I'm starting a post that I know I will never finish. The nature of it is not something that can be concisely articulated into a neat and tidy essay, but I can express the shape of the idea here; which is finding the strength to be authentic.
Instead the modern landscape is filled with brands and advertisements and pressure to conform to a socioeconomic sect in order for businesses to analyze specific consumer demographics. This can't be the free society envisioned by the founding fathers. Thoreau's Civil Disobedience is collecting dust on the shelf of history. The new generation aspires to conform and fears rejection. Very few proudly carry their freak flags in the offline world anymore. It's like there's a spinster librarian hushing everyone to be quiet. "Shhh - share your opinion elsewhere. Aren't there online places for your kind?" it seems to me that the worst thing is being thought of as strange or weird. Why is that? Or more importantly, why do we care? Who said everyone has to like and accept us? Maybe this is the dark side of too much political correctness.
Before my rant gets misinterpreted as propaganda or conspiracy theory I'll stop and go back to the premise of this blog. The role of social media in my life and why I think it has importance. I recently read Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody, in it Clay gives a profound overview of the current online landscape and presents examples of how people are organizing and effecting change by their participation on social media platforms; such as: blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.
Brands and consumer focused businesses need to remember that a consumer is not a faceless mindless entity in which to understand through statistics and dogmatic primitive analysis. The beauty and purpose of social media is to release all of us from the chains of categorization and the simplistic roles they evoke. Advertising and marketing no longer needs to be the likened to the pastor delivering a sermon, but rather a country fair where wares are on display peddled by trustworthy friends of the community.
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