Social Media – The Cult of You

Social media has been called “the cult of me.” It encourages each of us to cultivate our own little cult, to gather around us a circle of “Friends” and “Followers”, sometimes even “Minions.” Seems like the ultimate in self-indulgence, doesn’t it?

But does social media really encourage selfishness? Is worrying about what other people think of you is a form of selfishness, or is it a matter of not giving enough consideration to your own self-integrity, obsessing instead over pleasing others?

Jane Steen warned in her blog post on 5 ways to make your twitter time more productive that the surefire way to make your twitter (or facebook) posts deadly dull is to tweet all about yourself (and your kids, pets, wordcount). Actually, I think posts about oneself, even about one’s cat, can be interesting — there are more pictures of cats on the internet than porn! — as long as the poster keeps one motto in mind:

It’s not about you.

This is the irony of social networks. You write about yourself, you post about yourself, you promote yourself, but it is not about you — it’s about what you can do for other people. Are you tweeting/posting something that will make someone smile or snort or sigh? When you read other peoples’ tweets and posts, are you thinking, not, how does this help me, but, how can I help them?

And sometimes the best way to help someone else is to let them know that they have helped you. Because the good people on the web, not the trolls, are on the web asking themselves the same question, how can I help the people around me? How can I add value?

A lot of people do succeed in adding value, from a post that makes one think about a problem in a new way, to a comment that makes one smile, to even bigger things. I was terribly nervous about going on Facebook and Twitter because of the Timesuck Issue, and indeed, it’s worse than I thought (and yet so much better) because I’ve also found out about wonderful books to read, events I want to attend, and people I want to get to know better. And chances are I won’t have as much time to do those things as I’d like. But the problem is one of TMGS — Too Much Good Sh… er, Stuff.

And of all the problems to have TMGS is pretty much the best of the lot.

Oh, and by all means, if I’m not following you on Twitter or Facebook, drop me a note and I’ll remedy that. 🙂