Blogging Authenticity

The topic of this post started to germinate several months ago, but its rooted in something I spend much time (too much time?) considering - how social media is used.  Particularly, it has to do more with Facebook than any other medium, partly because that seems to be the most prevalent medium available.  I've long felt that social media, when it comes to our relationships and friendships, has a unique, if not tenuous, position.  It has so much ability to enhance those relationships - the immediate sharing of life's moments with those that are meaningful to us but are not physically close.  Yet, it can so easily devolve our relationships - make them less real as we rely more and more on the medium to sustain the relationships.  For me, this is most prevalent in Facebook - but that's a result of how I view Facebook and use it, as compared to Twitter, Google Plus, etc.  Those sites provide a, for lack of a better image, a photograph or snapshot of the lives of friends and family, and even acquaintances and people we don't know.  But like a photograph or snapshot, there's often a story, or history, you don't get.  This photograph that social media in the form of Facebook provides lacks context.

Without that context, how do we determine if what we see and read is authentic, genuine?  How do we know that what we see and read is truly "what's happening" with our friends and family.  The answer, I think, is that we don't, unless we have a relationships that do not overly rely on Facebook (or other social media).  Our relationships still have to have an "old-fashioned" foundation.

Why? For me, its because regardless of the medium - be it Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or even a blog, you only get or see what the "speaker" wants you to see. And that is not, necessarily, authentic.  For example, the overwhelming majority of everything I read from friends and family on social media sites is positive - funny stories, pictures of great events, etc. I would estimate that 3/4 of everything I see is in that category.  Another 15%-20% consists of people sharing things they have read - occasionally books, but mostly news stories that they wish to make a comment on.  The remaining amount is when they share something difficult or challenging, an event or thought that is filled with sadness or grief.  Yet, somehow, that breakdown doesn't seem to accurately reflect what life is.  It may be all those moments, but not in that proportion.  Life, I don't think, is not a collection of fun pictures and status updates (even if we want it to be).

Social media has made sharing so easy, that sharing has lost its specialness.  Social media connects us with so many people, that sharing has lost its meaningfulness.  These statements certainly contain some hyperbole, but for me, over the past few months, these are the conclusions I've reached.  Utilizing Facebook means that I'm sharing the same things with my best friends from school, and people I have not seen in a decade, and likely will not see for another decade or more (if ever). That fact, for me, is disjointing.

The result of all this has caused me to reevaluate my approach to these sites.  I've reached the point where I have a strong desire to use a blog more than those sites, as impracticable as that may be. And yes, I understand a blog can be in many ways no different than a Facebook type site.  But for me, it is.  In the way I approach it, I think, I can provide a context that will always be missing from Facebook, Twitter, etc. That said, in trying to enhance and supplement my relationships, the challenge with Facebook and other sites is to be conscious in how authentic my use of those sites will be.

Lest someone get the wrong idea of what I'm writing (or even why), my thoughts and feelings have to do with making sure that my use of these various tools do the most to enhance the relationships I have, not diminish them.  Based on how I approach Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and how I approach blogging, the most enhancement will occur through blogging.  For others, it will most certainly be different.

But at the end of all this mental hand-wringing, I want to be authentic in how I present myself, and I want to provide context with the moments in my life.  Blogging simply better allows me to tell those moments in an authentic way.

 

“Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.”

― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“The frame, the definition, is a type of context. And context, as we said before, determines the meaning of things. There is no such thing as the view from nowhere, or from everywhere for that matter. Our point of view biases our observation, consciously and unconsciously. You cannot understand the view without the point of view.”

― Noam Shpancer, The Good Psychologist