So yesterday I blurted out a highly emotional post about social media and what I described as the big lie: Anyone with 10,000 followers on Twitter will not be your buddy.
I wrote, with very strong NSFW language, about some specific events that I had experienced recently and how I felt about them.
Lots of people (including two of the people I had named), commented to agree with me. A few disagreed with me. And one of the people I named was hurt, and thought I was using objectionable tactics to get the attention of the people that, you know, I was writing about desiring the attention of. (I wasn’t doing so consciously. But on some level he’s probably right.) The comments are really interesting, and worth reading.
From this post and its 64 comments, I have a few thoughts.
Seemed like a good idea at the time…
I wish I hadn’t written the post. No, I’m glad I did. I wish I hadn’t tweeted it. No, glad I did! My grandchildren and employers and posterity can read it and that’s bad. No, it’s great! Worst thing I ever wrote. Best thing I ever wrote!
Argh.
There is a part of all of us that is incredibly naive. That always, always thinks that it’s going to work out for the best, that doesn’t see the need for the seatbelt, that stands there in the rubble saying, “How did that happen?” And it has a partner: the voice that will say incredibly ugly, mean, hurtful and selfish things, because we’re thinking them.
These are a part of me. They’re a part of you. So what do we do with those parts of ourselves?
Do we drown our inner voices as wrong and bad?
Do we choose our audiences oh-so-carefully, and target parts of ourselves accordingly?
And how does that mesh with the ideas of “authenticity”?
The inner voice speaks
That post was so very, very emotional because it was about thoughts I’d been having for months and suppressing. In the first six hours of aftermath, where the comments were positive, I felt about 10kg lighter. I’d Gotten it Off My Chest. I was back to my usual self: impossibly cheery, liking everyone, enjoying the interactions. I’d purged the bile that was choking me and I felt better. It was all okay.
And then someone felt hurt and it got complicated and fraught and oh-so-human. Should I have not published it? Just writing the post didn’t make the feelings go away. It was expressing them to the world (and, specifically, to the people I was thinking about) that brought the intense relief.
Did I have the right to do that? To publically air my dirty laundry, to specifically name people and tell them I’d done so? Are my feelings enough justification to say whatever I want? And if they aren’t, what do we do with them?
Targeted authenticity
That post was authentic: it was my thoughts, expressed in the way I thought them. It was ugly, and forceful, and mean, and honest. There are ways in which I could have tailored the message: a different forum, a selected audience, toned-down delivery. I’ve used them before. I did not use them this time. Does that make me a hero for authenticity? A bold voice in the wilderness, saying That Which No-one Hath Dared Say? Or just a really public asshole?
Depends on who you ask, apparently. Maybe all of them.
How do you reconcile the desire for complexity, to be a fully-realised human being, with Brand Me? Brand Catherine is the happy smiling face, the cheerful over-user of the word “awesome”, the helpful chatterer. Brand Catherine never talks about anything ugly. And Brand Catherine leaves the other 5% of me, the selfish grasping petulant sensuous imperfect depressed and irritating parts, with nowhere to go.
It used to be said that for this purpose you had a personal blog. Somewhere to talk about your haemorrhoids and phobias and your vulnerable, imperfect, human side. But does that work in the new 2.0 world? In the world of transparency, social media, personality marketing, authenticity… does that require that all of you be on show? Or are we all playing roles, carefully contructed personas, with all the bad stuff happening behind the facade? Oh, we can talk about bad events in web 2.0. But bad thoughts, bad feelings? Do we just all pretend that we never wanted to shove someone into traffic so they’d stop yammering at us?
And if so, what does that say about the relationships we form there?
I have no answers. I would love to hear yours.