Dear Gen Y Techno Nerds

I’m calling an amnesty. Could you please stop the invention of any more social media. Just for a little while. Until I get my head around the ones you’ve already created.

I’ve done my best. I’ve Tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, Pinned. I know there is so much more out that, but my frail mind just can’t take it!

People smarter than me tell me there are ways to use the bird, the camera, the pin and the big F to drive traffic to your blog. They speak of hoards of folks heading to read their carefully crafted words from just one strategic pin or a particularly artistic shot, filtered to perfection. Funnily enough,  accidental shots of the ground don’t seem to attract people.

Computer geeks, you’ve changed me. I photograph my food before I eat it. I haven’t seen an entire episode of a tv show since I began scrolling twitter of a night. My family complains I’m distracted. I don’t know what they are talking about, OMG DID YOU SEE MELBOURNE METRO’S  VIDEO ON DUMB WAYS TO DIE!!! What, were you talking to me? No I’m not laughing at you. Excuse me just because I’m sitting here giggling to myself does not mean I am losing my marbles. It’s this funny … oh don’t worry … you wouldn’t get it.

I plan family activities based on how well they will photograph and how much copy they will generate for the blog.

I’ve tried to lose my natural inclination to introversion and throw myself into the twitter conversation. Excuse me, couldn’t help over-reading, well you are having this conversation in a public forum and I just thought I would throw my two cents worth in, no really,  I’m quite amusing in person, it’s just this 140 character thing that stifles my creativity. Hang on a minute we’ve got another viral hashtag, oh that’s funny, there’s a good point, ouch that’s a bit nasty, ok now it’s getting personal, guys maybe it’s time we let this go … ok maybe not.

Heading off to the nicer world of Pinterest, who am I kidding, heading off to the PERFECT world of Pinterest. Where everybody is happy, living in beautifully decorated homes, dressed in white, baking cupcakes and planning birthday parties to rival royal weddings. Oh right I’ve pinned my dream life. Just as a distraction from the bill paying, making do, can’t-get-it-colour-coordinated life I really have.

Facebook is still chugging along. My old faithful. The first social media I embraced, long before I knew my future lay in taking our dysfunction public to get a laugh, a few followers and maybe one day an income. I have a blog page now. I’ve “liked back” the other people who have “liked” me. I no longer see updates from the people who “liked me in real life”, you know my friends from my personal page ’cause I’m a professional now. Shame though my “professional” page only gets a handful of people looking at it, because there’s some special code Facebook uses to judge whether you are worthy of being seen by the people who have “liked you”. Seems they would like you to pay to promote yourself so then people can have you appear in their newsfeeds. Well I guess they’ve gotta make a buck or a million too.

I’m on Instagram too but I’m not even technically competent enough to link you to it! I snap a shot or two then add a filter and reckon I’m Annie Leibovitz. No really, those filters are GOOD. I’m making ART people!

Obviously, I haven’t got this figured out, I need some TIME to sort out how these things are supposed to work. I know that you techno guys are working away in someone’s garage (if you haven’t made it yet) or in some all-white warehouse space with beanbags and slippery dips (if you have had a success or two) and I get that you want to create the next BIG THING. The change-the-world app  that everyone will jump on board and make you squillions and change how we communicate forever! But I’m tired now. I need you to take a break. We DON’T NEED ANOTHER FORM OF SOCIAL MEDIA. Not right now.

Let’s put down the mobile devices, step away from the computer, and see who’s in our real-life social world, just for a minute or two. Just long enough to share a bottle of wine and a laugh or two.

Then, when we come back, we’ll have blog fodder, tricky shots of the half-full wine glasses, and a cache of tweets we could have sent, but was probably lucky we didn’t (God they were funny).

Cheers

The Social Media Try-Hard