December 2010

When I first appreciated the onslaught of social media, the first thing that came to mind was that it was nothing less than a catalyst for the further degradation of a decadent culture. Of course, that is my typical knee slap response to anything in its incipience, before it has had time to grow past its ugly duckling period. Blogs, I thought, were online soapboxes for the general public to clamor upon about this thing and that. To a large degree I was initially correct. But what I did not calculate was the fact that such egocentricity would soon peter out, only to be followed by people with something worth listening to. My initial responses to Myspace and Facebook were pretty much the same, if not even more scornfully so. Though Myspace is really not my deal, Facebook has come to be a huge part of social sharing that I could not have imagined possible. Again, time let the field of social weeds cull themselves, and now we are left mainly with a scent full field of Facebook flowers. Now with Twitter I was initially aghast. To me it was the stupidest thing on the interweb. Again, how more wrong I could have been is impossible to conceptualize.

So what’s the verdict?  Was there even a verdict to be decided upon?  I would have to say that social media is no longer in my cross hairs of cultural evil, no longer the fomenting agent of our civilization’s ruin.  Instead, the onslaught of social media, for those up to date, has become a way to remain connected with people, to add remarkable ideas for their community to ponder, and to level the playing field for the commoner.  This last attribute might be the greatest of all, for it is threatening to change the whole of our advertising industry, from the interruption-based industry of commercial campaigns to becoming a league of transparent companies that attracts its customers by its good deeds, by its offering of free and useful information, and by good old fashion hard work.  Online social media has become the champion , the freighter even , of industrial transparency. Not only does corporate malfeasance easily come bubbling to the surface of the online community, ingenuous characters are quickly sniffed out and scoffed. Simply put, one’s online reputation is made good with continued, determined, and honest effort but turned sour with frightening ease. This is one of the first positive cultural movements that our civilization has seen in a while, a movement which just might be the turning point for reverting our culture’s immanent decadence into a movement where the West is back on track as an almost living phenomenon.
Genruk