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What is social media?

What makes social media, social is the conversation, the dialogue. Yet, these days true open dialogue seems hard to come by. This is a trend I have been watching for the last 16 months. Seems, there are people who when they find out you do not agree with them, immediately seem to become ultra critical. Debate, dialogue and conversation exploring difficult topics online in social media circles, seems few and far between, Disagreement seems like bait and people take the bait, whether it was intentional or not, all the time. It is like it is an invitation or a taunting for a verbal fight.

Confrontation seems to the order of the day.

Sad.

I have noticed this behaviour increasingly escalate into neo hate speech. Which is the reason I took a break from social media. Plus I don’t need to see negative commentary, witness people feign concern and express quasi sentimental posts, repeated in my news feed 40-50 times. If you are going to post something at least put some real thought into your post. The  Use your words, express yourself and most important build and expand the conversation.

Please, do that and we all win.

Do that and I will gladly participate and play within a wide ranging conversation.

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The insanity of maintaining multiple online presences

I realize that headline may not be grammatically correct, too bad. Since the demise of anchor version one I’ve noticed that I’ve been chasing engagement. Engagement on the original anchor application was effortless. It was rewarding. It was mutually beneficial. Not so with version 2.

I found myself attempting to engage multiple presences on social networks. It has become unmanageable, not to mention unrewarding. I realize that a lot of these issues are “my issues”. However, I am the only one that can choose to deal with it. Increasingly, it seems to me that be successful in social networks, you have to be willing to subjugate your priorities for the priorities of others.

Everyone talks, few listen

Doesn’t seem like people are interested in listening, only talking, projecting and broadcasting. Exchange of different ideas is frowned upon. People are posting stuff that is not their own as if it is their own. That shows a distinct lack of intellectual honesty. I realize that in some cases it’s absolutely possible that one could forget where you learned something. I know it happens to me.

FYI, this idea of intellectual honesty I first heard from my friend Rosa Say.

Quoting ones teachers and providing citations of the author or originator is the essence of intellectual honesty.

But we don’t have “teachers” anymore do we? Now we have Google.

Google, social networks of all kinds have of become our teachers and influencers. We have become conditioned to the wide availability of information. We have also stopped thinking for ourselves, thinking critically.

We were given two ears and one mouth.

We should listen more than we speak. However, that seems to be very difficult for the unwashed masses. Largely unaware of the intrusion of performance based acceptance into their awareness and consciousness, the march of marketing, hype and other people’s agendas has clearly infiltrated their minds. It has clearly happen to me, hence my declaration of a new practice. dIgital hygiene.