The Trouble With Social Media Is That We Are All Way Too Awesome
Since this week is New York’s Social Media Week, I’ve decided to weigh in on something troubling me: I’ve yet to encounter anyone that can fully grasp the significance of social media. This might be due in some part to the only people I speak to on a regular basis being Facebook stalkers or randoms so taken with my 140 character missives that they must track me down via Foursquare/Latitude… but at the end of the day these should be the very people exposing its fundamentals rather than waxing poetic about their last awkward lunch date. I say this because social media has exposed us all for what we really are: geniuses. We are all Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson that went to bed before making Pet Sounds. That is to say: we create mighty inescapable works, (suffer a nervous breakdown), and the world moves on with our endeavors forgotten or relegated to a heap of Web 2.0 ephemera. I suspect this is why I’m fascinated with Quirky. It is such a refreshing break from the typical collective blathering. We can finally make the products of late night ramblings, cafe frustrations, or cubical quandaries into physical bits rather than strictly electronic bits. Or failing that we can scrape up the remnants of last decade’s snark and so eloquently crush the hopes and dreams of those more talented and successful than ourselves.