Phaylen Fairchild Productions : The Ego and Importance of Social Networks

Social networking is an amazing tool, one I never expected I’d be using in so many fields, both for personal exchanges, marketing, collaboration and information. It’s like a big old Wal-Mart Superstore with everything you could possibly want or need all rolled into one. It began with Myspace, which despite being considered the granddaddy of them all was topped earlier this year by the every growing facebook community (link.)

Social media is one of those fancy buzz words we use to describe how we communicate in unconstrained, spontaneous clouds through virtual medium. Gone are the days of undisclosed thoughts and passing whims. We’ve said so long to opinions that our mother taught us were best kept to ourselves. Bye-Bye political correctness and the pubic manners we were instilled with as children. Nobody uses their inside voice in Social Media, and that’s created an amazing culture shift unlike any our generation has ever witnessed. We are the netizens of the new era, we are the Generation-I for information, from the senseless and benign: “I’m getting ready to go out tonight! Should I wear my Blue thong?” to pop culture profundities; “Michael jackson has just died,” all the way to the politically relevant; “Someone threw a shoe at G.W. Bush! HaHa!” It’s all there before our eyes unfolding like some endless quilt of seamless text happening in real time. It’s no secret that Social Media has pushed aside most of the avenues we used to take in our pursuit for news, all which was delivered to us by some droning news anchor at 6 and 11. Now, social networks grapple onto hard hitting stories and deliver them in a viral fashion with further reach than any singular news channel could possibly hope to. It’s not some well manicured duo behind a desk feeding us up-to-the-minute information from a fact sheet.

It’s the people we follow.

It’s the real human beings living it and reacting to it, raw and uncensored. It is the power of information placed in the hands of the masses. And sure, when Davey67609 wants us to know that he’s finally passed his kidney stone, sometimes it’s plainly frivolous as well. However, you won’t hear that from your local news desk.

There is an Ego to the cyber citizen society that populates these networks. Many things that people say nobody really asks to hear. No one is soliciting information or urging others to post about their daily grind. They just do. Real people in the real world sharing small bits and pieces of their day for no damn reason other than they can. And someone might respond. They want someone to respond. They want to know they are being heard. It’s the whole “Hello! Is anybody out there?” mentality that we are addicted to. Sort of like the first time you spoke on a CB radio while traveling the I-90 and thought, “Oh my god, there’s real people in those other vehicles flying by me at 90mph, and they think and speak!” I remember with anticipation as I hovered over my father’s Ham Radio just willing someone out there to speak. They didn’t have to speak to me, mind you. I just wanted to hear someone utter something, and the fact they didn’t know I was listening made me want to hear more. When the internet boom hit and people began using chat rooms, you’d often find “griefers” and Bigots charging into rooms for minorities to spew bile and hatred without remorse. Why? Because they could. They could speak and people would listen. They would incite a reaction from strangers.. strangers somewhere out there. The birth of the Net Society made the world a little bit smaller and a lot more braver with what they shared.

And social media may have matured that with the evolution of Generation I. Sure you still have those who like to say things explicitly for shock value or to, as I say, knock on the wall until someone knocks back. But the invention of cloud communication has changed things significantly. It’s almost a shared consciousness, or a million different thought streams in a million different directions open for anyone to read and respond, or ignore altogether. In turn we share ours, we toss them out there like flecks of dust for the wind to carry across thresholds of doorsteps around the globe. Why do we do that? Ego.

And celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon. WebCelebs are People like you and me but are accustomed to having throngs of people hanging off their every word. It is not a new thing to incite reaction with vague rambling if you’re famous. We’ll follow them to just to seem them type “Oink” like a pig once ever six months on twitter. They’ll get a million responses, and many of them won’t bother reading them because they have a super-confidence in knowing that they are heard when they utter anything at all. Why do they hold contests between themselves to see who can reach a million followers first like Larry King and Ashton Kutcher? Why does Ellen Degeneres ask her millions of followers to head on over to Kevin Nealons and follow him to help him reach a million? Why does Moby have 900,000 followers but himself follows only 18 (If you include the fact he follows Barak Obama and David lynch- many celebs only follow other celebs) Why do we follow celebrities who don’t give a crap what the plebs are thinking nor do they typically respond to the bellows of “Please say hi to me Ryan Seacrest!” Why the hell would anyone NEED a million followers to begin with? Why are there countless websites dedicated to creating schemes and automated bots to help the less popular social network members gain more followers on social media platforms?

Ego.

Everyone wants to know that someone was is listening, otherwise, what’s the point? If people wanted to keep “it” - whatever the “it” of the moment is - to themselves they would write in a Diary.

The powerful thing about social media is it has brought an awareness to the unaware and given a voice to the voiceless. For some it has changed their lives. It has brought attention to things and to people whom without the broad grasp of social networking would have remained faceless. Grassroots causes, charities, political campaigns, marketing companies are all harnessing the power AND the collective consciousness of Social media. Why? What’s happening this very moment? See the trending topics. See what people are thinking in the now. See what they’re saying in real time. Get up, get angry, get active, get linked in, or just get stupid. Knock a thought into the stratosphere of thoughts, there are as many as there are stars in the sky now. The choice is yours, and nobody will tell you that you can’t. It’s highly possibly that someone will knock one right back with an @ in front of your name. You will have been counted. That’s the draw. That’s why we’re there. That’s why some sit and refresh the page over and over to read new posts. Social networking has proven something rather astounding, and that is you don’t have to be “somebody” to be heard anymore. From our phones, from our computers, from our sofas, our thoughts manifest themselves with minimal effort. No matter who you are or where you are, you now have a soap box and the world, the entire world, can be your audience…

…even if all you have to say is “My feet hurt.”

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