When Social Media Will REALLY Matter

Proponents of social media love to cite all the ways these emerging tools are “changing the world.”  For example:

• Clay Shirky‘s Here Comes Everybody references dozens of marginalized groups from around the world who’ve united online to effect positive change in their lives, theologies and governments.
• Twestival provided clean water to third-world citizens via worldwide donations.
• This past June, Twitter bled green for days in support of Iranian protesters who decried the results of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.

And it’s safe to say that “household names” (at least within our insular fishbowl) like Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton and iJustine would still have mundane 9-to-5 jobs if not for the financial revolution of blogs, YouTube and Twitter.

And yet, for all the ways social media helps to unite and repair the world, there’s still one thing it can’t do very well:

Social Media Is Bad at Destroying Things

For all the online outrage directed at Dell, Comcast, Motrin or Dominos Pizza, none of those companies was brought to its knees by the collective ire of social media.  No multinational corporation has been toppled by the web-enabled masses.  No CEO has been dragged through the streets and made to pay for his transgressions despite the endless evidence available for free, online, 24-7, that could presumably fuel any such reaction by the wired intelligentsia.

In fact, in each of the corporate cases above, one of two things ended up happening:

• The companies targeted by the angry mobs learned from their mistakes and wised up, often adopting social media strategies along the way, or
• I forget.

Which is part of the problem: there’s so much to be upset about in the world, and the Internet makes all of that frustration available to us around the clock.  Sooner or later, even the most steadfast among us gets burned out by the constant beating of the war drum.  And if the stalwarts can’t be bothered to see the revolution through, how can you expect the attention-addled cubicle farmers to sustain their rage for longer than a lunch break?  (AKA, “Iran?  I don’t even remember what’s happening in Darfur.  Didn’t we win that one?”)

Not that I’m advocating the wholesale destruction of corporate or capitalist culture (though I’ve been known to in the past).  Nor am I cynical enough to believe that, as in the cases above, tearing a company apart would be in any way preferable to convincing that company to change its business practices.  After all, when social media can be used as leverage to coerce its target into bending to the will of the people, the people have won.  In those instances, social media has succeeded.

What I am saying is that, despite our best intentions, social media — and its users — won’t reach its full potential until it leads to the destruction of something previously considered untouchable by public interference.

Tags: Armchair Sociology, audience, common sense, history, My Social Media POV, perception, pop culture