I’ve been thinking about the ways in which our society is changing. With the current changes in technology, we communicate differently, we value different things, and we have more access to information. As a result, there are people who believe this progress to be positive and people who believe this progress to be negative.
Here’s my proposal. We are living in a time where everything we do is a production. Our social media rarely demonstrates who we are and instead focuses on who we want to be. Our communication is based on the priority level of each conversation as opposed to the timing.
I don’t think these things are necessarily that different from the past nor particularly bad in any way. We have to learn to view the content that is produced for social media as a production for our eyes. Something that helps us understand a person’s aspirations more than their current state. We need to learn to make our conversations more valuable if we want to be a priority to other people.
In the past, people would speak to someone because they started speaking and were in front of them. Today, my message inbox is full of unread messages because I know someone asking me about the latest sports news is far less important than my business partner asking me to service a marketing opportunity. Historically, we have always told people what we wanted them to hear about us. Now we have tools that allow us to paint a more detailed picture of our own beliefs about ourselves.
Everything is and has always been a production. Approach all new information on social media accordingly. Don’t fool yourself into believing the content you put out about yourself.