Mad Social Media Men
Last month I started watching AMC's Mad Men on Netflix. You know, that show all the kids were raving about five years ago. (I've never been one to be on time to a party.) No point in posting a late and lengthy review now (CliffsNotes: it’s fantastic; if just for the costumes and set design alone) but watching the 1960’s-based show online, while pausing to check my Facebook news feed of course, got me thinking about the connection between the two.
I’ve been turning over my personal social media usage in my head for the last year or so—how I use it, how others use it and why—and though I don’t have any concrete answers to these wonders, I’m getting there thanks tocopious amounts of Mad Men.
Watching the way the actors in the ad company’s creative team pitch campaigns for brands isn't all that different from the way Gen Y’ers present themselves online. Not that many (or any) of my friends are putting pen to paper (haha, excuse me, I meant fingers to keyboard) creating campaigns for their social media presence—but subconsciously, we kind of are.
We all have a voice on social media; unique from our real life voices. Some people’s digital presence comes off whiny, cocky, condescending, empathetic, playful, excited, or in a hundred other tones. And behind each status update is some sort of desire (be it conscious or subconscious) to please your audience—to get ‘likes’, comments, or just to be seen. We’re the ad execs to our own personal brands.
The problem, for me at least, is the difference in digital and real life voices. For instance, people post more about the happy and joy in their lives than the doom and gloom; which, like an ad campaign, paints situations (or product) in a good and even luxurious light. Type-speaking in your real voice is no walk down Madison Avenue; and I'll be honest—I have some real life buddies who annoy me online. I don’t dislike them; I dislike their accidental digital brand strategy.
There’s a great quote from an episode of Mad Men where Peggy reprimands her competitive coworker Pete. He waltzes into her office, goes off on a professional tangent and she fires back with “stop barging in here and infecting me with your anxiety”. That sentence—give or take the ending emotion—is often how I feel about social media. I feel like the majority of my friends are either ‘infecting’ me with their perma cheerleader positivity or polluting the common social space with the crème de la Internet crap.
I want a news feed that’s more balanced than Joan Harris’ figure. I do have a few friends whose posts I look forward to reading—friends who post in a uniquely unselfish ‘knowing-you-guys-I-thought-you’d-enjoy-this’ kind of way. They digitally curate things of interest, comment on current events and throw in brief personal tid-bits in a relevant not who-cares kind of way. I like that, and I want to do more of it myself.
The irritable, judgmental, negative wave that washes over me when I see the 90th person comment about the heat on a mid-summer day is—as Betty Draper (Mad Men reference #3) puts it—unbecoming. Not that I’m innocent of social media annoyances, but I've semi-consciously limited my posting for fear my friends will judge my updates as harshly as I catch myself judging theirs.
I want to be as slow and thoughtful in my social media usage as Pete Campbell is each morning with his fine-toothed comb. I think we've become so enthralled with connecting, that we often don’t recognize when it’s valuable to disconnect—either from someone or from social sites briefly. I wonder what it’s like to put the world aside to enjoy the mental peace and quiet that comes with a glass of whiskey and a snooze on your office sofa. Don Draper knows, and I want to find out, too.
READ ON: Here are four questions to ask yourself for more thoughtful social media sharing, courtesy of another similar post on this topic. And a must-watch cutesy and clever Sesame Street parody of Mad Men.
I’ve been turning over my personal social media usage in my head for the last year or so—how I use it, how others use it and why—and though I don’t have any concrete answers to these wonders, I’m getting there thanks to
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| Mad Men characters Roger Sterling and Don Draper |
We all have a voice on social media; unique from our real life voices. Some people’s digital presence comes off whiny, cocky, condescending, empathetic, playful, excited, or in a hundred other tones. And behind each status update is some sort of desire (be it conscious or subconscious) to please your audience—to get ‘likes’, comments, or just to be seen. We’re the ad execs to our own personal brands.
The problem, for me at least, is the difference in digital and real life voices. For instance, people post more about the happy and joy in their lives than the doom and gloom; which, like an ad campaign, paints situations (or product) in a good and even luxurious light. Type-speaking in your real voice is no walk down Madison Avenue; and I'll be honest—I have some real life buddies who annoy me online. I don’t dislike them; I dislike their accidental digital brand strategy.
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| The curvy Joan Harris |
I want a news feed that’s more balanced than Joan Harris’ figure. I do have a few friends whose posts I look forward to reading—friends who post in a uniquely unselfish ‘knowing-you-guys-I-thought-you’d-enjoy-this’ kind of way. They digitally curate things of interest, comment on current events and throw in brief personal tid-bits in a relevant not who-cares kind of way. I like that, and I want to do more of it myself.
The irritable, judgmental, negative wave that washes over me when I see the 90th person comment about the heat on a mid-summer day is—as Betty Draper (Mad Men reference #3) puts it—unbecoming. Not that I’m innocent of social media annoyances, but I've semi-consciously limited my posting for fear my friends will judge my updates as harshly as I catch myself judging theirs.
I want to be as slow and thoughtful in my social media usage as Pete Campbell is each morning with his fine-toothed comb. I think we've become so enthralled with connecting, that we often don’t recognize when it’s valuable to disconnect—either from someone or from social sites briefly. I wonder what it’s like to put the world aside to enjoy the mental peace and quiet that comes with a glass of whiskey and a snooze on your office sofa. Don Draper knows, and I want to find out, too.
READ ON: Here are four questions to ask yourself for more thoughtful social media sharing, courtesy of another similar post on this topic. And a must-watch cutesy and clever Sesame Street parody of Mad Men.