Jumping Off the Platform

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.

Bryan Adams 



In a world of instant gratification through social media, at what point does this major distraction distract from the quality of our writing? Do we twitter, pinterest, facebook and ning our way through the day, or do we use these communication tools to occasionally make contact with the people we care about? 

Should we, as writers and creatives, be even more concerned about the effect of constant and easy communication? And if we are adding to the overall online noise, what is the quality of that noise? 

A few years back, the word "platform" became the new obsession for writers. You didn't even need a completed manuscript, you were encouraged to build your platform, and then you could worry about what you were offering the world. Who you were, or made yourself appear to be, was the selling point, not what you wrote, or even how well you wrote it. It seemed absurd to me, a kind of backwards approach to creativity. Get an audience and then create something!

The only way this approach is valid is if the end product of creativity is just that, a product. We can argue that of course a painting or a book, a Florence + the Machine CD or a well-crafted bentwood rocker is a product. Yet doesn't the quality of the commodity matter more than how much attention it receives? If 200 people "like" something on facebook, does that make it more viable? 

What frightens me is that we might lose the deep contemplative selves that need quiet rooms, disconnection from electronics, and large swaths of time in order to have thoughts worthwhile enough to share. If our communications become primarily superficial, where in this electronic rabbit's hole is there room for empathy, for compassion? Not only do these distractions detract from our ability to create freely and wildly, they ironically distance us from one another.

Are we short-circuiting our adult brains, just like kids parked in front of Sesame Street? No one questions PBS-wisdom, when the early childhood experts explain that children have short attention spans, and shooting images and words and bright characters at them is the best way to program their malleable brains. We might ask those experts  if learning how the adult world works in slow, boring time isn't a better preparation for living in the adult world. 

Sesame Street to twitter is not a big leap. We adults build our web sites, create blogs, such as this one, and maybe we even have followers on the quick and dirty sites. Our every thought broadcast for others to consider. But what of the content? Can we in 140 characters communicate any more than self-interest? Do we touch or help or change one another's lives by posting the meal we just ate or the hand bag we just bought? Do you really care if I did 50 reps per arm at the gym? Okay, 30.

I recently opted out of facebook. I assumed my adult children would eventually call me, my friends too when they figured out I'd gone missing. As for the dozens of new "friends" I'd befriended, they would not truly miss someone they'd never met face to face. I'll maintain this site and my business site . . . and I'll communicate more intimately with people. I'll call them or email them or write them a letter. People still do that, right?  

As writers, we know what it takes to create our best work . . . each of us having a different set of quirky needs and habits. I found early on that I could not have music playing while I wrote, the lyrics kept me from deep concentration. Discovering that social media, as seductive as it is, has the same effect on me, it makes sense to walk away. I may not be following the populace, and the populace is definitely not following me, but if you and I pass on the street, recognize one another and embrace in friendship, that is enough of a platform for me.

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