What if our newspapers were filled with articles on how to write for newspapers?
What if the only books we printed were books about how to sell books?
What if TV shows consisted solely of monologues about TV?
I doubt we’d have much use for them at all.
So why do we accept it in social media?
The Three Pillars of Social Media Content
If you blog, podcast or otherwise create media for web-based distribution, you probably talk ad nauseam about one of three topics:
- How to create web content
- How to monetize web content
- Yourself
Notice that you probably don’t talk about the subject matter of your content, because your content is its own subject matter.
Crazy, isn’t it?
We blog about blogging. We market about marketing. And, when we’re not selling our expertise, we sell ourselves. It’s the equivalent of painters forever painting portraits of themselves painting their own self-portraits. I can’t imagine another medium that would exist solely to justify and perpetuate its own existence, and yet that’s precisely what we do here.
It’s ugly. It’s desperate. It’s solipsistic. (Look it up.) And it makes for one anemic defense of an industry.
It’s almost like social media labors under the suspicion that if it stops talking about itself, it’ll cease to exist.
Which begs the question: does social media exist? Or are we making the whole thing up?
If a Tree Falls in the Woods and No One Retweets It…
The social side of social media revolves around techniques meant to get others talking about you. The media side of the equation is less about the form of the content and more about its distribution. Mobile, web-based, downloadable, subscribable… These aren’t media forms. These are means of distribution.
What we have is people using multiple channels to convince you of their own merit, mostly so you’ll talk about them — and, specifically, so you’ll talk about their vast array of expertise, in subjects like…
- creating content,
- monetizing content, and
- themselves
Is it any wonder that people believe Twitter is a wasteland of people discussing airports and breakfast cereal?
Are you shocked when the level of social media discourse reported by CNN or Nightline amounts to the same uninformed, knee-jerk reactions we already ignore when we scan through blog comments, but which the mainstream media somehow thinks represents America’s profound and timely wisdom?
Of course, it aggravates those of us who believe in the potential of social media, and it motivates us to prove the naysayers wrong.
But here’s the catch:
What if they’re right?
Does a Computer Know It’s a Computer?
If our entire medium did exist solely to justify its own existence, surely we’d recognize that lunacy and abandon it for something legitimately meaningful. Right?
Only if we can diagnose our own insanity.
Look at the blogs you subscribe to, the tweeters you follow and the podcasts you download. What percentage of those sources focus on something other than social media itself?
Look at your own output. What do you write or speak about most often? Is it a topic that has to be explained to anybody who hasn’t heard of Chris Brogan?
Odds are, those odds aren’t good.
So why do we do this?
And what would happen if we didn’t?
I Wrote a Play About This Playwright Who Writes Plays About Playwrights Who…
What if you spent more time writing and reading about a topic other than the web itself?
Who’s creating dynamic media that happens to be online, rather than media that only matters online?
How can you use social media to teach others about a subject besides social media?
(You do have other interests, don’t you?)
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to perpetually explain what you did to people (and why), because the value of what you do would be obvious even to people who don’t own smartphones and who think Amber Naslund was the bassist in Jem?
I know, it’s a scary idea. The first rule of Fight Club was “don’t talk about Fight Club,” because if you did talk about Fight Club, then Fight Club might cease to exist.
With us, it’s the opposite: if we stop talking about social media, then we cease to exist.
Or, more specifically, we cease to exist in our own little fishbowl.
But if we’re only special to each other, we’re not really special at all, are we?
We’re just people with make-believe jobs and titles, who invent our own conferences and pay to hear each other speak about speaking about talking about blogging about ourselves.
And call me a cynic, but I think we can do better.
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Tags: America, audience, bullshit, common sense, perception, Social Media, Sociology, Twitter
[...] och tillbaka. Jag kunde inte ha skrivit det bättre själv och jag föreslår att ni läser hans tankeväckande postning, men eftersom jag fann hans argumentation tilltalande och eftersom jag själv funderat på frågan [...]
The problem IMO starts with the word “(Web) content”. It's always felt lifeless and commoditized to me.
[...] Do you get the sense that social media is just a delusion we’re all perpetrating on ourselves with implicit collusion in order to give a sense of purpose and value to our empty lives? [...]
What's up Justin, I've heard you express this feeling before. I agree about the presence of the social media about social media content in blogs and podcasts and I am bored by it. I enjoy some tehnical type content that helps those of us with jobs in areas other than web design, content and other tentacles of this thing we all enjoy. I consider myself a talk show host when it concerns my podcast, and as far as twitter goes I'm just a voice. For you and the younger amongst us, you need to realize although yinz think this is all some new thing, it's really not it's just easier and more widespread. Twitter is kind of like CB radio on steroids, when looked at on a social level, but even on a commercial level some businesses used it. The only thing that has changed about folks communicating with one another is the technology. Ham radio operators (like me) had the internet before the internet via bulletin board systems (bbs) using vhf and hf packet radio burst transmissions. I know people use twitter comercially and the ability to spread information exponetially via numerous retweets is exciting to communicators (Iran comes to mind). Anyway I'm rambling keep up the good work
I've been thinking this lately, too, and I've just started ignoring the “5 tips for SM success”-type posts and focused on creating content that can live in multiple formats. Remember, both Twitter and Facebook could conceivably disappear tomorrow. If you've put all your marketing eggs in either basket and suddenly that basket disappeared, would you still be able to justify your salary to the boss?
I totally do this all the time. Wasting tweet characters, & whoops, did it right ^there^.
[...] Matter Anymore — (John Jantsch) The Social Business Manifesto — (David Armano) I Tweet, Therefore I Am… Empty? — Justin Kownacki The “Like, Er, Lie” Economy — (Robert [...]
While I can see an armchair contrarian's point & purpose for this post, and I am not guilty of these charges, I respectfully disagree. And I offer this POV (as an avid reader/consumer/user of online material):
Social Media is a Tool, like Broadcast Media before it.
Each Tool exists regardless of what is said/written/broadcast about itself.
It's fun to whine: “600 TV/Cable channels and nothing to watch!”, but just as the Tool of Broadcast Media delivers so much more than programs about making TV programs, the Tool of Social Media is used in as many ways as we want or invent.
TV is used by plenty of others besides TV Producers.
Blogs are used by plenty of others besides Social Media Writers.
I get riches from the sites/blogs I choose to return to for more (edutainment, facts, resources, information, new POVs, etc.), and I love discovering new ones, like linking here for the first time, from a Penelope Trunk post. I'm not in her field, I'm not in your field; yet I've found value in your works via the Tool of Social Media (linking/social proof/comment conversation/etc.) And I can continue to via the Tool of So/Me [and it's really about "So/You" ] using RSS, email subs, following you guys on twitter, and meeting new people in your comments.
Theater troops DO attract audiences with productions of NOISES OFF via in-person delivery.
Radio stations DO attract listeners with PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION via radio waves.
Pen and paper DO attract readers with HOW TO WRITE, from tips to tomes, via ink and pulp, (and maybe a shop, a lending library or a supportive friend.)
I can't believe that Social Media would cease to exist if bloggers, podcasters or other online content creators suddenly stopped sharing “how to create content,” “how to monetize content,” and/or their personal stories and perspectives. Just like the Theater, Radio, and even hardback Books do not stop when their offerings extend “off topic.”
But I can clearly see that the niche of contrarian, and a post poking the Tool that delivers both the post and its readers, is an excellent choice for attracting the Social of tweets/links/comments, via the Media it requires to do so. Smart choice.
Thanks,
~GirlPie
To me, the fact that we're using SM to talk about SM is just circumstantial – people still aren't convinced it's not just a time-waster and a a medium with no ROI whatsoever. We still need to legitimize it.
It will son be over, hopefully! :)
To me, the fact that we’re using SM to talk about SM is just circumstantial – people still aren’t convinced it’s not just a time-waster and a a medium with no ROI whatsoever. We still need to legitimize it.nIt will son be over, hopefully! :)
[...] Do you get the sense that social media is just a delusion we’re all perpetrating on ourselves with implicit collusion in order to give a sense of purpose and value to our empty lives? [...]
[...] took a few Internet-free days last week. It was great to get away from all that “noise.” As some have pointed out, I was getting a bit tired of some of the nonsense available on the [...]
[...] (Inspired by Justin Kownacki’s post “I Tweet, Therefore I Am Empty“) [...]
I think you’re all proving his point.