Virtually Human: The Real Face of Social Media
Today’s guest blog is by Kendall Ruth, a writer, runner, and artist who’s done nearly a bit of everything – from assisting in surgeries to having tea with Heads of State to losing toenails on the Leadville 100 or consulting for businesses and political campaigns asking the question, “How can we make this better?” He’s one of the copywriters for PrintsfForHaiti.com and writes a blog called The Ink.
With all the social media tools available they might feel like the stuff of cold, disconnected, fractured robotic-horrors of every sci-fi story every told, but there is a humanity behind every Tweet, Facebook update, and Blog post. Social Media can be far more re-humanizing than the Luddites would have us believe…
About once a month I get asked, “What is Twitter? Why use it?” or “You write a blog? What’s the point?” There is a short answer to the Twitter Q: Public text messaging across the Internets in 140 characters. ‘Nuff said. And to some degree, the same can be said about blogging, only with more character(s). Yet, it takes a bit longer to answer that last question: “What’s the point?”
Technology that does not re-humanize us is pointless. So, I respond to that question with stories of human connections, of people I’ve come to know that have far more to them than 140 characters.
A year ago I went to my first “Tweetup” – a real-life gathering of actual twitter-users talking to each other in regular conversation beyond electronic interfaces, without #hashtags or acronyms like “LOL” or “OMG.” There were the initial awkward encounters, navel staring of people trying to connect faces with usernames. But this was humanity, the real deal, the face behind the avatars with all the beauty and blemish that goes with it.
Over the year more tweetups were used as fundraisers for various nonprofits – seeking to be more than another cocktail party of self-serving networkism. A community was forming with origins in a virtual reality, but it had graduated to a Real-Life connection. Interactions became more than business card swaps. S.O. Jewett wrote: “Conversation’s got to have some root in the past or else you’ve got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.” Over time, Twitter users made “roots in the past” and continued the conversation that started in the Twitterverse – “How’s your nephew recovering from that accident?” “What are you learning with your new art projects?” “So it turns out we grew up in the same town, what was your experience like there and how did you get here?” A year later, people who were literal and virtual strangers before are sharing life now in a way that is natural to our humanity. Some of those connections are integral in helping find work, or resources for their passions to excel. Some of those tweetups have provided enough money for a clean-water well in Africa, or money towards Cancer research. And if I understand anything, isn’t that the point behind open-source social media?
A few years ago singer/songwriter Matthew Ryan and I exchanged some MySpace messages about how one might use the Internets to better connect with fans at a grassroots level – in essence removing the distant major record label machine from the equation. Matthew left the big label and recently released his 12th album on a label he started with his publicist called The Dear Future Collective. Nearly every bit of marketing for the album Dear Lover has used Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, online magazines, and blogs. Matthew’s third track release, “City Life,” was done via YouTube, making a video of snapshots his fans sent in of all the various places they took a paper cut-out of Matthew – similar to the traveling Gnome made famous in the film Amelie.
In December, I contacted Matthew to see if he would want to do an interview via email exchange as an experiment in promotion for Dear Lover. If I could get other online publications to pick up the interview all the better, but, at the very least, it would get posted at The Ink, my personal blog. The process was quite encouraging and enlivening. Matthew wrote on Twitter and Facebook that it was “one of the purest interviews I’ve been a part of.” A month after I posted the interview on my blog, an online magazine published a portion of it, giving Matthew more landscape in a greater diversity of listeners – some of whom had never heard his music until now.
I get emails and Facebook messages from people all over that are heading to see Matthew Ryan play at their local club, who are buying his album in stores or online – a connection virtual that has become a human connection far grander than I expected.
Much of what I have learned as a photographer started via Greg Lawler, whom I met initially through an internet friend and who works at The Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Within a year, I was in the area for work and celebrated my birthday in his backyard, over tri-tip and margaritas with his and another family. He’s purchased one of my prints. I have three of his hanging on my wall. And we know the stories behind each since we shared them over drinks at a local SB Pub. After the earthquake in Haiti, Greg started the web page PrintsforHaiti.com. I instantly signed on to help. We are selling high-quality prints donated by some of the best photographers in the world, raising money to help with recovery efforts in Haiti. Again, almost all marketing has come through social media resources, podcasts, and a virtual word-of mouth. We are using generative creativity to connect real people to real needs in a disastrous situation.
Most PR, marketing firms, or businesses initially use Social Media tools to increase the bottom line, market share, or image management, but they soon find each “connection” is a real person that will only stay connected as long they are interacting with another real human. The quickest way to lose your street-cred in the virtual world is to be nothing more than another billboard. Embrace the humanity in these realms and you might just find your company, your product, your self becoming more human oriented. And you might make some new friends, closing the distances in a global community.
Consider this:
- How do we thrive in human connections as virtual connections become more “normal?”
- What is the human reality/story behind every virtual connection? Am I willing to change my agendas to know a person and not just market to them?
- How would my use of Social Media change if I approached it as a means of Re-humanizing myself and others?
See you out there, Virtually or Literally.