Life in Our Times: Reflections on Social Media and "Being Social"

So, I've been participating in this 100-Day Challenge for a while now, as a way to get more focused on my artwork, and specifically as a method to develop better Social Media Marketing habits.

Being some four weeks into the challenge now, I have established that I have no problem adapting my life to fitting in a bit of creativity every day, but I'm really struggling to get the daily social media part into it. I find that most days I'd rather just avoid it, and on some days I outright dread it.

And I really did not set the bar all that high: Post something on twitter/X, Instagram and my Facebook page daily... with optional postings on Pinterest and others.

Not Very Social

This got me to really reflect on this whole modern "social" world of ours, and how poorly I fit into it.

While most people seem to wear their phone like a fifth appendage, I spend much of my time wandering around the house just trying to find my phone, picking it up from some place where I set it down because I forgot I had it with me while I was doing something else, and I don't even know why I have to drag this piece of gear around with me in the first place, and blah blah blah.

And then it occurred to me that I was never really particularly "social" even before we had social media, often being happy to just be off by myself doing my own thing for hours, days and weeks on end... without talking to another person. The fact that we now have "media" doesn't mean that I feel any more social than I did before!

My reticence and difficulty in getting into a "social media habit" with respect to promoting my artwork is little more than an extension of the fact that it doesn't feel natural to me — it feels like shouting meaningless noise out into the wind simply for the sake of making noise.

The Changing Nature of Human "Value"

In an ideal world, I would simply be able to create my artwork, put it on my website (or take it to a show/festival), maybe run a few ads here and there and people would buy it now and then, and we'd be over and done with it.

But that's not how it works anymore.

In fact, in many cases people are far more interested in the story about the artist than they are in the art itself. As such, when I offer something for sale it's not really even about what I'm offering for sale... it's more about me — and if I'm interesting or cool they might buy some art — and that sits rather poorly with my core values.

It's Not THAT New!

Of course the way we do things with modern social media have roots that are far older than 21st century twitter and Instagram. We have to go back all the way to about the time of the 1929 stock market crash and the social atmosphere that grew out of the Great Depression.

As people struggled to recover, there was a distinct shift in how people conducted their affairs and "how they were in the world," in terms of what was important. We went from a dominant paradigm in which people were mostly judged for their character; for who they were; for their essence, as it were, as somebody of integrity and honesty and being an upstanding citizen.

Out of hardship arose this thing that you might loosely call "The Cult of Personality." How to conduct your self in the world gradually became more a question of what "show" you could put on and how you could "win friends and influence people." Indeed, Dale Carnegie's famous book by that name came out in 1936. And so the social game began.

Not MY Game!

When I periodically say that I long for the past, it is really a past that existed before I was born. A past where doing OK was less contingent on having a good song-and-dance routine.

Perhaps — because I don't do the social game very well — I just want what I do; my actions and my work and the quality I convey and the depth of my friendships to be the mark of who I am, rather than what clever story, what kind of song and dance I can do, and how good I look in a selfie on Instagram.

Paradox? Not Really...

Now, it would be natural for you to be a little skeptical of what I'm saying here because — after all — I am here on Hive, writing blog posts practically every day and I keep blogs in other places as well.

But I find that to be a slightly different situation because that is story telling, and more about keeping a journal and about being engaged in one of the things I enjoy most in life: writing.

Social media — at least as I experience it — is not really about writing so much as it is about showing off and making a lot of noise in service of having a few more people publicly assure you how "great" you are, while they privately resent that you're even breathing their air.

Just Plain OLD!

Having been raised by a very old family... which I mean in the sense that my parents were both about 40 when I was born, and they were by far the youngest in their families... might have a fair bit to do with this time/values skew, in my world.

After all, my paternal grandfather was actually born in 1871, and I had an uncle who was born in 1898. I think in my upbringing I was substantially influenced by the age when your character and integrity were far more important than your social game. But no matter. It is what it is.

So whereas I am at peace with myself and who I am in my essence, I do sometimes feel like a bit of a relic in this world, and like I don't really belong here... and social media continues to feel like a chore, even though I am well aware of its importance!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2024-03-17 16:12 PST
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