Entertainment or Madness: Devolution Into Delusion

This is the 12th in a series of He Said He Said posts and the first published directly on BeBee, by Phil Friedman and myself. The other eleven posts are published in the Lumpy Kingdom of The Mighty Hamsters, but when I get time I will repost them all here. If you’re interested in reading them, however, you can find them here, He Said He Said, identifiable by the banner pic you see here.

PHIL:  The other day, I was private messaging with someone about writing and publishing on social media, and I found myself venting:
“Those with a propensity to madness appear to be bolstered in their mental devolution by the environment of social media, which facilitates ever greater and greater self-delusion.
Part of the reason for that are the accolades they receive from others who mistake opacity of expression for depth of thought -- because such acolytes are themselves so fu**king shallow.”
Now, before you comment, don’t ask me who I am to judge. For a rant such as this, is just an expression of “my humble opinion” — to which I am entitled. Well, I grant, maybe, it’s not that humble. But still, it’s expressed solely as an opinion.
Upon reflection, it occurs to me that the rift between the world of social media and the real world is growing wider year by year, if not month by month.
For example, I just read an article in which the author spoke about how to be successful on Facebook. Not about how to successfully market a business or a product on Facebook. Nor about how to successfully promote a brand. Nor even about how to broaden your circle of friends. But how to be successful on Facebook. As though to do so is an end in and by itself.
Yep, just what we need know: How to be an Ace Facebook-er. To my mind, this seems to verge on self-delusional madness.
JIM:  As someone who has been on the edge of this “self-delusional madness” since pretty much the very beginnings of

social media, I have to say that your assessment is pretty accurate.
However, I have always been under the impression that this ‘self-delusion’ is a bit of a yellow brick road that millions of people have more or less been conned into traveling down.
This road is paved by the intellectual drug dealers who are the social media establishment, and who saw the opportunity to get a whole bunch of people hooked on the ‘fun’ of being there.
Social acceptance was lure. And it’s something that all of us crave. These people are smart, and they prey on that need. So the ‘self-delusion’ that you talk about, I believe, is something of an addiction that is a result of all of this.
And that addiction is being fed by every marketer out there who thinks they can make a buck off the junkies.  Hardware, software, social selling, social media profile building, character enrichment, some types of coaching, the whole nine yards.
I know you’ll be tempted to make this a “generational” thing (‘cause I know how you like to rag on millennials). But I don’t think it is. I think this is equal opportunity manipulation and trans-generational madness.
And let’s face it, Boat Boy, we’re all addicted to social media to varying degrees. The people you are talking about are just the furthest gone. Yes?
PHIL:  For the record, Mr. Trans-generational, I am not down on all millennials. Nor do I discount the value of cross-generational communication and engagement.
Indeed, I believe cross-generational bonding is our only hope for society’s ultimate salvation.
Whatever psycho-social maladies are generated by an over-exposure to social media, they are visited upon both the young and old farts like you. And upon some in between, like me.
But we do, I think, need to recognize that social media is not a gateway to greater knowledge or to transcendental world consciousness. If anything, social media is very much more like playing a realistic video game: it has the perceptual trappings of reality, without actually being real.
Social media is, in very large measure, a playground of the mind. A place where almost every person who works for him or herself adopts the title “CEO” ― never mind it is highly questionable one can be a “chief executive” without other executives (or at least employees) to be chief of.
Social media is a place where almost everyone who is out of work can adopt the title “entrepreneur” ― never mind that they don’t have a clue what’s involved in actually starting and running a business, or even reading and understanding a financial statement.
It can be a place where almost everyone who wants to draw attention to him or herself can adopt the title “Disruptive Thought Leader” ― never mind that they have never had, let alone expressed, an original thought in their lives.
Social media is, in the words of my friend Dr. Milos Djukic, fractal. That is, social media as a whole is very much a structural macrocosm of its parts, each of which is a mini version of the macrocosmic whole. It reminds me of a giant dating web site.
On a dating web site, you can feed your fantasies of achieving exciting liaison by posting a photo of some good looking, tanned and fit “surrogate”. And you can create a persona who has done exciting things and who lives a stimulating and exciting life. And you can correspond back and forth with amorous targets to your perverted heart’s content.
On a dating website, you can be an international businessman, a lonely millionaire with a yacht and a plane and a mansion in the country with a pied-à-terre in Manhattan. Whatever.
We all know and accept that. But what we don’t often think about is that we can do pretty much the same thing on social media platforms. And many do. Except perhaps the emphasis is on being a CEO, or maybe a brain surgeon, or … whatever. And it seems that not only do we, at times, convince others to believe in our fantasies … we seem, at times, indeed at most times, to believe in them ourselves.
JIM:  I would agree with you here, Swami Phil.  But I would also apply the 80/20 Differential (shortened from the bulkier 80/20 Rule Of Almost Everything). This states that the ‘delusional’ types in social media constitute the 80%, because that’s the way of the world and social media really is just a subset of the world.
I have recognized this for like ever, and really only tend to pay attention to the 20% that are, in my opinion, not delusional. (and not always 20%)
This is why, several months ago, I closed down my Facebook account (with 2100 so called friends) and started over. I now have a total of 100 or so, all of whom I either know personally or professionally.
This has improved my FB experience dramatically. And mainly for the reasons you have outlined above. The same applies to LI, and will probably also apply to beBee once I get known there.
The point is that if you are not delusional, you probably have the intellectual means to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. If you are delusional, none of this shit really matters anyway.
Thomas Jackson, who we both know is a true ‘everyman philosopher’ said something really brilliant in one of his recent posts.
 “Forty good connections mean more than forty thousand whom you could not pick out in a lineup.”
The obsession with spreading one’s delusion comes from a narcissism that social media encourages. I’m not sure you can do anything to curb its spread. Because it’s really the most enticing aspect of social media for the 80%.
But what you can do is keep your friends close and disconnect from the rest. If more people did that the delusional people would be isolated and only exposed to each other. Hey, how’s that for an insight?
PHIL:  I think you’re absolutely correct about being unable to curb the spread of self-delusion. I have no doubt that fantasy interaction on social media is like a narcotic. I also have no doubt it releases serotonin or some such into the bloodstream, making people feel good, and eventually drawing them addiction. But that is not my point, Mr. Hip-and-With-It.
My point is to recognize the phenomenon for what it is, and to work to not fall victim to it. Maybe that is a futile struggle, but I cannot hold my tongue. (As though I ever could, anyway.) I feel at times as though I am walking among the “Body Snatchers”.  And I want to scream, “Wake up, wake up… WAKE THE F#$K UP!
As to trans-generational connection, or the lack thereof, millennials who whine about not being given sufficient credit for their accomplishments as a generational group should take a look at the facts.
Of the major dot-com entrepreneurial giants, only a few true millennials are to be found, for example, Zuckerberg (1984) and Silberman (1982) ― and even these guys are at the outer limit of being born in the “millennial age”. Whereas so many of the names seen daily in the press (e.g., Jobs, Gates, Allen, Musk, Hoffman, Dorsey, Williams, Thiel, Rose, and Branson) were born before 1980, in many cases long before 1980.
So, I seriously question whether expression of “millennial discontent” is not an outgrowth of the social-media-driven self-delusion I’m talking about.
Having said that, I sincerely hope that all ensuing hate mail will be directed to you.
JIM: Well there you have it. Another blistering exchange of WTFU (Wake The F**k Up) opinion from a couple of mildly opinionated, opposite end of the scale boomers.
In our world, almost everything is bullshit in one form or another. But don’t despair, you will get there one day, and the bullshit will be yours to discover.
Hope you enjoyed this dueling rant and will make it a point to give us your opinion (hate mail gratefully trashed) and of course share this with the comatose and hopelessly addicted in your network.

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I am a communications professional. Through my own core skills as a strategist, writer & art director and with the help of some insanely talented associates, I work with primarily B to B clients, large and small to create hard working communications in whatever sector of the marketing universe their strategy dictates the need to travel through. I am also a mentor, blog post editor and a pretty decent photographer.
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Copyright 2016 By Jim Murray & Phil Friedman