When social media first started to grow, one couldn’t be faulted for thinking (based on traditional media history) that it would be nothing more than a self-promotional and self aggrandizing weapon of mass annoyance. One might also be forgiven for assuming that it was going to simply show us the darker side of humanity. When you consider that traditional media channels relegate the “better angels of our nature” to page 30 or the last two minutes of a newscast, you can understand that perspective.
However, with all the dark side glimpses and the demons who have perched themselves on the web, social has often shown us our better natures and the staggering power of harmonic voices challenging us to do and be better.
Almost everyday social media reveals (to me at least) the magic which surrounds us.
Social media demonstrates the special gifts we all have to share. It reminds us that human potential is what magic really is. It challenges, provokes and inspires.
This is my thank you letter to social media and to the people who make up the communities which drive social and the web. I wonder if we all appreciate that we are not just participating, but building something wonderful, something amazing.
What makes social wondrous is us. Social media fans the spark which exists in all of us and among some of us, creates a fire which blazes and lights up the world.
We are magic and we are amazing when we share ourselves, our gifts, our hopes and even our fears. Perspective is important to a good life and social media puts that perspective close at hand every day – a passing glance or a piercing stare at the human condition.
We express our dreams and enumerate our fears via social media. But most of all we desperately try to escape, connect and commune with others. Alchemists all, we combine the volatile chemicals of human interactions and more often than not, create gold. Perhaps rarely magnificent, but often together, simply wonderful.
You don’t “win” social media, you participate. You join the community which drives it and you serve that community and enrich it. If you want to be recognized by a community then you need to contribute something worthwhile to it. There will always be those who will try exploit communities, but this assures they will live their lives on the extremities of the very bodies they attempt to corrupt.
So I want to thank you for sharing and contributing to a world which is becoming increasingly more social and thus (I believe) more human.
As individuals we are travelers, but when joined as communities, we are home.