Do you remember your very first social media post? I remember mine. I sat in front of my iMac and waited, and waited and waited for, wait for it… Nothing. That’s right! Not a damn thing happened and clearly no one cared about me, or what I had to say.
Or was it that no one was listening? In the early days of social media, that may have been true, but perhaps more to the point, I didn’t have the slightest inkling that what I was doing was ‘interrupting’. What’s more, I was interrupting without even being asked to be part of the conversation in the first place. And I’m pretty sure my mother taught me that to interrupt was plain old-fashioned rude.
“Kate, wait your turn”, she would chide.
“But mum,” I can hear myself saying, “That’s not how social media works.” And I would smugly smile, knowing myself to be in the right.
To my mind, social media works much like a lone spectator screaming instructions to the umpire during a packed AFL game at the SCG. No one asked their point of view and only those in very close proximity heard what was said anyway. Most didn’t care, some agreed, most didn’t and one or two want to smash the lone spectator to a pulp.
That’s the whole point about social media: as content creators, we most often pass comment without context of our own audience. And, even more importantly we can’t take those comments back.
Reciprocally, as recipients, we rather voyeuristically dip in and out of a conversation(s) that may not be for us anyway.
These opposing forces are both the great strength and also the great weakness of social media. And often why, when the worlds of passionate creator and casual observer collide, the outcome is so catastrophic – disillusionment, frustration, even anger can take hold. And so too, vitriol. Perhaps more personal and nasty attacks take place, (trolls may even invade) and all of this has happened while we were sleeping; we weren’t even around to defend ourselves.
And this leaves us with a choice. Do we fight or flight?
My belief is neither. We simply manage the language away from the point of consternation.
We see this happen on the edit time and time again. Stars fall from our graces if we take the slightest offence at their commentary. Then, we see, as if it were all a storm in a tea-cup, the conversation changes.
There is a wonderful example of how to do this in a current BBC program, “The secret life of 4 year olds”. The headline is that through simple language and instructions, 4 year olds mostly get what they want. And, if they don’t, they either turn and walk away or, they change the topic.
So, how do you address issues surrounding the commentary you don’t like in social media? Perhaps we need to behave more like these wonderful 4 year olds and change the conversation.
After all, you started it.
