How do we judge our worth in modern society? Tonight, I was at the bachelor party of my good friend, Dr. Know, and there were a few embarrassing videos that people wanted to post. They were going around the table asking how many FaceBook friends everyone had, so they could determine whom they should tag to maximize the embarrassment for the people in question before they got home and could tag us all. Amazing that we were judging value by FaceBook friends!
On the other hand, I feel that many of us determine our self worth from the numbers. I have another friend, Marc Ryan, whose very contract includes clauses based on the number of twitter followers he has. (Therefore, you should follow him on twitter if you can). The fact that it isn't just a group of guys with an embarrassing tea-pot video judging by that, but big and profitable corporations.
I further believe that we tend to judge our own worth based on the social media feedback of others. For example, if I write two wall posts on FaceBook and one gets 13 likes and another gets 5 likes, I am bound to think that my thought that received 13 likes was far superior and bound to influence my thinking for any and all later statuses. I had this discussion with a friend once, but it is almost impossible to not recognize that much of our feeling of quality work is influenced by the feedback of others, often in environments where the options for feedback are limited to a couple of weird options.
That leads me to blogging. The question of how bloggers determine how good their blogs are is probably mostly driven by the number of people who read the blog or the number of people who comment. I mean the number of reasons people blog is probably as varied as the gross number of bloggers out there, but just about anyone would like to think that others like their work, at least to some degree.
People pour themselves into a blog post, and often people's reaction to it is nondescript. Yet, I believe that even a quick note stating the mediocre reaction to the post would be appreciated by the writer. So, consider this a plea that when you read a blog, leave a comment. Even if it is merely a score on a 1-10 scale, that would be cool. And definitely feel free to give this blog a bad grade, so I can continue to feel bad about myself!
I read your blog post today and like the fact that you can read the text more easily with the solid background color.
ReplyDeleteMatt,
ReplyDeleteThere are a million ways to judge the worth of a thing. In our marketing driven world, the Facebook "like" has become a highly-valued way because people tend to buy things they "like" far more often than things they do not "like". If we remove our marketing filter from our view of the world, we find many other ways to judge a thing's worth, such as its impact/importance for society, or better yet, its adherence to fact, logic, and wisdom. As to these qualities, something can be excellent and not be popular AT ALL. Consider Jesus himself--impeccable in his nature and yet not esteemed in kind.
As to people not responding to blog posts, ours is not a culture of reflection. And besides that, we have taught them that it is a fitting response simply to click the "like" button. They generally have nothing to say...and nothing to think. This is the way we have been educated/conditioned and it's AWESOME for marketers and for governments, though bad for the people themselves.
Few are even aware of it, much less, trying to CHANGE it.
I love your blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And one time, I had a birthday and only got like 5 birthday messages on Facebook, and it really depressed me. People that I considered to be far less popular than I typically received many more. So the next year on my birthday, I took a deep breath and checked my Facebook mid-morning, only to find like one message. Then I realized I had my birthday turned off! Ha ha! Next year I am going to have my account disabled, I think. It is so silly to determine anything from that, but I totally do it.
ReplyDeletep.s. I don't think I would take it as a bad sign that you only got a few comments here. I didn't get FB love because I had my birthday turned off. You don't get blog love because in order to post a comment on your blog, one has to copy those stupid letters and numbers, which one can never see properly, and it takes about ten tries to get it right. :-)
ReplyDelete