MySpace was for Beginners,

Facebook is for Consumers,

Instagram is for Observers,

Twitter is for Doers..?

“That’s A Myth of Social Media, Not The Myth!!” I hear you say.

Obviously these are grotesque generalizations, but there is undoubtedly a fundamental difference in the use, form and function of these social mediums. I’ll try not to use the word philosophy in this post.

Now let me tell you a little bit about my background and experience of these platforms. Then I’ll give you the Myth of Social Media.
I have a deeper historical background in use of Facebook, like some of you do.

I was introduced to Facebook from back in the MySpace era, when everyone was jumping ship.

And like many others once I made the switch there was no going back to the earlier platform. Facebook obviously does what it does, but for me I closed my account, that ship sunk long ago.

Facebook has been gradually changing since it was originally set loose upon the world and now we complain about ads, invasion of privacy (app t&cs) and the lack of  our message actually getting to our followers (around 10% to 20%).

So with that, I became a bit anti-social in a social media sense, excuse the pun, and enjoyed a few more special years in reality.

It’s great to break through the myth of social media and connect on solid earth with real flesh and blood people, Wouldn’t you agree?.

But it was only a matter of time until the media infiltrated my reality once again, when a friend recommended the new and happening digital picture socializing platform of Instagram that started to fog the clouds in 2011. And before the fog cleared, it started pouring when Fackbook bought the platform for One Billion Dollars.

It was pretty clear to me, from that point that we may only have a few short years before it became the next ad network, “InstaAds”. *And as I write this in 2014, the Instagram advertising algorithm is slowly being introduced, like a pot slowly being brought to the boil.

Up until this point in my story I only have a couple of months under my belt the twitter world, so lets get to the reveal the myth of social media.

 

So What is the Myth of Social Media?

MySpace was (probably still is) all about Me & Mine. The Ego. My interests, MySpace.

It was the first online profile to display my life, likes, preferences and wants. (this was a strange concept at first, but essentially what it told me was, that it is ok to flaunt myself and show off and feed my ego, as long as it’s on MySpace account.) Narcissism begins when we push off into a see of nothing, surrounded by reflection in the still waters of the emptiness all around.

Facebook picked up where MySpace left off and made it made it way cooler to flaunt myself within a herd of all my friends, by now I had a growing ego to feed. (hence the endless news feed of what all my friends are doing).

I noticed at first was all about updates for updates sake “I go potty”, “I eat salad”, Then updates evolved to expressing your two cents on where you’ve been online. And in a way it didn’t feel so lonely departing the safety of dry land and reality beneath our feet.

So we didn’t feel like the single lonely island of “me” and “my” in an already vast internet ocean (aka MySpace), it felt like me and all my friends were all together, going in the same direction and when anyone made a ripple, got sick over the side or saw the faint glimmer of light through the cloud cover. The Facebook news feed made me feel at home, like I was there sharing in that moment.

By now we have drifted out of sight of land.

Then Instagram entered into my life as the emotional savior; pictures of cute puppies running on land, spread a sense of positivity and all of a sudden I could colour my world with the snapshots of my life.

Never mind the art of painting my boat, when I could just collage my world with pictures of the lost art of living for the moment, not for the likes and follows.

With this new virtual imagery coloring our life, we consistently forget to climb the crows nest and keep a vigil watch on our position, bearing and course and so we drift ever more closely to the trash island in the middle of the pacific.

Twitter is our last lifeline, It’s a useful megaphone to ‘holla’ our floating comrades nearing junk island. But with the right #Tags we can tweet all the way back to a civilization based on dry land and in reality.

These only two question’s to ask yourself…

“Is there anyone left on solid ground whom can answer our SOS tweets for help?”

“And, If it were you, Would you throw your lifeline to a sea of social misfits, hardened by the fog of darkness?”

Eventually if we float around the pacific for long enough, one of two things will happen. We become accustomed to it and build a home on the lonely drifting trash island of social media, remember the movie Waterworld – “Beyond the horizon lies the secret to a new beginning”. Maybe with some GMO foods on board we’ll grow gills and webbed feet too.

Or on the darkest hour on the darkest night, our needs for survival will kick in and the adventure to feel real clean dirt under your feet begins, and doesn’t end until you can see it and you can smell it, clean precious Dirt.

Send a tweet if you’ll heed the call and look for a way to make landfall on reality?