What’s Wrong With Social Media

The buzz and defensiveness this week about Empire Avenue reminded me about the conference experience I had in Paris and how angry it made me. Sure, the conference was good. Not great, not horrible, but a solid conference. However, the bullshit that went on behind the scenes due to social media angered me. While I’ve written about it before here and here, I had forgotten how far along it had come.

Here’s a few choice examples from the conference:

1. No snarkiness or negativity in the twitter stream. It was insane. Every. single. tweet about the conference was dripping with how awesome it and its participants were. There wasn’t a single complainant about the conference running two hours behind schedule or some of the presenters. When someone didn’t submit his slides ahead of time nor had a backup, his presenting sans slides was deemed pure “genius” and he was a true “rockstar”.  WHAT?! Are you kidding me?! Not a single snarky tweet about having a backup was uttered. The best was when I sneaked in a semi-snarky tweet. Not only was it ignored by the majority (most of my tweets were being retweeted), but the person I was chatting with started back pedaling and trying to play down my snarky comment. If you were simply reading the tweet stream of the conference, you’d think that not only did it smell like roses but it was also the most amazing conference any of the participants had ever attended.
2. This is the one that kills me. Not a single bad word was uttered about any of the conference speakers. Sure, I get it, you’re speaking too and don’t want to criticize for fear that others will rain during your parade. But, pretending and tweeting that someone was phenomenal when they really weren’t hurts us all. In fact, because of previous tweets and social media “proof,” I was really looking forward to a specific speaker. I had always heard such good things via twitter and he’s been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences. Boy, was I disappointed. While not the worst presenter, he was certainly in the top (or bottom) ten. The thing that angered me the most was I knew he got this presenting gig just like he’ll get his next – because conference goers tweeted only positive things about his presentation. ARGH. In essence, because we’re afraid of being honest, because we’re afraid to rock the boat, because we’re afraid to be criticized and ousted from the “cool club,” social media is perpetuating mediocrity.

The question becomes, is our lack of honesty via social channels hurting our ability to innovate, to become stronger marketers? Is it hurting our ability to stand up for ourselves and our beliefs? I’m not sure about you, but I’m certainly not ready to become a lemming.