Anti-social media

I’m taking a careers workshop and was pretty much gobsmacked when a participant assured me that the way for me to go is social media. Something to do with either running social networking communities, or managing social networking software products; I’m not sure and she seemed pretty vague, too. More interested in sounding authoritative than in providing actual, you know, substantive information.

(And this was after I’d said that I’m interested in nothing to do with the consumer or social media space.)

See, I’m not sure that this whole social networking phenom is more than a fad. Like, you know, that-there iPhone thing. But, beyond that, I’m completely dumbfounded not only by how much platforms like Twitter or Facebook encourage continuous public displays of self-absorption, but how they seem to imbue their members with seemingly unlimited amounts of utter, mind-freezing stupidity.

People are so enthralled by the concept that, instead of a mere 15 minutes of fame, they can get bleeps and blobs of it round the clock—just keep tweeting or updating your FB status. Those go out to everyone they’ve connected to, with the urgency you’d expect to get from a news-flash announcing that the Israelis and Palestinians have just sealed a peace agreement over a pulled-pork sandwich and a few brewskis. Over and over again.

And I’m not even talking about those god-awful FB games.

People just lose their brains when they log on to those sites, blabbing stuff, posting photos and who knows what with this bizarre schizoid idea that they can at the same time draw the admiring attention of everyone who views yet another pic of them slamming back tequila shooters or leading the pack in a wet tee-shirt contest while not appearing on the radar of current or future employers.

And the environments positively encourage this sort of thing.

But here’s one of the more recent examples of why I can’t get excited about social networking: the Washington state corrections officer who was charged last week with bigamy after FB’s “friending” algorithm suggested that Wife #1 might want to friend Wife #2, since they had Alan L. O’Neill as a common friend.

Now, O’Neill isn’t the first—I Googled “Facebook bigamist” and found others over the past years. So what is it that makes anyone think that anything that can be uploaded from a phone, pad or PC isn’t going to be circulated, processed and entered into evidence somehow?

And why, if I’m not a PI or a blackmailer, would I want to be part of this business?

Besides, my idea of a time suck is putting out a feeder full of Nyjer seed and watching goldfinches squabble with juncos at it for hours.I'm thinking I'll add a hummingbird feeder, too.