“There’s No Real Communication Out There — All This Technology”

When I first overheard this comment at the gym the other day, I thought it was a non-sequitur. How could the very advances that have opened up new ways to communicate be responsible for what this person perceives as a world lacking in communication?

Social media is about telling people who you are, what you like, where you go, who you go with.  It’s about establishing a “personal brand” that says: “This is me. I want you to look at me, read about me — my comings and goings. I will tell you what I like and maybe you’ll like it too.” It is a way to “put yourself out there.” It assumes everyone will be uniformly interested in what you are up to. It’s a way of telling your story — moment by moment — the same way to everyone out there.

But…

Do you really want to tell the same things in exactly the same way to everyone who comes to look?

When you do that, you water down the level of intimacy of the message as it’s received by any particular person. Even if I want to give the same information to more than one person, I probably don’t want to say it in the same way — or at the same time — to any two people. Because each conversation is a reflection of a particular relationship, it ought to reflect the uniqueness of that relationship at that point in time.

Do you really want to engage in one-way communication?

Are you so sure of exactly what you want to say that you don’t want to check in real time how it happens to land with the other person, depending on how his day’s been going or what’s on his mind? I don’t know what I will say to you or anyone until I start our conversation, at which time things will come up naturally and organically. Shouldn’t we be open and willing to be influenced at the same time we’re trying to influence others?

Every person ought to make decisions about what they tell me and the way they tell it to me, to tell others things they do not want me to know, and to tell them things in ways different from the ways they might tell me.

“Personal brands” are based on goals, drivers and characteristics like “eye-balls,” “shelf space,” and “messaging” that, while appropriate in the mercantile promotion of consumer products, morph into soul-damaging egotistical, self-centered attitudes and behaviors when applied to interpersonal relationships.

Social media is sometimes being used for low common-denominator behaviors like exhibitionism and voyeurism, promotes the surrender of personal privacy and blurs the lines between what is appropriately to be shared with the public generally and what is to be kept to a more discreet audience; between that which belongs in a blast communication to no one in particular and what should be tailored to each individual recipient.

The communities these sites enable and foster are often based on childish and sophomoric principles and connectors which do not further the enlightenment of society in general and, in fact, show the way backward instead of forward.

It’s also an example of what happens when older generations come to envy and emulate the practices of youth, with strange consequences unforeseen by the inventors of those practices.

Young people started using social media to brag about the things young people are proud of: the number of friends they have, how much they can drink, how good-looking they are, and so on. Then things started getting weird when their elders began using this dorm-inspired young folks’ tool to brag about things older people are proud of: their grand kids, vacations they’ve taken, their boats, second homes and so on.

Then the youngsters, fed-up with being crowded out of their special space started leaving one site in droves, only to find a new home in another one that’s a little different in mechanics but pretty much the same in the kinds of communication it encourages. It was one thing to bathe in a tub of goofy content generated by you and your peers, but quite another when your parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents jumped in there with you!

When these younger folks leave, it’s not more technological coolness they’re after, but relief from the overflow of mind-numbing content they and their families are flooding themselves with.

Interpersonal communication is very delicate and even sacred, and ought to be treated with respect. With its immediacy and ease of use, social media has the power to get the right kind of message to the people you want to reach. It can also devalue the interchange between people if it’s not used mindfully.

Next: Tips On Mindful Use Of Social Media.