Here's today's (probably first) duh statement: cyberspace is an odd place. I suspect it isn't if you grew up consistently online, essentially living in cyberspace. However, I'm of a certain vintage where I came to it later in life. I'm always amazed/impressed when I bump into someone online, although, if you think of it, isn't this one of the points of the whole contraption? This morning a nice USC graduate student (good morning, Christopher) asked me if he could study some aspects of my blog for his dissertation research, and, of course, I said yes - which I would have even if I didn't have painful memories of my dissertation. When I was teaching at Franklin and finishing up my graduate work at UC I can remember asking a colleague if she would consider reading some of my chapters and she said yes, for money. Thankfully, innumerable other folks did so out of the goodness of their heart. I guess I bring up the request because I always assume that my blog sits out there floating inert in cyberspace bothering no one (unlike it's creator). That said, since I started writing daily commentary on Proust I've been getting between 75 and 125 views a day, which, in my little corner of the world, is an explosion. It's probably a case of tapping into the Proustian purists who will move on to more interesting subject matter when I finish misunderstanding Remembrance of Things Past. Of course, I've never really made any attempt to "grow" the blog, which would mean tackling the whole project more systematically and linking to other blogs.
I've done a little bit of that in Twitter in that I'll reach out to other folks, especially in Yemen. I want to follow them and the unfolding tragedy in Yemen - and inshallah the happy ending, although that, sadly, seems unlikely - but I want to be able to approach them with questions, and to do that I think you need to be at least somewhat on their radar. There is definitely a generational factor at work with Twitter as well. For example, musicians like Neil Young or Lucinda Williams use Twitter - or maybe more accurately their handlers use Twitter - as a promotional tool, while a younger generation like Kathleen Edwards or Neko Case tend to post funny stories or pictures (Edwards about her coffeeshop or Case about her dogs) like anyone else would. I'm thinking about this because I wonder if the same thing is expressed in the Twitter responses - or non-responses - of the candidates. All of the candidates dump stuff on Twitter, but it's just endless soundbites, even from folks who I really admire like Bernie Sanders. Essentially, is this just a case of politicians guarding their words or is this representative of a generational understanding of the point of social media? Going back to the beginning of this mini-rant, isn't the point of social media to bump into other folks, not just talk about them? Are you facilitating a discussion because you want to hear what people think or are you just lecturing at them?
Every morning I send personalized versions of the same Tweet to all the presidential candidates, the Secretary of State John Kerry, and President Obama. @BernieSanders Your thoughts on the #Saudi war in #Yemen? #BernieSanders So far not one response, other than random folks ReTweeting them. So, does this mean that the candidates and the Secretary of State and the President don't care about or understand Yemen - or that they don't care about or understand their audience - or they don't care about or understand social media? Well, sadly, we know none of them care about Yemen . . .
Oh, and I just realized that this is my 800th post on this blog, which I guess makes some thematic sense.
I've done a little bit of that in Twitter in that I'll reach out to other folks, especially in Yemen. I want to follow them and the unfolding tragedy in Yemen - and inshallah the happy ending, although that, sadly, seems unlikely - but I want to be able to approach them with questions, and to do that I think you need to be at least somewhat on their radar. There is definitely a generational factor at work with Twitter as well. For example, musicians like Neil Young or Lucinda Williams use Twitter - or maybe more accurately their handlers use Twitter - as a promotional tool, while a younger generation like Kathleen Edwards or Neko Case tend to post funny stories or pictures (Edwards about her coffeeshop or Case about her dogs) like anyone else would. I'm thinking about this because I wonder if the same thing is expressed in the Twitter responses - or non-responses - of the candidates. All of the candidates dump stuff on Twitter, but it's just endless soundbites, even from folks who I really admire like Bernie Sanders. Essentially, is this just a case of politicians guarding their words or is this representative of a generational understanding of the point of social media? Going back to the beginning of this mini-rant, isn't the point of social media to bump into other folks, not just talk about them? Are you facilitating a discussion because you want to hear what people think or are you just lecturing at them?
Every morning I send personalized versions of the same Tweet to all the presidential candidates, the Secretary of State John Kerry, and President Obama. @BernieSanders Your thoughts on the #Saudi war in #Yemen? #BernieSanders So far not one response, other than random folks ReTweeting them. So, does this mean that the candidates and the Secretary of State and the President don't care about or understand Yemen - or that they don't care about or understand their audience - or they don't care about or understand social media? Well, sadly, we know none of them care about Yemen . . .
Oh, and I just realized that this is my 800th post on this blog, which I guess makes some thematic sense.
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