thing would collapse. so maybe the only way that it can sustain itself is a lot of people just talking, not a lot of people saying anything.
So that’s my completely arrogant rant for the day. So thanks everybody, bye.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
A wealth of information leads to attention starvation…good stuff Joel. The desire for substance: interesting to see how we as a society deal with that.
Thanks Giles!
As always walking that fine line between deeply thought provoking and general babble, but I’m thinking that was the point. Thanks Joel.
Thanks Alex :)
Twitter is like a cocktail party. People, like me for example, trade quips about a variety of things because there is an immediacy to it – you can instantly communicate what’s on your mind. If people waited, thought about it, chances are they’d be less communicative. The quality might be better, but a lot of interesting things might go unsaid. Not to suggest that much of the content we, and I include me, put up there is inherently or always interesting, but consideration often leads to self-censorship. And I don’t think many of us know how to navigate balance. Regardless, there’s good reason to pause and reflect on how a tweet reflects on you and your brand…
Good points, MrWordsWorth.
I guess I’m thinking we shouldn’t just always settle for the babble when there’s plenty of opportunities for something a little more challenging or interesting.
Yes, babble’s a thing we do and always have, but I think there’s an expectation nowadays that that’s enough.
I *LOVE* this, Joel. I saw the tweet to which you referred and it actually made me a little sad. Are we so go-go-GO, so mired down in churning out STUFF that we have no time to devote to actual quality? I’m bothered by that. I’m harshly self-critical, and I can’t post something simply for the sake of posting something. I want what I put out there to be something of quality.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get a snack. :)
So glad you like the post!
It is a pretty terrible shame that apparently we’re too busy these days to think carefully and strive for genuine insight. And, worse than that, this is held out as being unavoidable and worth embracing.