A long downward spiral
It started out pretty well
I have been online since the early days of personal computing. My 8-bit Atari computers and my 300 baud acoustically coupled Atari 830 modem spent way too many nights and weekends linked up to The Source, Dow Jones Information Service, and assorted early BBS systems. I later progressed to CompuServe and GEnie, and NNTP newsgroups. Eventually, I ended up on the web in the early 90s. These were the good years, where I actually had fun most of the time that I was online, and contributed to the fun being had by others - with my own work, not just sharing something funny that had been posted elsewhere.
I realize that it is me
I have had social issues for a long time. They were exacerbated by my time in the Coast Guard, and really came to a head during my tours onboard polar icebreakers, where I'd be cooped up with people for many months in the Arctic
 |
| USCGC Polar Star - from Wikipedia |
This was reflected in my online life, I think.
The 1980s
In the eighties, everything was pretty carefree all over the place. Lots of jokes and discussions about everything under the sun. As I mentioned earlier, these were the 'good' years. Computers and online communications were new to all of us. We could carry on conversations for months, sometimes after not having seen the other person for weeks. There was very little trolling that wasn't obviously meant as fun, and everything was good natured and laid back.
The 1990s
The nineties were still pretty busy. Nowhere near as much in the way of lighthearted banter though. This was the Clinton era, and the 2000 Presidential campaign. There was a lot of communication with other people, but it was generally pretty serious, if not downright acrimonious.
 |
| Democratic Underground |
The 2000s
The Bush administration, 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still a lot of back and forth, but I was noticing changes. I was on a lot of online forums, since the newsgroups were dying down. Things were OK, but I noticed big changes even then. As the years progressed, it was harder to get actual responses to posts on places like Democratic Underground. Other people had great 'fan clubs' - they'd routinely get hundreds of replies to their posts, and people wondered where they had gone to when they were offline for a while. I might get three to fifteen replies to my posts, and when I was gone and then came back, I'd be lucky to get an "Oh, I think I remember you." - even though I'd been a member since 2001 - almost the beginning. I pretty much stopped posting to all forums around 2007 through 2008.
The 2010s
Most of my attempts to deal with people, other than going to the store and having someone ask me a question, are done through various online avenues. I have this blog, and the one I use for my online store, The Wits' End. There is Facebook, of course. I have to admit that I've never really liked Facebook very much and only hang
 |
| The Wits' End |
Social networks like Google+ and Twitter
Google+ and Twitter are different matters. I have two different Twitter accounts. One for me personally, and one for The Wits End. Each of the two accounts have approximately 1,500 followers. My Google+ profile shows me that I currently have 1,732 followers. This sounds pretty good I suppose, but it's not really as impressive as a person would think. I have run tests on Twitter over the years, asking questions, saying controversial things, asking for help with something, replying to conversations being conducted and more. I have never received a reply to one of my own posts that didn't involve a link to a page from someone else. I have had a few comments from a couple of individuals relating to the atheist related items in my online store and Etsy shop, so there is that I suppose. I do; however, get loads of likes (well, favorites now) and the occasional retweet, so I do know that people are seeing things.
Google+ is a little better. I do, in general get a little more interaction. Nothing spectacular, but I enjoy it because it's the place where I actually feel like a human being that someone wants to communicate with. My original posts look pretty sad compared to other people - there are a number of people I interact that have a quarter of the number of followers and yet they have five to six times the number of views on their posts. About 20 percent of my posts probably get a reply. On the average, those that do get a reply, get about one to three of them. I look at the streams of friends and see that they're getting three or more replies on almost all of their posts.
The blogs
Then there are the blogs. I've had this one for many years - July of 2008 was my first post. The other one, which is for my online store - The Wits' End since July of 2015. While I will be the first to admit that I am not exactly a great blogger, it always seems strange to me that I don't get any sort of interaction on them at all, even when some of the posts might get fifty views in a day, and many hundreds of views overall. If I remember correctly, when you don't count the comments that originate on Google+ (and there have only been three instances of those), I've only had one comment on my blogs, and that was a SPAM comment.
The stores
Between my Etsy shop and the online store, I have receive many tens of thousands of likes, retweets, pluses and favorites on the items that I make and sell; these would be through Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. Those thousands of assorted likes and retweets in a month result in about ten to fifteen sales for that month, but that's a different matter.
So why am I posting this?
That's a good question. I don't really know, to be honest. Judging from the very things that I have been talking about, I am unlikely to get any sort of reply. However, even with that knowledge, I'm hoping to buck the odds and get some insight from people into what I might be doing wrong, and what steps I can take to change direction.
1 comment:
It's pretty hard to respond to something that's the online equivalent of a sigh, other than to say, I could relate to most everything you've said. The thing that hasn't been considered is that we're aging. Most people remember their teens and 20s as "carefree and fun" and our online interactions tend to mirror ourselves.
While there is likely some merit to the argument of the changing culture and it's corresponding norms in social interactions, I don't know that it's the internet per se (and I realize you weren't necessarily saying this either), but more the internet is a mirror of what's actually going on in the big room and on a macro scale.
On the one hand it's been really fun and interesting to engage with people from all over the world (at one point I took a MOOC course with 180k+ students enrolled in the course), it's also been disturbing to see some of the inner workings of people I've known for most of my life. Super hard to see how trauma has affected the lives of friends and family. Access to social media makes me feel like I need to react to literally more stuff, good and bad.
The one thing I keep posted on my computer is a reminder that on social media, most people are far more interested in having you read what they post, than they are about reading what you post. Since keeping this reminder on my desk, I cancel many more posts.
Post a Comment