The dangers of relational inflation: a social media bubble?
The social isn’t about beauty contests and popularity contests. They’re a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It’s about trust, connection, and community. That’s what there’s too little of in today’s mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn’t merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state — through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That’s where the future of media lies.
Excerpted from Umair Haque:
“Today, “social” media is trading in low-quality connections — linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships.
Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency inflation debases money, so social inflation debases relationships. The very word “relationship” is being cheapened. It used to mean someone you could count on. Today, it means someone you can swap bits with.
Thin relationships are the illusion of real relationships. Real relationships are patterns of mutual investment. I invest in you, you invest in me. Parents, kids, spouses — all are multiple digit investments, of time, money, knowledge, and attention. The “relationships” at the heart of the social bubble aren’t real because they’re not marked by mutual investment . At most, they’re marked by a tiny chunk of information or attention here or there.”
Umair then gives a number of detailed signs that this is indeed happening.
And he concludes:
“What are the wages of relationship inflation? Three cancers eating away at the vitality of today’s web. First, attention isn’t allocated efficiently; people discover less what they value than what everyone else likes, right this second. Second, people invest in low-quality content. Farmville ain’t exactly Casablanca. Third, and most damaging, is the ongoing weakening of the Internet as a force for good. Not only is Farmville not Casablanca, it’s not Kiva either. One of the seminal examples of the promise of social media, Kiva allocates micro-credit more meaningfully. By contrast, Farmville is largely socially useless. It doesn’t make kids tangibly better off; it just makes advertisers better off.”
June 1st, 2010 at 11:49 am
Good observation by Umair Haque.
But may I posit that in the final analysis, it is our use of social networks that determines their social utility.
Anyone can “turn off” the intrusion of low-value games on their facebook account while keeping in touch with those friends who do have important things to say, and they can in turn spread the word to their circle.
We aren’t locked in to the low value communications that social networks have made their default mode because they maximize advertising income.