“Walking into Starbucks – umm, what should I have?”
“Hanging with my BFF!”
“Just bought shoes…brown.”
Personal issue…I hate posts like that. Every time I see one I wonder why the person who sent it thought it was important to share.
Worse – as any of my readers know – I loathe anonymous hate mail…you know the type…
Why is this man writing? He is full of S—T….
(signed) Shakespeare
Advertising is dead – deader than dinosaurs….
(signed) Digitalguru
One thing I do love about those posts, though, is reading the posters’ handles – there is a lot to learn from how they view their anonymous selves….
On the one hand, everyone wants their 15mgs of fame (thank you, Bob Greenberg), and somewhere deep down is the belief that posting makes you famous—or at least well-known.
On the other hand, it’s a natural human instinct to want to be heard—and how better to be heard than seemingly making yourself heard…post something.
So the debate rages on – do digital channels make us better or worse communicators? Are digital channels changing – for better or worse – our ability to communicate?
Once again – I feel we have the wrong view. The channels are great. In fact, amazing. Digital technology and all of its various applications have opened up new means for us to be ever closer, ever more intimate, ever more able to share.
Grandparents living cities away from their grandchildren using Skype to stay in visual touch; friends deciding where to eat based on the proximity of the eating place to their next location; buying movie tickets for a date, as you run, last minute, to the theatre because you unexpectedly freed up an evening slot and your date said yes via text.
All of the above plus countless more – not including all of the wild business applications.
So what’s my beef? Very simply – it’s how we use the great power that has fallen into our hands…listen:
“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”
Edward R. Murrow
And there you have it, from one of the great communicators of any time – who would have been great in our digital world as well.
The issue is not the channel. The problem is not the application. The question is not how to regulate the medium.
The only dilemma is, how do we train the next generation so that they are the stars of the circus…?
What do you think?
I suffer from a certain amount of schizophrenia, technology-wise. Through the years I have come to see technology as merely a tool, a hammer say. You can build a house. You can knock it down. But when I began to view technology back in the early nineties it was through the lens of a luddite and though I have fully embraced technology in its many forms since that early skepticism I cannot say that I accept the notion that technology, the varied modes of digital transfer, the channels, as you call them are irrelevant or, again, as you say “not the issue.” Maybe modern people think that Mcluhan is little more than a fabricator of truisms. I don’t. The medium is the message or at least a large part of that message. How people receive a message very clearly determines how they respond. I don’t know how many times I have heard people, when talking of weeding out their emails, say they’ll delete something simply because the subject line is not pointed enough, or exciting. That puts a lot of weight on 2 or 3 words. When discussing this topic many years ago with a friend she told that the information of Lincoln’s assassination took roughly 3 days to completely penetrate the American psyche. In that time life went on and people saw that was, tragic and mournful, not an end. Now the immediate availability of local weather patterns can send weather men and and their audiences into a panic attack. And really is it all that great to be able to skype your grand parents from Kuala Lumpur or is it just another thing that has enabled us to detach ourselves from a valuable physical sense of community. Your notion of training the future to be valuable members of the circus resonates and as we have rung a bell we cannot unring these notions are academic. I just hope that training comes from the creators of “Baby Einstein” and not “Call of Duty.”
Oh lord did you hit my button today, and as an aside, I think we’d have a hard time being Facebook friends, I’m the annoying person that constantly posts pictures of my dogs. ; )
I’m with you on your views and the lack of “responsibility” people have to sharing in social forums. I think Facebook works best when it actually communicates and connects people, but too often people don’t understand the boundaries and divulge too much. Sharing detailed medical details or personal details about marital woes in a status update! My dad talked about his COLON on my wall. I had to have a lengthy discussion about how “the wall” works and threaten to defriend him – yes, defriend my father – if he didn’t stop talking about his body parts on my facebook page! (He learned and I do love my father…we’re still facebook friends).
I think it goes to show that people still divulge levels and types of information commiserate with what they would verbally share. Facebook hasn’t served as a filter, but a further facilitator.
This hit a chord for me because my overall feeling is that I’d rather have the trivial updates below then the overindulgent ones that make me cringe. It’s a double-edged sword I guess….you can’t have one without the other. I agree that education is key…Facebook needs etiquette. I don’t want to read facebook and feel like I’m sitting at the Thanksgiving table at a friend’s house while they get in a fight with their husband. Boundaries people, seriously….
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Whatever the technology, human beings will want to express themselves, and share their thoughts with the largest possible audience. How well they do that is what makes the piece interesting and memorable or not. Posting a blog is no different to sending an ‘open letter” to the press, something people have done for hundreds of years. Ghandi did it back in 1939 when he openly pleaded with Hitler to end all thoughts of war. In his famous letter, he addressed Hitler as Dear Friend and then added…it is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to a savage state. The world hung on his every word. And waited with bated breath for the reply. The technology was incidental at best.
David et al. this is one of your best rambles thus far. So true and so on the nose. It isn’t the channel, it is the content, the individuals, the judgement and the message appropriateness. Now if we only could teach politicians and other pontificators to hold off expounding their favourite and obtuse points of view until they thoguht them through? If only they learn that so-called social media could lead to the most anti-social movements and counter-productive ideas!
I think we need to train people to filter information. Just like we were taught how to find the right/correct information in school (whether it was in the library or the great www doesn’t matter), we need to figure out how to get the right information from the right people. I have around 300 Facebook friends. Of those I think I get updates from 150, for the rest I have checked the “hide updates” box. But I haven’t unfriended them, because they might be good friends with a poor sense of relevance. So now when I use Facebook I usually get interesting/relevant/funny updates, not “Yumyum, pancakes for dinner”.
My point is that even though it may be stretching freedom of speech to far by claiming that pointless updates is a right, it is at least fair to say that everyone has the right to say whatever they want to say – excluding the obvious such as racism etc. In person, online, in a paper, a book and so on.
It is then up to us to decide whether or not we want to listen.
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i feel the same way. i wish we had the option to screen interesting posts from meaningless ones.
regarding your concluding remark, i think that what has led & encouraged those people to post useless messages are the questions on the various social platforms:
the ” what’s on your mind?” from Facebook and the “what’s happening?” from Twitter are behind all this.
if those would change their questions, then we might witness a difference in posts.
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Hi David,
I got so sick of what was going on at Wunderman I had to start my own agency. And if you really want an answer, try starting to train your people again.
Too many Millennials running around thinking they are hot shit.
You guys laid off all the experienced folks, and well.. hired these newbies. Worse, you aren’t training them.
When I got my first job at Wunderman back in 1993, there was training. Training that told me enough was enough and time to start an my own agency.
You are not developing future leaders.
Which is no surprise now that Starbucks barista’s get more training on making coffee thank current agency account folks..
Big agencies are DOOMED unless they change course and bring back the experience (and pay accordingly).
Respectfully yours,
Fletcher Gensamer
Founder & President/CEO
Gensamer & Company Marketing Communications LLC
http://www.gensamer.biz
P.S. I will send you a new business brochure. The one thing you guys didn’t train me on was new business. What’s up with that. So I am winging it.