The Art of Bubble Building in Social Media

Normally this is the time of day I turn off the internet and sit somewhere with little to no distractions and type out word after word on my attempt at a novel. Today, I'm sort of annoyed so unless I get this post typed out really quickly, I'm not going to spend any real time on my novel.

Social media. Yeah, that again. I'm still trying to figure out how social media fits into human interaction, as I'm sure some sociologist at a university is doing somewhere as well. I don't have interns or a university's level of research capabilities, so I might be a little less academic about social media than others. I also don't pretend to be a social media guru, sitting at my Twitter client watching two, three or four streams on information come and go by other self-described social media gurus and Twitter bots.

I am, however, a student of life. Since I was a kid I've always watched people: I watched how my parents interacted with each other, others and with my siblings; I watched how the “cool kids” behaved and wondered what made them different from the rest of us; and I watched as my peers became enthralled with sports, or video games, or drugs, or surfing (I grew up on the coast), or whatever was the current magical past time for bored teens.

Since the internet became widely available I watched as message boards brought people of like-minded interests together, no matter their background or their social and economic standings. Message boards ranged on a scale of extremely moderated, where the rules were strict and people who stepped outside of the rules were warned, suspended or banned, to extremely open, where anything goes and a topic started about the best route from Santa Fe, NM to Albuquerque, NM might end up with pictures of naked women, naked dudes, swearing or might even go off topic all together.

The internet was a place of choices and options whether your idea of moderation was more similar to the prison system or for the wild west, or a myriad of possibilities in between.

And then came social networking as a social network and nothing more. Sure people already staying in touch via email chains and some people even had blogs others could go to to read about their friend's lives, but no one really came together in a vast ballroom of everyone they knew from all their facets of life. If you wanted someone to see your thoughts, your animated gifs, pictures of your cat dressed as Robin Hood you had to they had to come to you.

Social media changed that concept. No longer did you have to bombard your friends with family updates, chain emails and whatever “secret insider knowledge” Snopes was going to debunk anyway, but now you just had to post it in one location and the views were brought to you by an algorithm of your best e-friends. Now you didn't have to send an email out to the 57 friends who you think might want to see pictures of your newest child or cat, but instead, all 200 people in your high school graduating class, all 20 people from your office you're connected to, all 35 friends from college and the dozens of other people you've collected over the years from social groups, league sports teams and those forgotten message boards can see the pictures of your cat, child, dinner or new furniture scroll by without having to leave one common website.

Our lives have become open books. The social phone call is dead having been replaced with “I posted it on [social media]." Email communication, also long forgotten, having also been replaced with “I posted it on [social media]”

A hundred years ago people went to their local church or civic gathering to connect with friends and peers, to catch up on lives and to share trials and tribulations; 20 years ago we made phone calls and went to reunions; now we log on from the distance of our own internet connection to share our lives with everyone we know and everyone we once knew.

A hundred years ago people spoke face to face. Twenty years ago people spoke on the phone when they weren't face to face. Now, you look at an avatar picture as you don't even open your mouth to communicate.

So, where has the art of the conversation gone? People don't speak to each other anymore: offices communicate by email or chat, friends and lovers communicate through wall posts and nearly everyone is paying a lot of money for mobile phones and not actually using their phones for talking.

Has social media killed communication? Currently Facebook is the behemoth of the landscape, by shear numbers alone with Google+ slowing gaining a foothold, passing Twitter to be number two. Social media has made everyone the narcissistic hero of their own story, and collecting “Likes,” “thumbs-up” or “+'s” has become a popularity contest.

But most people have forgotten the 'social' aspect of social media and the true value of human communication.

My brother nearly didn't invite me to his wedding because I didn't “Like” his Facebook post about being engaged. My sister was terribly upset that I didn't comment on Facebook when she announced she was pregnant. My other sister got married without inviting me because I apparently didn't “Like” her wedding announcement on Facebook.

Why? Simply because I rarely use Facebook. They made no other means to contact me instead choosing to place their announcements on social media they presume everyone checks all day long. 

I spend a vast majority of my “social media” time on Google+. I find it much more interesting for conversations than FB, attracting people of like-minded interests from across the globe. Both Google+ and Facebook have their pros and cons, Facebook being the place to interact with the people you know, and Google+ being like those message boards from days of old, where people from different backgrounds come together over a similar enthusiasms.

With Google+ I have connected to media people from across the country, small business owners from across the globe, photographers in my own backyard and atheists galore of every background. With Facebook I have connected with... people I already knew via one venue or another: some were old high school friends, some old Army buddies; some motorcycle riding friends and some just friends I picked up along the way.

What I have noticed lately, on both social networking sites, is this: people don't want their posts disagreed with, no matter how factually or logically wrong. Remember when I said social media was creating a world full of narcissists? That's true. A friend on Facebook posts about getting her 13^th cat and you respond with “don't you have enough cats already?” and suddenly you're a jackass. Someone on Google+ posts about thinking the iPhone is sexy and you disagree because 'phones aren't sexy' and you're a troll. (true story) Or, in this case, I'm a troll.

The same person called me a troll once before for questioning why he spent hundreds of dollars buying his father an iPad, setting up a Mac ID, teaching him to use Facetime (over the phone, no less) in order to have a video-chat with his dad. I merely questioned why he didn't use Skype or Google Talk (with video chat), which could be used by any internet connected device. He called me a troll.

A few days ago a “journalist” posted a link on Google+ directing her followers to an article shewrote about a missing Colorado woman. I live in Colorado, just a few miles away from where this woman is from and I commented to that fact on the post. The author replied with something like, “Scary isn't it?” This is where the problem started. I told her I wasn't scared at all and she replied I would be if I was a woman. I then pointed out that I saw no reason to be scared: the article she linked to did not state the woman was kidnapped, raped, strangled or left in a ditch somewhere. The article merely said no one had hear from her in 48 hours.

She then accused me of being a troll. How was I troll, I asked, she, as the journalist, didn't indicate the woman was kidnapped, just that no one had heard from her. She didn't state who reported the woman missing (boyfriend, parents, co-workers?) or if her social media had been updated or not, whether the journalist had spoken with the police or FBI about the missing woman – nothing.

When I pointed all this out, I was again accused of being a troll and an apathetic dick for not crying over a missing girl whom we still didn't know had any association with foul play. 

I had a long time follower stop following me recently because I said seduction was not rape. She, a feminist, disagreed and I am now apparently a misogynist and not worthy of her connection. According to her, the question of sex should come up in the first few seconds of meeting between the two sexes. If the woman says no, and the man still proceeds to ask her out, buy her flowers, treat her nice or anything else men have done for a thousand years, he's raping her. (I still don't get that one and I'm sure some feminist will try and explain it)

A few months ago a woman I was following on Google+ posted a link to her blog. In it she, a counselor at a prison, went on a rant about having to talk to aperson in prison, a convicted pedophile. When I asked for clarification on what kind of sex crime she told me it was none of my business. Well, if you want me to feel the outrage, then I need to know. Was he (this convict was a “he”) caught urinating in a park? Believe it or not that's a sex crime in a lot of places and possibly pedophilia if it was near where children might hang out, such as a playground, even if no children are at the location at the time of the incident. Was he 21 and having relations with a 17 year old? That might be pedophilia in some states, and not in others. Was he forcibly raping 10 year-olds? Did a neighbor complain that he likes to walk around inside his house in the nude, with the windows open and some kids in the street could see? This is America, if we're not all covered head to toe at all times, a la a burqa, then you're violating someone's sensibilities somewhere. She accused me of being a pedophile and a troll by way of response. According to her, a counselor, asking too many questions was akin to admitting you're a pedophile. Don't ask questions, just trust her account of the situation.

She then went back to her blog and talked about “that guy who was a little 'too' interested to not have those tendencies himself. 

Ironically, this woman calls herself, SusanTheTroll. But, I'm the troll. 

Then there are those people who are so committed to their beliefs, even if those beliefs are false, they accuse anyone who disagrees with them a troll and proceed block them. A few people, running up to the 2012 presidential election called me a troll and/or blocked me for refuting their “memes.” These people include so-called Birthers, Obama/Muslim conspiracy theorists, how Obama single-handily ruined the economy even before being elected to President in 08, or how he spent trillions of dollars between 2000 and 2007.

Fight fiction with fact and you're blocked for being a troll. Are teachers trolls when they correct a student's misconceptions? Are judges trolls for deciding court cases you disagree with? Are philosophers trolls for daring to question the “truth?”

According to Wikipedia, a troll is:

... someone who posts inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion

When did the art of conversation become a trolling offense? When did having a back and forth discussion become something undesirable? When did the human connection become a curse?

Why do we all have to be head-nodders, not disagreeing with anyone for any reason for fear of being labeled negatively?

I often criticize Fox News adherents, people who are usually so ill informed about a subject matter they cannot make a coherent or fact-worthy argument to support their claims. We call this the Fox News Bubble. I'm seeing a lot of this sort of behavior as people post content to their social media sites. With the ease of use of blocking features, people are creating bubbles of like-minded mentalities, creating their very own microcosms of sycophants.

Why do people who are trying to use social media for self or business promotion cry foul whenever someone disagrees with them? I've been called a troll numerous times now for doing nothing more than disagreeing with the original poster's position.

I had a “friend” on Facebook a couple of years ago. This “friend” was actually a friend of a friend, but I'd run across her at enough parties and social gatherings that I finally decided to friend her on Facebook. Multiple times a day she would post a link to her business (as an insurance agent) with a line to call her with any insurance needs. After weeks of seeing only this type of post I sent her a message requesting she create a Facebook Page for her business and post those advertisements there. She unfriended me instead.

I have noticed two very real patterns with open networking, such as Google+ and more controlled networking like Facebook:

1. People want to live in a bubble. They want affirmation and confirmation of their beliefs and a hoard of people lauding them for their opinions. No one is really interested in a safe open environment where ideas and concepts can be passed around without ridicule or retaliation. They're interested in getting their opinion out there and not having to support or defend their opinion from dissenters.
2. Facebook calls your friends “Friends.” Friends will rarely block or disconnect from you. There is an extra attachment there that transcends the e-relationship. Some of my Facebook friends are die hard believers of mythconceptions (coin that for me) and even when you call them dumb or stupid they will still have a beer with you and see you at a BBQ or party without wanting to throw punches. They're “Friends.”

There are also other networks, Twitter and LinkedIN, for example. On Twitter it's not as easy to have a conversation with their character limit, and if you disagree with a tweet, like Google+, it's easy to unfollow that tweeter.

LinkedIN is networking for business people and most of those people having conversations are generally professional and respectful. If you disagree with someone and explain why, you end up in a conversation where ideas and opinions are shared. I've yet to see anyone on LinkedIN claim “this is my wall and you can't disagree with me” like they do on Facebook and Google+.

First with blogging and then with social media outlets, people are sharing their entire lives with anyone on the internet. To put those thoughts to the e-wind, as it were, and not expect any sort of response is naive. It's even more naive to believe the entire world will agree with your every word. Just like your husband or wife, your kids or co-workers, not everyone is going to agree with every position you take.

But do you have to be right all the time? Are you human? Can you be wrong and be mature enough to own up to being wrong or misinformed? Or, are you so egotistical that everyone who disagrees with you is a troll?

Some questions to think about when you're getting ready to push that [Block] button.