Do you really care what I'm doing while I'm on the train? Do i care what you are eating for your lunch?
The dissemination of information is instantaneous, forever and accessible from anywhere. Social networking has changed the way we gather data, if it can be classed as gather. We are served data based on our online movements which is monitored, measured and analysed without you knowing, to be used by marketeers....me being one of them.
Amongst all this personal data are the ramblings, blogs, tweets and updates about ever aspect of your daily life.
It is now the norm to have an 'Update' or 'What are you doing' when you login. We are instantaneously pressured to find something witty, irreverent but in most cases down right dull to inform the world.
So why do we do it?
Is it because we are inherently narcissistic? Is Social networking a self gratifying activity?
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I think your worries might be off the mark.
ReplyDeleteA true narcisist simply has no need to communicate the facts about their mundane existence to others: remember that Narcissus was obsessed instead with his own reflection.
If you conceive of communication as something that is constitutive of our identity rather than something that those with fully formed identities subsequently do, then the narcisistic worry is allayed somewhat: it's got less to do with the content of what is communicated and more to do with the fact that communication channels are in place.
We are as a species, social animals.
ReplyDeleteIt is programmed in our DNA and we want to be popular, hence the never ending ramblings on Twitter, Facebook et al.
Social media and marketing in general has got personal. Thats what people want(or certainly the marketeers would have us believe!). Whether this is true or not I am not sure. All I know is that we live in a society where we want it all and we want it now. Social media satifies the hunger of the masses but IMHO this says more about todays society than anything else. Give me the love of my family, a job I like doing and a decent pay packet and I am quite happy living in my bubble world!