Why I Suck At Social Media (or maybe it’s social media that sucks?)
Yes, I hear you cheerleaders in the audience stroking my ego, telling me how I am oh so popular and loved and shouldn’t feel bad. Enough of that! I’m done with denial, ready to walk into a group meeting, and loudly declare the truth.
“Hi, My name is Deaux (hi deaux!) and I
suck at Web-Two-Point-Oh.”
I mean well enough, you know. With the best of intentions (and some nagging from a tech-addict friend) I’ll jump on the bandwagon and sign up for the latest, greatest social service. I connect to a few friends, make contacts with a few people I don’t know, and swallow my allotted bit of spam, dutifully expanding my network. I work hard at commenting, twittering, stumbling, digging, commenting, linking, friending or whatever the in ing-thing is.
And then it starts… I stop collecting friends. I forget to check my feed reader. I let Twitter languish in silence for days. I neglect to log into my IM accounts. I’ve left a trail of forgotten, broken hearted beta services behind me, and I don’t even HAVE a Facebook or Linked in account, for gawd’s sake! What’s wrong with me? I so suck at these things.
What happens, you ask?
After each initial burst of enthusiasm, I get self conscious. Internet remorse rears its ugly head. (It’s like buyer’s remorse, but no money changes hands)
I start to regret what I’ve said, whatever it is. I become afraid that I’m annoying people, that I’m doing it wrong, or that I’ve committed some horrific faux pas that no one will tell me about, a faux pas that, no doubt, will be broadcast around the world, archived forever, and echoed into infinity in a dozen searchable databases. Oh the horror!
So even if no one notices my mistake now, it may surface in 20 years, when, say, I’m running for President. (Hey, it could happen! Deaux in 2012! )
But why the freakouts? Contrary to expectations, social media doesn’t provide all that much in the way of direct feedback, unless you *really* work at it, or you’re already an A-Lister, of course. A-Listers always get responses. ( Hi A-Listers!) ( see what I mean? )
Web2.0 touts a “conversational” approach, promising a sense of community interaction, but mostly? It doesn’t deliver. It leaves me feeling pretty much like I’m talking to myself, lost in a sea of other people, all of whom are talking to themselves, too. Sometimes I even wonder if I’m interrupting their internal monolog with my own clumsy attempts at socialization. So there is a big feedback gap, for most of us.
And that feedback gap is where I start sucking.
(Ouch, that sounds kind of wrong, doesn’t it? See, I’m already regretting this post )
Being the creative type who can’t stand to leave a canvas blank, I can’t seem to resist coloring in those feedback gaps myself, imagining what people are thinking and feeling, creating a running commentary of all the things they haven’t said.
And lemme tell you… my imagination can be dark , even abusively critical! You people say the MEANEST things in my head! Not nice, not nice at all.
So in response to the imagined stoning by hoards of angry 2.0ers, I crawl into a metaphorical corner of my mind, blankets pulled over my head, and hide from the social-media anxiety farms for a while. My self-imposed isolation doesn’t usually last long, but a few days of silence is enough to assure that any network of social media friends pretty much forgets about me.
Social media is a fickle friend.
Hey, maybe it’s not me, but Social Media that sucks?
Oddly, I excelled at Web1.0 interactions. Give me back my chat rooms, the thoughtful message boards where people didn’t complain if you wrote more than 3 sentences, and email exchanges that were as well thought out as hand written letters. Take me back to when being social on the computer meant making real friends - the kind I’ve had, in some cases, for 12 years - not collections of avatars as social proof of relevance.
Internet socialization wasn’t always an effort at branding, nor was it the modern multitasking smorgasborg, where everyone has is consumed with branded popularity, getting laid, selling the latest affiliate product, or aggregating as much useless information as possible.
Once upon a time, online interaction was driven by a desire to actually get to know people - people you might otherwise never have had contact with. People in other countries, social classes, people with vastly different interests and outlooks, people who could broaden not just your newsletter list, but your mind.
Curiously, I actually *sold* things back in those days of real socialization. Amazon links worked. Requests for donations worked. People actively supported the sites they liked, because they felt connected to them. *Really* connected, not like they were just part of a social-proof collection of gravatars, but like they were part of an ongoing evolving conversation, before conversation became the buzzword of the decade.
The trouble is that social media isn’t about socialization, at all - it’s about marketing. Marketing products, selling yourself, and branding your friendship in soundbites and 100×100 pixel images. It encourages echo chambers, not conversations, and soundbites make for fickle, fake friendships: “Kiss, kiss!”
Yes, Social Media is a fickle friend finder…
But I’m not a fickle friend.
At least, I try not to be, even though I suck at this social media thing. And I apologize, sincerely, to anyone who believes my neglectful ways as a friend indicates my true feelings and interest in what you have to say. I’m *not* that fickle (not nearly as fickle as social media, anyway) I’m just that neurotic.
Really.
And I can’t blame all of this on the shortcomings of social media. Even in the real world, I rarely write return letters, or thank you notes. My friends and family are used to having to call me, invite me out, and drag me out of the house - knowing I won’t initiate our activities. But this new internet social thing does expose my shortcomings in a dreadful new flat screen light. (CRT monitors were so much more flattering to my skin tone, don’t you think?)
“So Deaux,” you ask. “How can we help you be less sucktacular?”
I’m glad you asked. I feel it’s a worthy cause, even if I don’t have my own telethon or 1-800-GiveMeMoney number. Even if supporting me won’t help you amass that elusive social proof.
But I really am a nice sort of friend to have around, I’m told — so long as you don’t mind that I probably won’t send you a Christmas card, call you out of the blue, or even email you bad jokes just to keep in touch. I worry that you’ll be offended because you’re of a different religion, the jokes won’t be funny, that I’ll annoy you by making the phone ring, that I’ll talk too much or too little or …
See how I am?
That’s why I need you to initiate contact. I need you to reassure me that I’m ok. That you actually WANT to talk to me. That I haven’t been shunned for saying “Hello” in the wrong font, or something equally absurd. That it’s not my fault Social Media doesn’t suit my personality, and that I don’t want to become a one woman marketing team for my own talents.
And I need you to nag me. Yes, nag me. Don’t ask me to “join the conversation” with some automated email from a beta service - and don’t “market yourself” to me as a friend. Just nag me directly and repeatedly to make it easy for you to initiate contact. Nag me sign up for Facebook. Nag me to use my Twitter account (you can follow me at MindTweets) And yes, nag me yet again to get that Friend Feed account I promised to set up 2 months ago. You can even nag me to read and comment on your blog posts you think I’ll be interested in.
Because I want to be social, I do… I just somehow.. forget.
So won’t you take pity on a
poor unsocialized Deaux?
For only a few pennies words a day, you can help rehabilitate her hermit ways!
(but she’s not making any promises)
Note: this post led to an entire series on the topic of temperament and social media. It turned out kinda cool.Check it out.
- Social Media and The Five Temperaments
- Why I Suck At Social Media (or maybe it’s social media that sucks?)
- The Five Temperaments; An Overview
- Surviving Social Media: The Supine Struggle
- Social Butterfly Meets Social Technology: The Challenge for Sanguines
- In Search Of Intimacy: The Melancholy on Social Media
- Quietly Participatory: The Phlegmatic and Social Media
- Control and Conquer! The Choleric and Social Media
- Test Your Temperament (the beta/pen & paper version)
- Temperamentally Yours…
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
i’m so much like you in this way that i’m not sure i’ll be good at helping. in fact, i think i might be not only as hermit-like as you, but maybe even worse at initiative and follow through. ::sigh:: but maybe, just maybe, i can do it cos i can tell myself i’m doing it for you, my Deaux-liscious friend. no promises, but i can try.
and let me say this: i signed up for facebook and didn’t even complete a profile or mention it to anyone. i mainly signed up because i saw that an old-friend of mine was on there, and i wanted to get her email address so i could contact her (which i haven’t done yet ::sigh again::). but know what? because of it, i got an email from another long lost friend last week that made me happy. so there are benefits to such things. really.
you and i, we really must get with because it’s obvious to me that social media competence is becoming ever increasingly necessary. we’ll be really lonely in our cocoons if we don’t unfold our wings and fly.
Ok. Somebody needs an INTERVENTION!
Consider one of the reasons we (I am including myself here) suck at the social media thing may be our desire for privacy and/or anonymity. I got a Facebook account under my real world name a few short months ago, and to my surprise, within days, was contacted by friends I see on a regular basis, classmates I have not seen since elementary school, my first boyfriend who now lives on the other side of the world, and even the children of cousins I have never met in person (the cousins I have met - their kids, not so much). While I am growing less and less astounded at how casually those born in the digital age reveal and display their real selves online, I still remember being discouraged from using a primary account in chat rooms and creating a sub-account to distract the spammers. None of the people who found me so quickly on Facebook are aware I have had a virtual presence on-line as “Puncuk” for more than 15 years. After that many years in the closet, I’m thinking I may need some sort of coming-out therapy before merging the two identities.
In reply to Dawn: Maybe we need a 12 step group. At least it would force us to be social with other antisocials…
In reply to Reg: Look, Dawn.. he’s volunteered to lead the support group!
More seriously, Reg, any thoughts on how the Temperaments you often write about could play into our comfort/discomfort with social media?
In reply to Puncuk: You might get a kick out of last year’s article on a similar subject:Privaticus Neuroticus. I agree that privacy concerns, and losing the comfort in anonymity play a big part in our reluctance… I cut my internet teeth in the days that even having a feminine screen name meant certain harassment, and I just can’t get past that. “Tori Deaux” is as close to a merging of identity as I have come — and I’m not at all sure I want to go any further, or that I need to.
So, who else wants to join us in Anonymity Addicts Anonymous? We’ll have remedial social media classes each Thursday night — and we’ll serve cookies!
well, ok… I actually had already read your PN article before, and was thinking of it while commenting here. And I can also see your point about not needing to merge your identities, but the more I use some social apps like Twitter, the more it comes down to either the extra work of broadcasting twice to the two separate audiences, or simply throwing up the hands, letting the identities merge and sitting back to watch the two worlds collide (I would do that if I found carnage amusing…. alas). The third alternative, of course, is to be occasionally anti-social in one realm or another and hope you alternate between each reasonably often without alienating everybody.
Deaux you’re such a (will he go for it? no he can’t!) Dear (OMG he did…quite sad really) for looking at this through the temperament lens.
Yes, I do think that much of the emotional crossfiring in this area comes from the conflicts with meeting and expressing our basic needs.
I’ll use myself as an example. I have a high need to express affection but on the other hand I have a very low desire to be on the receiving end of overtly expressed affection.
Does that mean that I have issues with self esteem? Or does it mean I prefer less flashy expressions of affection (i.e. if you’re having another cup of coffee, pour one for me too: rather than buying me a present or singing me a song in a public place). For most of us that tendency is compounded when viewed through the social media constructs
That is only the fundamental need of Affection that is tossing the proverbial monkey wrench into the social media conundrum. What happens when we look at the whole of our elemental needs and take in Inclusion and Control as well?
Take all that and compound the issue with the fact that social media contacts are a mile wide and an inch deep and you really have to consider whether the risk outweighs the return. Which is to say, you may make an exponential number of “connections” but how many of them will you really get to know well enough that both of your lives will be enriched?
Oh well, you did ask for it, after all.
There is nothing wrong with you. There can’t be, because I am the exact same way. Although I am not as smart as you.
While reading this post I was wondering why you were writing about me. A lot of what you wrote really hit home. I still cannot believe how you and I are so much alike in our thoughts and actions. Could it be because we were born on the same day?
I will do my best to help you with your rehabilitation.
lol not sure how to help when I am the same way…hahaha… But seriously I will try.
Have a fantastic productive day!
Tori, you’re ok. I actually WANT to talk to you. It’s not your fault Social Media sucks. And it’s ABOUT TIME somebody said that!
Everyone has been jumping on the Social Media bandwagon because everyone says everyone is jumping on the Social Media bandwagon. I keep missing it (darn thing is moving too fast). And I’ve been feeling guilty about that-until I read your post. Finally! A voice of reason!
Thank you. (Hey, did you know Tori means “gate” in Japanese? You’re the gate to sanity!)
Bonnie
Whew. I’m feeling much better now
Thanks to all of you for the support, commiseration, and the collective cry that
the emperor has no clothes onSocial Media Sucks!@BonnieYou made me laugh outloud at the image of the fast-moving bandwagon - glad I could help relieve your guilt! Hmm.. I’m ‘the gate to sanity”? Well, it certainly explains why I’m on that border between sane/insane!
@Reg Well, at least you didn’t break into song!
I really do appreciate the response on this, as I’m pretty sure that the temperament issues help explain my own social media reluctance, and likely those of several of the commentors here, too. The question, then, becomes how can we use these tools in ways that work for our own personality needs? There’s at least another post or four in this concept, don’t you think?
@Puncuk The new internet interconnectivity definitely raises the effort required to keep two separate online identities going, or even maintain normal privacy between different areas of life. It also increases the chance of being seen as deceptive or hiding, when all you want is a little privacy. I’d like to use social media to build better relationships with family, but at the same time, I don’t like the idea of handing the keys to every aspect of my life over to a nosey sister-in-law. More concerning, I imagine many situations where this could have implications a lot more serious than just my personal discomfort - Who wants their business identity to easily connect to an internet dating site, Or a forum where they discuss their struggles with manic depression? I It’s a level of transparency that goes beyond “revealing your humanity”, it invites abuse. Ok, rant over. I now return you to your regularly scheduled comments.
@Jackie I think you, and I, (and some of the others here) have similar issues because we have a similar temperament profile. And like Dawn (and me) you probably do better encouraging others, than in motivating or drawing attention to yourself, … but only so long as you feel that encouragement is wanted and rewarded. Am I close here?
note to self. this comment box is WAY too short. fix it please!
Oooh, oooh, oooh Mr. Kotter….. I think you’ve just given me my post topics for next week! The Chloeric/Melancholy/Phlegmatic/Sanguine/Supine and Social Media.
(Are you old enough to remember Welcome Back Kotter?)
I was hoping you’d pick up on that hint from me : ) If you’ll do that, I’ll tie into it with a Temperament post of my own.
(and yes, Horshack, I’m old enough to have had a crush on Vinny!)
Tori, that is completely true. Sometimes I wonder if others know me better than I know myself. :-]
Have a happy day!
Jackie, ha. It’s only because I know my personality type well, know I share a lot of the same traits with Dawn (because she and I talk about it endlessly) and have seen enough from you to guess at your type : ) And have a happy day yourself!
Would anyone get mad if I said I think, just think, that maybe I hate Facebook? More than it just “annoys me”
Ted, I won’t be the least bit mad! In fact, I will offer my full support to your proposed possible hating of Facebook!
The emperor has no clothes, and social media sucks! Take that, Web2.0!
(Ok, I’m done with the drama outburst. I am curious, though, as to why you might think that you might hate Facebook? )
I don’t know about Ted, but the reason I’m hating Facebook is the high nuisance factor. Facebook seems primarily a place where people incessantly send each other applications containing “gifts”, i.e.virtual flowers, ice cream, butterflies, eggs, puppies, purses, drinks and everything else anyone ever thought to take a picture of or draw. It’s spam dressed with a very classy demi-glace sauce.
Facebook never did leave a very good taste in my mouth. Great explanation Pancuk! Thanks. I might borrow it if you don’t mind?
[...] by Tori Deaux on June 10, 2008 Design and productivity blogger David Seah thinks frighteningly like me at times. Recently, he’s chimed in on the struggles with Social Media with “Community Building for Introverts” , a far more positive take approach than my own recent declaration than my I Suck at Social Media. [...]
*stands up*
Hi, my name’s Mark and I’m a social media suckaholic.
Hmm, that does sound a bit… wrong, doesn’t it?
Like a few of the others I could identify with a lot of what you wrote. But I’m not so nice. Sometimes I really don’t care what other people have to say. Sometimes I really don’t want to talk to them, or add them as a friend on Facebook, whether or not they send me demi-glace spam. I see Facebook as a big advanced Address Book. All the rest it has to offer is like glitter; pretty, but it has no real function.
I also don’t care if people look poorly on something I wrote. In fact I’d prefer it if they tell me, though nicely, otherwise I won’t be too kind if they misrepresent me.
…though I must say, my more negative attitude is a very individual thing. I.e., some people make it really hard to put in any effort on their behalf. In general (and always initially) I’m happy to attend and engage with people.
(all together now, in good 12 step style) Hi, Mark!
Ok, suckaholic sounds WAY wrong. But funny.
With any luck, there will be a series next week on personality temperaments, and social media… I think it may click for you. We all have reasons for hating social media, but those reasons seem related largely to our personalities - interestingly, it suggests that the current forms are really missing the boat.
(btw, I agree that Facebook, and many of the sites, are fancy address books. And I can’t be bothered to keep up with a plain ol address book!)
[...] that business a few weeks ago about how how much I suck at modern social media? In the comments on that post, there was some speculation about how personalities and temperaments [...]
[...] on the various services, but also finding themselves frustrated (see Tori’s article a “why I suck at social media” * . [...]
I love this blog article. It made so much sense to me that I had to let you know that you are truly on my go back and read list. Love it, and you are ok.
I just found this blog searching for the words “social media sucks.” There’s a post on the tech tips blog Make Use Of linking to a YouTube video on why social media is probably (albeit sadly) not a “fad”:
<a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/social-media-fad/"
(I’m “Little Sister” at the bottom who commented about the Orwellian implications of being so blindly “social.”)
I’m too young to remember firsthand the “Web 1.0″ era, but as an aspiring novelist and born wordsmith (probably related to big brother Winston) with a love of sentence structure and well-written, poignant thoughts, I have to say I’m right along with you in that I suck at social media because social media sucks. Actually, the term itself is a misnomer: It puts the “me” in media (and maybe the “social” in “sociopath”).
I won’t encourage you to use your Twitter or Facebook account(s), but may instead encourage you to close them, because I don’t have any of those either, and have basically sworn them off as irrelevant to positive change in society (which I aspire to create too). A big part of that change involves swimming against the tide and embracing your inner “outcast,” being an individual amid a sea of Gravatars and profiles and a whole mess of Twit droppings.
I’m on quite a few forums too, don’t get me wrong, but forums and listservs by and large are geared towards a specific topic, while Twitbook and EmoSpace are the “2.0″ equivalent of anarchic dark alleyways, celebrity stalking, and dare I say it…cocktail parties and *gasp* the high school “cool kids vs. misfits” updated and scaled to Google-size for the 21st century.
(As if that weren’t enough, blame social media for the celebrity twit droppings that are Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. “Nuff said.)