A Bömer in the wild

The superficiality of Social Media

While most companies and people are now in the beginning of exploring what Social Media actually is and can become for them (marketing-opportunity or keep-in-touch platforms), there is a very unsocial aspect of it being hidden.

Being positive, active, knowledgable or funny has always been a good way to make people like you. In Social Media this is no different. The Ecommerce blogs like Mashable or Dutchbowboys are being the top in the range of knowledge and being cool in the i-world. They are the newsletters and reporters of the new world.

Then you have the bloggers with thousands of followers who, sometimes for no reason, are seen as important or interesting for all those people. They often do not follow these people back, or do so on paper but don’t actually read their posts unless they are mentioned.

And then there is the rest, the people who follow all these bloggers or reporters and share some of their own ideas with the world. They often are active in Social Media because everyone was active in it around them. But what can they say to their average of 130 followers?

Nothing real, because they are not funny or happy at all times. They have their doubts because they are human, and they have their negative views on the real world around them. But how much of these updates are really ending up on the Social Media? Almost none, because nobody wants to read that, right?

So their updates are shallow, well-thought through and often stopping at a point in their live where they see no added value to the effort, since they cannot be sincere anyway, so why bother?

Therefore I have the feeling that this Social Media hype will either die a silent death in 4 years, or will survive because people accept to be shallow in all their outings to the world. The last will feel for me as if the shallow-flu from America has flown over to Europe, settled and will never let go.