Social Media: A Commonality of Avatars

Dr Seuss wrote:"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

My take is pretty straightforward. This is social media, not business media. I think we 'talk' to people who are just like ourselves, are in the same space, and have the same objectives. A certain common bonding. We 'chase our tails'. We pat each other on the back. We give ourselves 'high fives'. Psychologically, that's probably good. Makes each of us feel better, in the knowledge that someone is actually listening and responding to our rants. It's scalable as they say.


Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etal, actually take us away from reality at times, and place us in a world where we can digitally enhance our image or persona. And in so doing, we kinda deify ourselves. I can go three days, for instance, without actually speaking to anyone. Three days without human interaction. Although when I am on a social media site, I actually believe that I am talking and interacting. I'm a digitized personality. My fingers talk to you on my keyboard. For all you know, that might not even be me out there in cyberspace.


I think, more importantly, that social media is just that. It's not 'business media'. It's 'me too'idness'. We 'talk' to other digital characters who think just like we do. A commonality of avatars call it.

I'm on Linkedin. That's it for the most part. Linkedin is not for finding 'more work'. It's for interacting with people that have similar issues. I find it helps me rationalize my thoughts. My gestalt. My world view. Nothing more. I thought it would be, but it just is not. If you think it is more, that's poppycock.

I tried Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, I was doing 'chicken crossed the road jokes', and Facebook was an egocentric, 'here I am...how bout you' demigodary of ones self. Who, aside from ourselves, actually gives a hoot. It's the deity in us that drives us in these spaces. Attempting to give us special status, established by ourselves. We all want to think of ourselves as an Ernest Hemingway or Albert Einstein, when in fact we are simply PeeWee Herman, attempting a come-back. A return to the stage.

Still, is this world of individual isolation, it is good to know that I can reach out in this space, and 'talk' to just about anyone who will listen. On the other hand, if I could actually find a neighbor and sit and talk over a cup of coffee, I would. But I can't...so I won't.