As I have stated elsewhere, the
raison d'être of all current electronic social media is advertising/marketing. Any social communication benefits that accrue to the particular media's users (henceforth referred to as
market) are carefully tailored side effects. If one should desire to use a so-called social media site for mercantile purposes, what better way to divert attention from your motives than to allow your market to do as you do, albeit that that market rarely has any commercial intent of it's own.
One of the mainstays of successful marketing has always been to allow the members of your target market to overvalue their own individual importance in the overall scheme of things. This is most easily accomplished by massaging their collective ego and by constructing the functional aspects of the chosen medium (and today's particular functional examples shall be drawn from Twitter, it being a rather blatant commercial venue, fortunate to have a market that, for the most part, eschews introspection) in such a way that the very use of it is conducive to the market's massaging of it's own mass of collective egos.
Let it then be a given that individuals and organisations who wish to disseminate any given product or service for profit, can use any social site to heighten their public profile and so their cash flow. What benefits, then, are bestowed on the private individuals who constitute the bulk audience of any social medium? Let us examine some specifics.
Twitter, our chosen subject for today (all that follows applies just as well to Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube or any other take-your-pick; we are not "picking on" any particular venue here), gives it's user a number of activity options, every one of which exists for "feel good" reasons. First and foremost, people have an innate need to believe that their opinions, achievements, in fact their very lives, are of some value to their society at large. Andy Warhol's prediction of fame for the Great Unwashed is now a reality. People can now put their thoughts, observations, life events and opinions out on the Electric Everywhere, theoretically for consumption by the entire world. People just love to be heard and, now, they can be.
Secondly, humans are by nature social animals. Facilitating communication between both neighbours and far-flung individuals has an interesting effect. The more personal the information exchanged, the greater the chance that an actual emotional bond will develop between the communicators. The personal nature of the exchange nicely mimics the development of a friendship between real-world individuals. For the sake of clarity, I have dubbed the individuals with which you develop some level of emotional connection via the Internet (same being confined to those that you will never meet in the "real"/physical world), "Electric Friends" (the term being derived from the title of an early Gary Numan hit song, "Are Friends Electric?"). So, now Twitter has given the masses of the market a venue for self-expression and a novel new way to create and develop social relationships (this latter ability having it's roots in a past generation's "pen pals;" remember that those pen & paper relationships did on occasion lead to marriage (how much less surprising now, when you can add sight and sound to your long-distance wooing?)).
Well, what have we next? Having satisfied two needs of the human ego, we shall offer power. Oh, not power absolute but a sense of power over other people. Or what else would you call the ability to choose who to follow? This is not following like cattle, which have no choice of herdsman, but more akin to people choosing which political party to join (a topic worth delving into but, for now, we need not consider the fact that any political party engendered by any given political system will always form a government typical of that system; ie, that "choice" of party is completely illusory). The individual is also given the ability to unilaterally reverse any following-related choice. In fact, this ability extends to being able to block any other user from one's own virtual world without having to justify the act in any way whatsoever! Now, this is a power the vast majority do not enjoy in their real world lives! Blocking, because it is the ultimate power available on any social site, naturally becomes part of the mythology of that social site and appears in all manner of contexts: conversation, threats and speculation, through to jokes and casual humorous asides. As capital punishment does in society at large, blocking on a social medium carries shades of philosophy, spirituality and penalogical theory.
However, control over the various facets of virtual society is not confined to decisions as conveniently clear as a black/white choice. Harking back to aspects of self-expression, any individual in the social cyberverse has control over his/her appearance (the choice of "avi") and those who decide against using this opportunity for self-expression (those who remain "egg" avatars; the whole of Twitter being a bird metaphor carried out ad nauseum) are pitilessly mocked. If you don't join the crowd and be an individual just like everybody else you had better beware!
When faced with a social artefact such as an organisation, bureaucracy or any other attempt to simultaneously unite & rank individuals, and if said artefact represented both a considerable initial investment to construct it and a substantial ongoing cash flow to keep it standing, it would be reasonable to conclude that any intrinsic "problems" or persistent negative aspects, are still in existence because some individual or group wants them to be. Social media operators arrange for their market of users to have good looking and positive reinforcement-producing (yet illusory, having no effect on the world outside your phone or PC) versions of the very real powers they themselves possess. With that in mind, this mini-monograph shall end with a look at one last aspect of control over others which Twitter grants. This is the ability to behave like any corporation or government and classify people. As much as people love to rail against and protest being pigeon-holed, given the power to put into practice this hateful tendency, they do so with relish. Monitoring one's interactions will reinforce the previously-made decision to divide people coarsely into the two camps of worthy-of-following and the not-worthy (apologies, Wayne). Press the "Me" button (and how much more ego-friendly could THAT button be?) and your choices are reinforced again! As well, you have the discrete joy of perusing the products of your own creativity, patting your own back all the while. As if all the foregoing was not positive ego reinforcement above and beyond the call of duty, there be one more power pearl for you to pick: Lists. With a list (or lists) you can take some or all of the people whom you have interacted with thusfar, and organise them into sets, using whatever criteria you might invent, and then proceed to name these sets (or even number them, should you be so inclined) to suit your fancy. Of course, what you actually end up with is a greater or smaller reflection of much of the same material as you'd see in your interactions column. Still, the whole list activity is about as fun as playing at being the manager of some sports team, or the general of an army. Pick your players, organise them, put them in their places and then eventually retire them when they either benefit you no longer or have simply become tiresome.
And so, our modern virtual societies are simultaneously becoming a bottomless well of profit for some, and an ideal training ground for the masses that provide that profit.
Now, aren't you glad to be an active participant?
