Thursday, May 1, 2014

HEY, SOCIAL NETWORKING GUYS!

I keep seeing THIS. 

I continually hear THIS.

 








It makes me feel like THIS:
 
It gets me wondering why am I tweeting? Why am Facebooking? It gets me asking myself, what have I gained from the weeks, months, years I've been doing this?

Night and day, over and over, every program, every news alert tells me LIKE US, FOLLOW US. When did this start happening -- last year, the year before?

Who's paying for it? The producers of the show? Twitter? Facebook? They're using our Likes, our Follows, to prove with numbers that some show is popular.

Hey, can you truthfully say that social networking is helping, or changing, or improving anything in your life? Nope. Social networking is just giving you something to do that makes you feel that you're doing something that's important.

You think that you are selling a book you self-published, that social networking is helping you sell it?

Hey guys, it's not helping to sell anything, be it -- a book, your handmade jewelry, your designs, your services -- your friends and followers aren't customers. They respond because it makes them feel like they're doing something, and they're just selling themselves like you are.

Here's a big-fat-nasty question -- if you weren't tweeting, or facebooking, how would you use the time you now spending on social networking?

Write another book? Make some furniture? Teach someplace? Do a project for your community? Whatever you do, other than social networking, involves the real world, real people.

The social networking bandwagon we've jumped on, is smallifying us, making you and me one of billions, of nobodies.

NAME THREE THINGS you could do with your social networking time? Hey, name one thing you could do. Or just be brave -- take a social networking vacatiion for seven days.and use the time for doing something, anything, else.

I Googled. Got some advice from a book, "Power of Myth,"  by a wise philosopher, Joseph Campbell."

He said:

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Twitter and Facebook are myths created by guys who are making tons of money by promoting the myth and making it something we do like mowing the lawn -- like going to a party with strangers every day, who like you, aren't sure what they're doing there.

What makes you feel alive? . Making friends with aging strangers, following them?

Truth:
Social networking is aging you faster than time, it's making you OLD.

4 comments:

Stan said...

Great article Em...couldn't agree more. Sometimes I think I should stop FB and Twitter. After two years my life remains "my life," nothing has changed because I "fave" someone or "Like" someone. Why do I keep doing it?

Poet_Carl_Watts said...

Some good points, some opinions which I feel are off base.

Twitter is not a selling medium. Never was meant to be.

It is a social network. On Twitter and Facebook you communicate with people, even friends!

Aging people! Frankly I laughed. Show me anyone anywhere that is not aging. Bodies age!

I have many friends that I met on Twitter. They are people that communicate with me. Some communication is higher quality that others but NO Communication is the lowest quality!

How out of communication can you get? Dead is pretty well the bottom.

Twitter is what I want to do. Could I do other things? Of course, it's a matter of choice.

#EverythinWill_B_OK! #AwesomeTeam♥#Odycy☮:-)

Unknown said...

Read it Em and I couldn't agree more. I'm beginning to wind down. Tweeting and facebooking is simply a habit...a self perpetuating habit. Life is too short.

Linda H said...

Hi Em, you popped up on my Facebook page today. I realized that we haven't talked in ages. Maybe I backed off when my Dad died, October 17, 2008. I miss him so much. In a lot of ways, I've shut down since then. I've become dependent on my roommate. She moved in fulltime in 2012 when she had to give up her apt. So different from when you and I were in touch. I'm glad you're doing well.
Linda