Let's get all Freudian/Jungian...

How Does Social Media Make You Feel?

     Are you a seasoned "pro" who flies through status updates and shares posts from across the web at the speed of light? Are you busy exploring posts and keeping your thoughts, comments and opinions to yourself or are you huddled in the corner of your online sphere, endlessly mopping beads of nervous sweat from your brow unsure exactly what to post to your timeline, wall or feed? Does online social engagement feel more like the high-school hallway of heaven of your dreams or the hell of your worst high-school nightmare? Are you now starring in the global social show of the century as the popular über-stud or rejected über-cybernerd? Do Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+ and other such social platforms excite and inspire your bones or do find them boring, terrifying or brutally annoying? Does Social Web 2.0 signal the righteous emergence of a shifting cultural paradigm for mankind or the-self-serving-narcissistic-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it?

    Are you checking in or are you checking out?

 

By now the majority of people in British Columbia have felt plenty embarrassed and ashamed by what transpired in Vancouver after the Canucks fell to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final on Wednesday night. We sat glued to the live CTV News coverage, appalled at the behaviour of the crowd as wave after wave of pseudo-war zone imagery flooded into the studio and onto our screens at home. I for one felt sick to my stomach; the kinda nausea I experienced as a youngster when two kids arranged to meet at the tennis courts to fight after school.

I've heard many people throughout the past week attempting to assuage the situation with shallow assurances that the sole responsibility for the violence and destruction that took place on those beloved city streets, the sight of so much positive celebration only a year ago with the Winter Olympics, was the work of a handful of crooks, thugs, punks, anarchists, yahoos, idiots, morons, hoodlums and goons bent on creating chaos and havoc regardless of the sporting outcome that night. All I see are labels being used to separate those who did the destroying from those who did the recording. All of whom share the responsibility in my opinion. One guilty of physical destruction and one guilty of passive digital and social encouragement that fanned the flames of the situation by celebrating the type of narcissism that Facebook Walls and You Tube fan pages live for.

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    I announced my retirement from the pursuit of my musical career ambitions today. It was a tough one.

    Many of you may not know this side of me but an enormous part of my experience on this earth has been in the pursuit of those particular dreams and filled with those particular experiences. You might not see that it's relevant to the focus of my current passion to help small business owners in Greater Victoria to get personal, get creative and get involved in the Social Revolution but I assure you that it is. Having a transparent agenda means giving every aspect of your being an equally important role in the presentation of the story you share with the outside world.

    I'm a whole person made of a seemingly infinite scope of distinct parts and I believe in the collective good that comes from sharing the intimate with the public; the triumphs along with the tribulations; for each one shows the world who we really are. If ever there was a time when I've felt the "bittersweet" aspect of life, it was today. I don't regret it advance or celebrate its passing, but instead pay homage to a chapter in my life that has led me down a labyrinth of doorways and thresholds; a gauntlet of personal and professional choices that have led me to this juncture where I stand today, poised to demonstrate myself as leader in this city and a creative enabler to those in need of a spark.

    Here is where my philosophy might well veer slightly outside the current comfort zone yours; the traditional mantra of economics dictates that all adherents religiously avow to keep the two dimensions of themselves - what they do for a living and the life they live - mutually exclusive from one another. In my own very strong opinion, the mandate of our individual and collective well-being requires that the opposite occur- that such destructive thinking is so fundamentally opposed to the social nature in which our kind has evolved that I challenge anyone of sound mind and reasonable process to rationally explain why such a false guard must be so vehemently maintained. Blame it on the #Gatekeepers.

A Toast To Change

    It's hard to say goodbye to certain dreams you've carried so close to your heart. It's okay to admit you're grieving a loss and adjusting to change - even when it's a choice you consciously made for yourself. Signing off from the music channel today for me was one of those moments and it affected me much more profoundly than I imagined it would when I composed that blog post earlier this morning.

    There's absolutely no shame in showing your true colours - in fact, I feel that quite the opposite is true. Being transparent doesn't mean denouncing privacy for oneself any more than it entails showing up at work stark naked. All it requires is that we permit the truth of our individual intent and aspirations to rise to the surface, owning our mistakes and embracing our successes.

    After all, in a world so desperately in need of accountability and responsibility, what else is this fantastic global Social Revolution trying to communicate to us about ourselves if not to explore the possibility of a cultural landscape of earning and maintaining both trust and respect?

Thoughts on this post? I'd love to hear from you.

     I've made it a personal mission of mine to be a more positive person. It's not that I'm a gloomy bastard or an asshole or anything quite that drastic, it just means that I often find myself incredibly frustrated with the efforts, or the perceived lack thereof, of other people. I also get incredibly annoyed by what I consider to be the continuing proliferation and propagation of old, out-dated, antiquated and unreasonable ways of thinking. You may have noticed this with my last few posts. It's something I've been passionately struggling with since I was 19 years old.

     What can I say? I just believe with every part of my being that something greater than this way of life is possible...for everyone. To quote my friend and mentor Daniel Quinn, “If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision." So I promise that although I will be transparent in my feelings and ideas I would like to promise you (and myself!) that negativity and angst is not going to be the overall tone of this blog.

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  I've deemed the so-called "experts" of "proper social media engagement" #Gatekeepers on Twitter but they exist across the Web. You'll know them by the arrogant manner with which they abuse these amazing new communication networks to bully newbies while at the same time propagating and proliferating the same old, antiquated, out-dated and quite frankly piss-poor ideas that have existed from the days of stone-tablets and hieroglyphs. They have a vested interest in making their voice the loudest, even if they're saying nothing. To put it in simple Star Wars terms, if the humanization and personalization of Web 2.0 is "The Force" then they are the #EvilEmpire spreading cultural despair and intellectual destruction throughout the social galaxy.

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         With a not-so-subtle tip of the hat to the widely popular Saturday Evening Post of a world gone by, I have elected to create The Sunday Evening Post (and corresponding #SEP "hashtag" for any of you uninitiated Twitter users out there) in an attempt to establish a weekly ritual for sharing an eclectic collection of inspiring stories and insightful links from across the Web. While this unique online presentation is available for everyone to enjoy, it's geared toward local small business owners and supporters who might, like me, struggle to find enough time during the work week to catch up on some of the relevant information being shared across the ever-expanding array of social media platforms.

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