By K. A. Laity
Is social media getting to be too much to manage?
This week over at Publisher's Weekly, Andrei Codrescu castigates the use of social networking as a complete waste of time. His interactions with his 5,000 "friends" has left him bitterly disappointed, complaining that "the camaraderie utopia of Facebook and every other social network is just pixel puff, literally a u-topos, the nowhere place where data bots work overtime to reduce you to a brainless consumer" and further, it's "nothing but lies and fake grins," so you can't even get good material out of it.
Codrescu declares, "The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again." Not, he says to cultivate a mystique, but because "no real writers ever lay down anything real in public." Anis Shivani's "New Rules for Writers" (which may or may not have been "satire" as belatedly claimed) likewise suggests avoiding publicity and shunning crowds. Writers need to be solitary iconoclasts: not a good match for social media. Most writers, however, are not likely to follow their urging because social media still offers the best way to get the word out in an ever-expanding market. But many do feel a sense of exhaustion from keeping up with everything.
If you Google "social media overload" you'll get over 700,000 results instantly. Clearly, there's a perception that it's all too much to keep track of via all these different outlets. Part of this is because some people tend to use every possible media source without figuring out which work best for a particular project and how that social media outlet works differently. Twitter is not Facebook and they appeal to different impulses and often very different people.
If you cynically friend 5,000 people and then complain that the experience is shallow, the only response I have is "duh." Maybe Codrescu didn't know the difference between a personal account and a professional fan page (useful). Maybe he only posted about his publications and people got bored (writers who only advertise get really boring). Maybe no one commented on his cute kitten video (sob!). I don't know; he wasn't one of my friends.
Social media is a giant sprawling conversation going on all the time all over the world: the biggest party ever. Yes, it's a bit unmanageable. And like a party you'd attend in the physical world, you're not necessarily going to talk to everybody. You might hang out in the kitchen and talk about food, or over in that corner of the library where you can talk about books. But if you're saying something interesting, there's a much greater chance that someone will overhear and join in. That's why social media matters. It may also be why women carry on the majority of it: it's still the norm in most cultures that women are socialised to socialise.
Not a month goes by that I don't type the words, "I love the internets!" on one of my many social media outlets. I have met so many people and found so many opportunities that would not have come my way had it not been for the 'net. The simple key to using social media effectively turns out to be acting social: talking to people who interest you, offering something in return, not trying to dominate the conversation or to bore people by repeating the same thing over and over. It may be cutting edge technology, but it's not rocket science.
K. A. Laity writes so much that she had to create some pseudonyms to keep her colleagues from thoughts of murder. A tenured medievalist at a small liberal arts college, she mostly tries to find ways to avoid meetings in order to write more . Find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter to hear the latest news, opinions and reviews.
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