I came this close to putting up a Facebook page over the weekend. I just can’t do it. FB is filled with the most ridiculous and banal yammering, embarrassing “look at me! Look at me!” pages bloated with selfies, stupid video, mindless chatter, and, of course, ads all over the place. I must be the crazy one: I can’t imagine why a billion people give up so much of themselves to what is, unquestionably, an enormous waste of time.
If even half the Americans on Facebook spent even a fraction of that time focused on America’s troubles, this country would be amazing. Facebook is the most insipid, narcissistic landscape of the stupid I have ever seen. I felt *soiled* just surfing around in it.
I’m a holdout too, though I did the MySpace thing back when that was a thing. Way I see it, if people from high school want to talk to me, they can Google me; there ain’t a whole lot of guys named Thad Boyd out there.
I expect if I ever tried to get serious about trying to make money doing creative things (I’ve got a few audiobooks to my name and keep meaning to write a short story or two and see how that goes), I’ll probably bite the bullet and start trying to promote myself via social networking. But that’s not something I have to think about until I’ve actually got something to sell.
Promoting my exploration into eBooks was the motivation for looking thru FB, where I saw what seemed like thousands of people doing exactly the same thing. I have a friend with 14,000 followers promoting one of my eBooks. So far: nothing. Not a peep. Too many people hawking all kinds of crap up there.
Here’s a question: have social networks like Facebook created more narcissism by making self obsession more socially acceptable and even kind of hip? Or are we just uncomfortably more aware of our collective narcissism as a society than we were hitherto? Or is it a combination of the two?
I can relate to the feeling that there are too many people hawking all kinds of crap. In fact, clicking “like” on someone’s Facebook page is basically just signing up to be spammed with constant advertisements.
My own experiences with the black hole of social networking have mainly taken place on Twitter. It seems to be standard netiquette to follow back anyone who follows you on Twitter (unless you are a celebrity). Thus it is possible to amass a supposed audience for whatever you intend to promote simply by following other people’s profiles, realizing that they will eventually follow your page in return. Shortly after creating an account to promote a forum I created in 2010, I authorized an app to follow back any account following mine as an automated process. To make a long story short, I somehow ended up with 27,000 Twitter followers after I followed some people of interest and subsequently found myself added to “follow4follow” lists. I got a kick out of it at the time. I thought it might lead to something beneficial. How wrong I was.
I don’t talk to these people and they don’t talk to me. In many cases, they don’t even appear to speak English. All they seem to do is promote, promote, promote–but to what audience? As a “follower” of theirs, I pay as much attention to their content as they do to mine–none whatsoever. I almost hope for humanity’s sake that most of my followers are spam bots since it would depress me less than the alternative–that thousands of people are willing to spend their lives on their smart phone tweeting promotional blatherskite to an audience of effectively no one.
This engenders the question, why are we following each other at all? Why do we even have accounts on a “social” network that appears useless outside of spamming each other or learning what Kim Kardashian had for lunch today? For a while I couldn’t tell whether I was just “doing Twitter wrong” or if it was simply useless. I now realize I am simply not the intended audience. This takes us to your contempt for Facebook.
“I must be the crazy one: I can’t imagine why a billion people give up so much of themselves to what is, unquestionably, an enormous waste of time.”
Well, yeah. Same here. We’re not vapid 15-25 year old girls who wants to share accounts of their trips to the nail salon and get 25 likes on their latest selfies. Clearly you’ve reached the same conclusion on your own. But rather than lament this apparent societal decay, I have come to accept (or hope) that eventually everyone will grow out of their narcissism.
Here is an interesting article on why people like us struggle to understand the appeal of social networks. You might dig this:
“Time-relevance distribution of young people tends to be skewed toward the present, like that of the Wall Street trader above, because their own life experience is skewed towards the present. If you are 20 years old, things that happened in the last 20 years would naturally be more interesting to you than those that happened 50 years ago. And as we grow older, we become more interested in what remains timeless because we witness them in our own lives.”
http://dyske.com/paper/1020
Also, a brief analysis of Facebook spam by the same author: http://dyske.com/paper/1101
You might like that Dyske guy. His is one of very few blogs I bother following these days (yours being another, Priest).
Ted: yes, this is precisely what I am trying to avoid: becoming another guy with another apple he’s trying to sell via social media. The problem is, most self-publishing tutorials preach social media, but I’m starting to think of SM as a vein that’s had too many heroin injections and is now medically useless. I think the main diff between FB and, say, reading blogs is I go to somebody’s blog, read and interact with that person. FB/Twitter seems an open spigot of junk posts and things I likely would not have opted to interact with but is kind of forced upon me–violently–as part of the news feed. I actually take a little bit of pride about not being on FB, and will perhaps become a popular author after I’m dead. Death usually sells books.
I have never self published anything but I do know of exactly one extremely successful self publishing author. She’s 26 and a multi-millionaire from selling a series of self published books.
These books are about teenage vampires in love.
This makes me think that the apple itself, or rather, our collective societal palate, may be the root of the problem. To wit, do people really even read books–whether paper or electronic–these days outside of Twilight lite? I try not to ask myself questions like this too often because I’m afraid of what the answer might be.
“I think the main diff between FB and, say, reading blogs is I go to somebody’s blog, read and interact with that person. FB/Twitter seems an open spigot of junk posts and things I likely would not have opted to interact with but is kind of forced upon me–violently–as part of the news feed.”
Agreed. Actually, Dyske makes the comparison of white noise communication on social media to CB radio between truck drivers. They probably wouldn’t even care to listen to themselves if you played a tape of their broadcasts back an hour later. Basically, stuff like Twitter/FB is enjoyed as a chat room or not enjoyed at all (though FB with extreme effort, does have blog like qualities about it in terms of potential for long term interaction, or so I’m told).
You’re right about death. Whitney Houston was broke when she died and now her estate is worth millions. Van Gogh died penniless and in obscurity and apparently “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” sold for $82.5M. C’est la vie.
At least I can console myself with the knowledge that my Power-Fist collection may appreciate by a good seventy-five cents in the event that my favorite comic book writer is hit by a bus.
IIUTC, the top-selling indy authors are writing bodice-rippers for Kindle’s top demographic: middle-aged housewives. Also, I think even *mentioning* any characters in my novels are black works against me. There’s a lot of indescribably awful “black” fiction out in eBook land. Teen vampires tend to appeal to teen girls, the shirtless cowboy stuff to their moms. My semi-hardboiled detective yarns (DUAL and ZION) miss those iron sights, as does my upcoming superhero serial “1999.”
Priest Will Not Be Getting Rich Until He’s On A Respirator and His Ex-Wife Gleefully Pulls The Plug. Sales soar, Marvel greenlights one of the dozen or so pitches he’s sent over.
You know, Christopher, I actually think just like you. The thing is, I created my Facebook account using a faux name -my grandad one, for the record- and I did it only because I realized it was the only way I could reprise personal contact with some people I was missing and couldn’t get in touch with otherwise -Roo, specifically, just in case you’re wondering, then Jose, Chip, Howard and Ali too. I still haven’t managed to get to Brian, but I hope to, eventually. Other than using it as another communication tool, as some people never checks their emails -myself included-, and MAYBE as an interactive showcase for artists -if the space is well groomed and not full of self-indulgent nonsense- I can’t find any further use for it. In other words, I kind of concur with the broad strokes you just used to paint your social networks’ portrait. Just don’t dismiss entirely its potential utility, for further reference. You know, a gun may be an ugly piece of abominable black destruction, but in case of emergency, see, like when you find out you left the can opener back at home, well, you know…
Oscar: you know, I’m being somewhat facetious. I’m sure there must be areas on FB not dominated by twits. I was just in overload wandering around up there over the weekend. Oh, the horror. More by private email.
By the way, the reason I came here… do you remember? The Ray annual. 20 years man.
LOL! Really? Man, one of my fondest work experiences. I feel an essay coming on…
http://digitalpriest.com/legacy/comics/ray.html
http://christopherpriest.com/legacy/archive/ray/raysupes.htm
http://christopherpriest.com/legacy/archive/ray/raybye.htm
Personally, I’ve found that the same sort of skills that let me deal with Usenet in the 90s work just fine for dealing with facebook in the 10s. Different tools for shutting out the trolls, but same basic population.
I found lots of enlightening conversation on Usenet. It’s probably the pages I was browsing, but I saw… oh, the horror… banality and ignorance on an unprecedented scale. and it’s actually addictive; you kind of start wanting to jump into some of these insipid debates.
I tend to find the more thoughtful facebook users tend to have posts locked to friends, so you’d never see those as an outsider. I certainly try to avoid posting anything as public on facebook (although the security settings sometimes reset without warning).
Well, that would explain a lot…