Popularity is indeed a crude proxy for quality, as innumerable examples show. But this makes it hard to upvote this heartfelt short statement: because, what am I going to do -- make it popular? Isn't that what it's speaking against?
Status updates are a new kind of conspicuous "consumption": instead of buying that pair of designer jeans for the big night out I'll just post a witty status to show off. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe even better than consumerism: no natural resources were lost in the production of this status update.
Everyone knows that’s not the whole story, of course. No one says “I’m lonely” on Twitter. No one uses Facebook to post their deep, dark thoughts about marriage or parenting or work or the future or the past.
When people do share such sentiments, they are ignored or told that they're over-sharing. I admit that I've even felt this about other people "fishing for pity", though at the same time I realize what a stupid, negative, uncaring thought that is to have, particularly in light of it being so-called 'social' technology.
However, the above passage leads me to wonder: you know how they say that you can change yourself from the outside in? For example, feeling nervous about a job interview of blind date? Literally skip for the last 20 feet to the door. It's very difficult to keep a negative frame of mind when skipping along. Force yourself to smile, and you may soon find yourself genuinely smiling more.
Does this hold true for 'social' networking? Let's say I'm depressed and haven't gone out much. If I focus on going out, doing something, and taking a picture of it, and then make a positive (or pseudo-positive) post about it, am I not effectively improving my real emotional situation?
Incidentally, I had a traumatic experience a few years ago when I met an amazing person who profoundly changed my life over the course of a mere month. She then passed away unexpectedly. I wrote a Facebook 'note' about my experience and feelings. It received little response on Facebook. When meeting friends in person, however, they often mentioned how deeply touched they'd been by what I wrote. So, the social pressure to be positive extends to the point that we don't even comment on our friends' tragedies online.
This may not happen so much on Facebook or Twitter or any place where your online identity is closely linked to your offline one, but the internet can actually make that kind of "over-sharing" easier. When people are anonymous or pseudonymous online, this can remove the inhibitions that keep them from talking about their innermost thoughts and secrets. The result of this is that, sometimes, groups of anonymous strangers will talk publicly about their feelings and be surprisingly kind to one another.
