Perspectives

I recently joined Facebook, perhaps the last person in North America to do so. Actually, I’ve received email that that is not the case. There are others who are also slow to get with the “latest” new thing. Not so new, huh, when there are 750 million users.

Oh, and I’m a Tweet Twit, too. For the life of me, the purpose of Tweeting escapes me. Yet, I get it completely.

As my sister describes humanity, “We’re nasty little monkeys,” but by gawd, “Can we talk about it?” Most human beings crave contact with their fellow human beings. It goes beyond crave, we require it. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest are broadly classified as social media. Many, if not all, of the social media have the capacity to instantaneously “share.” And that, Dear Reader, is the fulcrum for this phenomenon. Oh, and mix in the ability of corporations to profit and “Oh, Lordy, Katy bar the door.”

I am not the “innocent” I might be, the unassuming neophyte in this brave new world of human connectivity. Why else write a weekly column for 23-plus years for an esoteric weekly newspaper in the little burg of chichi Winter Park? What compels an individual such as myself to do so?

Two reasons, primarily: ego, and writing about a subject crystallizes one’s thoughts. How will I know what I know until I write it down?

Today, with the ubiquity of social media, everyone is a writer, an author, the mistress of her fairytale life, a master of his compelling narrative, the purveyor of unvarnished truth and dispenser of objective opinion. Uh-huh.

Not only that, but I’ve had a blog (a personal forum on the Internet) for years, MEDIAmerica.US. I thought myself so very clever when I came up with that name in a spurt of creativity some 15 years ago. But that was well before the rise of social media. I am an old man in an evolving world of communication.

Perhaps, a dozen people genuinely care about my welfare. I call them my lifeboat compadres, those who would make it in my lifeboat as the ship sank, whom I would willingly give up my seat for. Everyone has such a list or could rather quickly compile it.

I even have a list of folks who could hang on the gunnels. Hanging with Christopher Robin subsequently takes on new meaning. The balance devolves into the great abstraction called the “rest of humanity.” Who didn’t make the cut. Who cannot, so to speak, hangout.

But Facebook has changed the equation of relationships and communication. This is what’s coming, folks. That “six degrees of separation” is now a marketing formula (an algorithmic computation) for pushing product and services. And Facebook and all subsequent iterations of electronic/Internet social communication will become vast platforms for evaluating who you are, who you know and what you/they consume (ideas, products, services, needs and wants). Purists decry the commercialization of the Internet, and I laugh out loud at such naïveté. Anything mankind can do, well, will be done for a buck.

Find a stray dog in the neighborhood and post about it on Facebook? Expect, someday, pop-up ads pushing dog food.

If you think you’re going to find “yourself” on the Internet, you’re wrong. It is you who will be found.

Who is Jepson?

Jepson is a 24-year resident of Florida. He’s fiscally conservative, socially liberal, likes art and embraces diversity of opinion. Reach him at [email protected]