july 15 gbc
Shortly after becoming deeply immersed in social media and social media culture I realized that
a) social would rewrite the rules of how to be online
b) this would rewrite the rules of being offline
I didn't know how it would happen and I didn't know what it would look like, but I knew something would happen and that it could end up being bad.
If you feel like you may have missed some preamble, yesterday's post will more or less directly run you right into the top of this one.
In 2011 I started working at the intersection of advertising, marketing, and social media —— first at a friend's small agency, then for a larger one where I was hired to be the community manager for Coca-Cola Canada.
This is when I started to see what would happen and what it would look like. In retrospect, I imagine it was pretty obvious to anyone who had read even a little bit of McLuhan, Adorno, or Horkheimer. (I took a lot of cultural studies classes before switching my concentration to literature.)
For reasons including but not limited to that I was getting paid to be good at it, I bit down hard the promise and potential of social, but when no one was looking or listening, I was deeply (but quietly) concerned at how far we were straying from the internet I had fallen in love with and found refuge in as a smart kid who didn't really fit anywhere; the one I was mocked for loving by people who still don't know what the internet is and how to use it (which helped me realize why I didn't fit and helped me be okay with it); and the one that helped me figure out big parts of who I was that are still huge parts of who I am.
Still, I ended up leaning all the way in because I honestly and earnestly believed that social media could be what put us web dorks on the cusp of the actual, literal democratization of the internet. The idea wasn't dumb, either. The notion of everyone having a voice and that all of those voices would (could?) receive the same amount of space and opportunity within the same space and context? Sexy as fuck. The idea that these new opportunities for collisions and cross-pollinations that could (might?) beget new opportunities for dialogue, connection, community, education, friendship, love, understanding where none previously existed.
My favourite book was (and still is) Microserfs and my internet idealism (still) traces back to that book, which gave me hope that I would one day find my people.
Related: I spent the evening at a bar with three such people tonight and it ruled.
In 2012 I saw what was going to happen. I screamed about it to anyone who would listen or who had to listen, by which I mean the classes in social media marketing and digital community management I was teaching at George Brown College. I warned that big brands were going to co-opt social media platforms and that we really, really shouldn't let them. I suggested that the community managers of 2014 or 2015 would get graphic design, photography, photo editing, and analytics rolled into their job description (because the analytics guy at my agency was seen as a luxury).
Eventually I got tired of talking about it and other people got tired of listening to it. I got sad and weird. I turned inward. I got really good at abusing alcohol. And when I came to, the social space had really and truly started its descent into what it is now.
More to come. I'm still putting a lot of these thoughts together in some kind of coherent fashion.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch watch
🌳 grass my
🌷 now stories
Be good to yourself.
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