I was in the audience for John Mayer’s interview at last week’s ASCAP Expo in Los Angeles. And in his follow-up post, he challenges folks to respond, repost, and continue a conversation (in more than 140 characters). Listening to John speak, I was mostly impressed with the fact that he’s equally smart and interesting. Without a guitar, he’s still thoroughly engaging. I don’t follow him on Twitter for meaningful insight — only because it’s funny. Seems to me that’s really his goal. You can’t save the world in 140 characters, can you?
In a way, I really wish that people who didn’t have anything to say would just …. shut up. Your own sad life isn’t all that interesting to anyone, no one’s asking you to share it, so please … save us the trouble of having to sort through your drivel just to find something interesting. This could be said for most of Fox News, members of the Tea Party movement, and at least 1 or 2 Jonas Brothers. Alternately, just because you -can- record and release your own music/post to Facebook/write a blog, that doesn’t mean you should. But then, who’s to judge? Quite the conundrum…
Smart and engaging are qualities vastly under utilized in this industry, and it’s something that shouldn’t be limited to 140 characters. The “beauty” of Twitter and Facebook is that they force everything into an easily accessible platform. You can get/find/post just about anything quickly. But ultimate expression and creativity is stifled by the constraints required to gain this mass usability and appeal.
When you seek to please everyone, the result is usually some type of compromise. At best, you might get 99% of your original expression crammed into 140 characters or a wall post. And 99% shouldn’t be enough.
Originally posted by John Mayer :
Last week in Los Angeles I participated in a live Q&A as part of an ASCAP expo on songwriting. When the topic of Twitter came up, I explained my waning interest in it being part of my daily life. By no means do I think it’s over as a medium altogether, but I do think that the days of “Twitter: The Breakthrough” have passed, as has been and will continue to be the case for every online social network. It’s reached it’s cruising altitude, so to speak. Patterns and templates are emerging. The Twitter-bred syntax isn’t really doing it for me anymore.
And call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing in the world to read scads of mentions/@replies and effectively open the floodgate of other people’s approval/disapproval. Finding out in 140 characters what a stranger has to say about you is like a mathematical equation without an established value of ‘x’. Who are you, stranger? What do you stand for? What do you like, and if it’s not me, then what does move you? What DO you look up to? Once I find that out, I’ll know how disappointed I should be.
This is where Tumblr comes in. It’s the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse. I love reading other Tumblr users replies, because they’re thoughtful by virtue of the fact that if they’re not, they’ll bring the intellectual property value of their own blog down, and that’s a commodity on Tumblr.
This post is an experiment in itself. If you want to communicate with me, open a Tumblr account, follow me, repost my blog and then add to it. I’ll follow you back. Agree or disagree, lionize or demonize, but for God’s sake, be original. You’ll have all the room in the world to do it now.
