On Facebook and Twitter, almost no one is a downer (read my tweets for an antidote). Ivor Tossell explores why.
I have no qualms with droll irony. Lord knows, it's all I've got going for me sometimes. But after a while, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that everybody on my Facebook list sounds more or less the same. Every status update, every comment, every little fart of consciousness that gets posted to that site sounds more or less like every other one: an attempt to look smart, sound detached, act aloof, as if life really were an endless series of caustic remarks and mild annoyances.
It's like being trapped in a nightmarish Oscar Wilde theme park, where everything is surface and snark and everybody has an animatronic smile fixed on their face. It's not what's said on Facebook that amazes me. It's what's left unsaid: Nobody is vulnerable or depressed. Nobody is on anti-depressants.
People don't usually broadcast their sorrow as their ambitions slip away, their health fails, their friendships falter and their relationships fail. (Facebook, at least, steps in and broadcasts that last one for them.) And sometimes, that disconnect from reality makes social websites seem like a foreign place indeed.
But Tossell does come back to the obvious, namely that just because the interaction is happening online doesn't mean the rules governing human nature have changed.
... The majority of people who post on a social network know that they're performing in public, strutting on a grand promenade, and they style themselves accordingly. These details aren't inane – they're calculated.
That means that there are sharp limits on what's sayable, and what's not. We get stuck with these unwritten rules of conduct, just like there are rules in any public situation. Sometimes someone breaks the rules, and says something truly appalling, or something truly vulnerable, and it's a refreshing shock to the system. But for the most part, it's all so much preening.
So there, I said it. We're all a bunch of phonies. Don't let anyone tell you the Web is a window to anybody's soul. It's just vanity, reflecting a thousand flecks of light.
Well, if you're going to be punished for being honest, then hard experience will teach you to be a phony.
Generally speaking, I would say that my experience in the corporate world has lead me to believe that "good people skills" can be thought of as being synonymous with "phony."
So yes, on Twitter (I'm not on Facebook, although I probably should be), everyone loves their job, clients, projects and employers. There are very strict limits on what one can admit to in terms of annoyance ("the barista sprinkled too much cinnamon on my latte!").
Good on Mr. Tossell to state the obvious, but I would idly note he offered precious little in terms of a pragmatic alternate model of human behaviour.