Welcome To He Said He Said Volume 30

Wherein the Phil & Jim Plumb The Depths Of The Motivation To Be Part Of the Social Media Circus
This is the 30th edition of this column, which we started about 2 years ago over in the Lumpy Kingdom Of The MicroHamsters. I have to say that this has been for me one of the best part of blogging on social media. Hopefully our opinions as both professional writers and long time bloggers have provided some insight into the topics we choose to discuss here. Personally I don’t see any end in sight unless Phil one day gets hijacked by Somali pirates. I’m too far inland for that to happen to me.

JIM: Over the past couple of years we have explored a number of areas related to social media. But one of the things we have never really talked about in any depth is the actual reasoning behind why so many millions of people devote, what has probably accumulated into a good chunk of their lives to hanging out on various sites like Facebook, LinkedIn Twitter, Instagram and beBee to name but a few.
IMHO, people and the free content they provide these sites is actually the engine that makes it go. But I have always been interested in understanding the why of it. I know that it‘s easy to get cynical when you look at it from the site owners’ perspective. But I’m interested in the participants and why all this shit is so attractive to them.
Sure, I know why I’m here. I’m a writer and it’s an outlet for my writing, just as emailing was before this and sharing Xeroxes of work with friends was before that. And I kind of have an idea why you’re here, being a writer of a slightly different colour.
But what about all those people when aren’t writers, Phil? What is their reason for being here? What the hell do they want or expect for all the free content they provide?
Are they just sheeple who do it because it’s what everybody else does? Or is there something deeper about what, more often than not, looks like a relatively shallow pond.

PHIL: Look, I am probably not the best person to ask about the motivations of others since I have a mountain of difficulty judging even my own “inner feelings”. Indeed, I am so oblivious to my own underlying emotions that I often have to ask my wife, “Hey Honey, how am I feeling today?”
However, it appears you are posing the question while, no doubt, expecting pure speculation in response. So, I guess I can safely hazard a guess.
Social media facilitates a person creating a fantasy persona and life if he or she chooses to do so. Unemployed? Wham bam, you’re an “entrepreneur”. Down in the dumps? Put out dozens of memes on “staying positive every day. Missing a personal love life? Publish articles on the do’s and don’ts of online “relationships”.
Am I pissing off a sufficient number of people yet? Well, if not, let me continue.
If you’re not already confusing and confused enough, wax prolific on “authenticity” ― while at the same time posting “Ten Pointers on Reinventing Yourself”. And take heart, for even if you’ve never supervised a single person in your entire life, you can decide to be a “leadership guru and coach”.
One of the sayings I see frequently quoted on social media is by entrepreneurial celeb Richard Branson, “Fake it until you can make it.”
Understand I am not saying everyone fakes it up. I am sure there is the Pareto 20% who are what and who they say they are. But I am just as certain there is a significant percentage who are not. Because on social media, you can self-ascribe and self-certify with almost complete impunity. Which is, I think, the key to why social media attracts so many of its denizens. They are literal followers of Shakespeare’s dictum that all the world’s a stage.

JIM: Well for somebody who might not have been the best person to ask, that certainly was a full-bodied reply.
It’s hard to disagree in principle with any of the examples you gave. But I’m just wondering if all this fake or fantasy persona stuff is really helping or hurting people psychologically.
I remember, back on an earlier Facebook iteration, the one where I had thousands of ‘friends’, there was one girl in particular who had, I found out after a while, developed this incredibly ornate fantasy life with a rich lover and one amazing shopping expedition after another. She waxed on about how wonderful it was to have the freedom to be able to go out any just pluck anything she wanted off the designer tree. She knew all the brands and could even talk articulately about them in terms of design and retailers that carried them.
Later I found out from a genuine FB friend that this woman was living right on the poverty line. That her life was a complete mess, divorce and disability, the whole nine yards.
I followed her for a while after that, but now, instead of thinking she was an arrogant elitist bitch, she just grew more and more pathetic in my eyes. Because looking at her posts analytically, I could start to see pronounced chinks in her intellectual armor. Little tells that said a lot. If I hadn’t been looking for them or known the reality, I might not have noticed. But I did and after a while I had to cut her loose, despite the fact that her intelligence made here a good political sparring partner.
I think that’s the curse of creating fake personas in social media. Most people simply don’t have the horses to sustain it flawlessly, and when they start going down, it has the potential to fuck them up big time, in a much more debilitating way than the fake persona posting ever could. Because, rightly or wrongly, so much of their perceived self-worth is invested there.
And in this regard, I consider social media to be a facilitator and in some cases a catalyst for this kind of behavior. The notion that you can measure your self-worth in terms of ‘likes’ and positive comments, to me, at least, is a bit absurd.
You and I both talk a good deal about views and engagement, but what we’re really doing is using it as small big data to determine if our writing is actually achieving what we want it to achieve in terms of influence and organic reach.
But there are people out there, and the younger they are the more prone to this they seem to be, who literally live and die by the popularity they possess and are able to sustain in these media.
There has to be something fundamentally wrong with that, doesn’t there?

PHIL: Believe me, I understand what you’re saying. One of my daughters is still a teenager, while the other is just past her teen years. We’ve had literally years of pitched battles about social media and how it encourages users to live not so much just for themselves (which would be bad enough) but almost entirely in the eyes of others.
Look, I’ve written about this elsewhere on a number of occasions, so I don’t want to stomp on a dead cockroach here. Suffice it to say that the really warped part of all this is that the eyes of others in which the devotees of social media live ― the supposed views that are reflected back by those others ― are not real either. Rather, they are created in their own minds by those who would bask in the light of those from whom they seek approval.
And if you think that is incredibly convoluted and confusing, you’re right, it is. Indeed, it’s a who’s-on-first-? dialogue worthy of Curly, Moe, and Larry ― not to mention the Tooth Fairy.
Social media is a Wonderland truly fit for an Alice. The irony is it doesn’t have to be. Of course, in order for it not to be, we all have to work to encourage, and in some cases force, the owners of the platforms to move away from their relentless pursuit of monetization through gamification and the quest for frenzied activity.
By the way, in that regard, I am impressed by Javier Rica’s recent notice that he and the beBee development group have pushed the reset button and are going to a radically revised concept for the platform, one that I judge to be strongly user-centric and dedicated to creating an ethos that supports quality of content and personal control over raw quantity of activity. If Javier and Juan can bring it off, beBee will set a new standard for social media. IMO.

JIM: “Great points, innovative thoughts, cuts right to the bone, you’ve kinda said it all, couldn’t have said it better myself,” he said in a frenzy of overworked social media comments.
I think the reason why we have been able to pull of 30 of these columns without actually putting out contracts on each other is that we have different approaches but the same basic understanding of the heaping helping of bullshit that people both create and have to put up with on social media.
These days, it’s gotten even worse. On Facebook for example, I can no longer tell the real stuff from the fake stuff. You can put it all on the Whackjob In The White House, but I honestly believe that this has, to varying degrees been with us all along.
And I think a lot of us recognize it, and some of us, like you and me for example, are on a bit of a crusade to make sure that people are thinking twice about all the crap that’s coming at them, that is, like it or not, a big part of what shapes the collective social media psyche these days.
I often refer to all this bullshit as part of the dumbing down. And what we are seeing now are the chickens coming home to roost so to speak.
I hope Juan and Javier can pull off this reset for beBee. There really are a substantial number of very good people out there, who, if it was put to them in the right way, would certainly make this an even more powerful community.
I like the way beBee feels that way right now, but only to a limited degree. But all that means is that there is a core here already that can be built upon.
Despite all the back and forth we have about LinkedIn, I’m not sure that the same sort of community can be built there. It may very well be, all management shortcomings aside, that it’s A) Not really focused on quality content to the degree that maybe it used to be, B) It’s just too freaking big and C) It’s now controlled by a company that has a completely different agenda, which actually has yet to play out.
Feel free to correct me if I’m off base, there, amigo.

PHIL: As if, Jim, I need permission ― or for that matter, any incentive other than pure perversity ― to correct you.
Anyway, as you already know, I have a hate/love relationship with LinkedIn. I object to the level of manipulation and control exerted on that platform by management. But I also have to admit, albeit grudgingly, that at this point, it continues to be the 800 pound gorilla in the room, when it comes to actually generating genuine B2B activity via online exposure.
For example, as I write this, I am at my favorite mobile office (Panera Bread Company) on my way back from meeting with a potential consulting client who reached me via ― you guessed it ― LinkedIn. The potential client is a software developer and entrepreneur who is looking for help in developing a new marine industry related app. And he reached me by looking around on LinkedIn for someone who had intimate knowledge of the boating and yachting sector.
Moreover, the consulting gig I am just wrapping up in regard of supervising the construction and delivery of the new 80-foot Offshore yacht, “Let It Bee”, also developed as a direct result of my presence and activity on LinkedIn. Indeed, every genuine business opportunity that’s come my way as a result of my activity on social media has come from LinkedIn. Consequently, notwithstanding my dislike of how LI management has treated its independent content contributors, I cannot discount the power of the platform to do what it’s nominally supposed to do.Can you build on LinkedIn the kind of community that has developed on beBee? I don’t think so.
But, then, we need, I think, to get clear on what kind of community we’re talking about. BeBee has a strong community of strong writers. No doubt. And I see more interesting expression of thought on beBee than on just about any other social media platform, including Medium, which seems to me to be primarily a Millennial’s sandbox.
What is not present on beBee is a significant level of B2B activity. At least not in the area(s) I work in.
Oh sure, there are some legitimate business people who hang around on beBee ― shooting the breeze, talking politics and philosophy, and in general having a good time. But if there is any serious business resulting, I for one am not seeing it.
Hopefully, Javier and the beBee development team will be addressing that issue in their newest upcoming iteration of the platform. Certainly, Javier’s recent heads-up on a “reset” of central concept indicates that beBee has intentions of becoming more than an online coffee house.

JIM: As usual I can’t disagree with your assessment. In fact I have relied only your assessments of things for a few years now to guide my luddite-like activity on social media. Although if you were following me on Facebook, you would certainly be thinking I wasn’t paying attention to anyone.
I too am hoping for the best from beBee in terms of leveraging all their social activity into business activity. You and I and the other beezers have discussed this at length and determined for the larger growth spurts to happen, beBee really needs to add a strong business persona to its brand character.
But that’s a whole other discussion. Suffice it to say that social media is as much a repository for lost souls as it is for those souls who, at the very least labour under the assumption that they know where they are going. And finally a other bunch of souls like me, and sometimes you and other people we have gotten close to here, who write simply because if there ain’t no audience, there just ain’t no show.
Thanks for humoring me on this. You’ll receive your reward…if not in this world, then in the next. I guarantee it unequivocally.

Thanks for reading. Phil and I both hope you enjoyed this post and if you have any comments, opinions, yes even criticisms, please feel free to post them in the comments section. We promise not to have the National Enquirer run an unflattering story about you.

Copyright 2016 Phil Friedman & Jim Murray. All rights reserved.

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