I fancy myself an amateur cultural anthropologist, as well as a sociologist and psychologist (others fancy me other things, but I am sure you can use your imagination). To my credit I did take courses in all of those disciplines in College, as well as the genetic code that goes with multiple psychiatrists in my immediate blood line (Dad and his Brother). That being said, I have mentioned before how fascinated I am with the online world and the culture, how things have evolved/devolved since I first got online in 1980 (or 1981, I was 10 or 11, who recalls exact dates).
I watched the evolution of the social networks, I have also enjoyed being a bit of a social network futurist. I am not always right or accurate, but I find it fascinating to extrapolate what will become from what currently is, and what has been. My track record has been pretty good so far, but I also laughed at Google when I was first asked about it by Holly Warren in 2000.
One thing has always bothered my about the recent social network history, looking at 2008 forward (I essentially abandoned any social online platforms between 2004 and 2008) is what I will be basing this post on, and this post is about my presentation at PodCamp East tomorrow (Sunday September 30, 2012).
I realized today that my session title was incredibly vague and completely obtuse, which is great because it means it is open to interpretation and also to having no one attend it, so consider this clarification and additional description. I promise I will write more in the future on this, but for now a few points that will be the backbone of the session, and discussion, tomorrow.
I prefer philosophical conversations based in reality but stemming from theory, this is one of those situations. I believe that the rapid growth of social networks, and the over saturation of such, is/has led to the entropy of the same. What I saw begin to happen last year, probably not intentionally, was a move away from large platforms to more intimate environments. You will notice I speak more in terms of Twitter as that is my favorite of the networks and the one most underestimated in value, and feared/misunderstood in use.
It began as some of the “social elite” began to cull their friends/followers to recapture the intimacy of the smaller communities and networks. Whereas in 2009/2010 success in the social spaces was measured on how many friends/followers you had. I think that the reason was not genuine in many of those instances, but was a new way to embrace the new differentiation of “what makes you elite”.
Mimicking celebrity accounts who only follow/friend the very few (or in the case of Conan O’Brian only the 1) but have tens of thousands of followers. As the ability to “buy” followers grew, and concepts like “follow-back” created artificial communities, the same elite were no longer safe in their “I am better than you because…” spaces. It was ironic that some of the same people doing this had only months prior preached that the true sense of community/engagement/relationships (pick whichever one you want) was in following everyone back.
I have never agreed with the “follow back” concept, but I have succumb to the wisdom of those with more expertise on other occasions (I wish I could recapture my staunch position of Facebook is only for “Friends or Family who I would invite over to my house and show my family album” – life would be simpler). With that I didn’t completely buy into it on Twitter, but more so than I would care to. If I had also bought into the “list” movement when it was first born it would have all been a lot easier for me, but the original “lists” were ways of making “who’s cool” lists, then the actual meaning was removed and they were just personal groupings for the purpose of following certain segments of your community.
At times I wish the rules would stop changing, but I think they change just to keep others a step behind. I know I am a step behind as I didn’t get the “cool kids” memo (that is not a negative tone, only mocking those “cool kids” I am friends with) which told me to auto-unfollow everyone and just rebuild my following from scratch. This is where I got the concept of “Rebuilding Your Village”.
Social networks have grown so much with the false concept of “We are all friends, koombya” that it has become only noise. The value of the interactions has been completely lost in the race for numbers. As some reach the near half-million market and are not actors/actresses, public figures or people with any kind of integrity, we know it is not even possible. This is where we start to see the remains of the early social networks and the hold-over social outcasts that occupied the space, creating new personas/identities for themselves to capture the social experience they lacked elsewhere in life (read: They didn’t have friends in high school so they needed to find a place to be cool and bully others).
Now as we realize a generation is growing up without a clear definition of the word “Friend” thinking that “acquaintance” is a bad word, people judge their own value and infer self-worth from the most inane of sources – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Spotify, Schemer, and MySpace (they’re back…). People are so focused on knowing what others “think of [them]” that they aren’t paying attention to what they think of themselves. The determination of self-worth from a social network interaction is an enormous emotional drain on a generation (or two) of kids, and with the complete and utter lack of mental-healthcare it will continue to breed real-life situations such as we saw inColoradonot recently.
The new movement, as I call it, of “Rebuilding Your Village” works to regain the sense of true community, positive reinforcement, and confidence in your immediate network. The root of this movement (I am being a futurist here as I have not seen other references to this yet, but I am sure there have been) is the sense that community and connections have been lost in the race to gain numbers and be the “biggest” on the block.
Size, we were always told, does not equate to quality or imply stature, when in fact those same people were merely telling you this to keep you down (I know my membership card in a variety of social media groups and clubs will now be revoked). Size did matter, people chose who to follow by looking at their “Friend/Follower Ratio” and total numbers. We have all seen the guy with 5 Tweets but 40,000 followers continue to gain more followers while not adding to the number of Tweets, it only proves the theory that numbers matter – or that people are generally lemmings that can’t think for themselves and assume there is quality/value in numbers. It is a matter of trusting the masses, which is no something I am condemning completely, only in some circumstances.
It is a general problem with social media, people presume that something is one way based solely on perception and not on fact. Perception is the rule, and verification of the perceived identity/situation/credentials is trusted and assumed to be accurate because trust is part of the nature of the social network structure. I have called (pardon my language) bullshit on this numerous times, and I will continue to do so despite the attacks by backpack trolls and bully’s trying to tell me I am “mean” “hateful” or “toxic”. To those people I say, you don’t know me so just crawl back under your bridge or rock.*
The reality of the social networks and value is that it is the new “classroom” – as we all race through life at warp 5, no time to relax, to socialize in person or to engage in community activities, we need a less time-consuming place to have basic human interaction, so people turn to social networks.
It has always been easy to feel as though you know someone from interacting online. That is a false sense though more often than not, and it takes moving to “f2f” aka Face to Face to truly discover whether you have made a new friend. Discerning the friend from foe on the large scale social networks got trickier, people were asked to trust and they did – then their trust was betrayed, sometimes by more than one person, so how do you measure one pathos against another pathos? This causes self-doubt, and in the less stable inviduals in our society, often times severe depression or even suicide attempts.
Now people are “tearing down their villages”, in sweeping moves they unfollow or unfriend people, and then step into the “Rebuilding Your Village” mode. This is where they rediscover their friends, or find new people. Starting fresh is efficient, but also socially unacceptable – at present. We shun those that “unfriend” or “unfollow” us, I mock some of my friends, know my velocity is often more than their mobile devices can handle – but I truly don’t take it personally (most of the time) when someone unfollows/unfriends me, I understand it, and i respect it.
It is about your time available, about focusing that time on quality rather than quantity, there is certain expectation that we all should be constantly aware of what our “friends” are doing. I am not, not because I don’t care, but because I gave up trying to wade through the muck that is my Twitter stream and Facebook feed. I feel horrible when I miss those amazing life moments of people I really care about, but I can only hope they can understand – it’s not them, it’s me.
This is what led me to predict that the new “next big thing” was going to be the next little thing. Seeing a mass movement toward “social downsizing”, but culling friends and focusing on interests and commonalities more in the regrowth process, with the hope of making actual real life friend connections. We don’t have as many opportunities to connect with people like we used to, we are all on the go too much, so a focused social network will permit us to reconnect with our interests. The perfect solution for this would be sites that identify people of similar interests (think eHarmony for Friendships, which eHarmony might REALLY want to consider doing), I know some might say “That’s Facebook” but it’s not, Facebook is too big, too invasive and on it’s way to being the next Yahoo or Excite.
Sites that offer promise are newer sites, or communities, Spotify is a good example, people naturally express themselves through music, and Americans tend to like to use songs to send “messages” so Spotify is the ideal social network specialized and focused on certain facets of personal interests.
My point when I began was to try to explain my session at PodCamp East tomorrow, my point is the future of social networks is in micro-networks (sorry Ning, you were a little ahead of your time) – focused small communities where people can really connect and build meaningful human relationships and interactions.
If you are inWilmingtonDelawarefor PodCamp East, I hope you will join me and discuss the concept, I always enjoy a little bantering on the topic of social networks and cultural anthropology. The session is at11:00amtomorrow.
*My reply to the backpack trolls and bully’s is for another post, I will not get into a tangent during this post.