To Be Seen, To Be Heard…To Matter

Whether you’re marketing your crayon startup or trying to launch a fledgling career as an accordion player, people look at social tools and at some point wonder how they can get people to care about what they’re doing.

So much of the conversations these days tends to be focused on get-rich-tactics that pre-suppose that people have enough time to develop strategies, curate and launch successful schemes on their own. The reality is, most social media projects are done by one person who has other responsibilities. They’re not blogging because they don’t have time for such luxuries. Chances are, they missed your last awesomeConf 2019 because they couldn’t afford to do that or maybe they’re not even aware such things exist.

Right now, someone is doing the job you do in an office somewhere and feels like they’re the only one in the universe going through what they are. They might feel there’s a possibility that someone else out there does this work — especially in 2011 — but they don’t know how to reach out.

All around you – turn over your left shoulder and observe, switch shoulders and perform the same visual fact-finding operative – it’s hysterics. People are hysterical. Things are spinning completely out of control, making everything a nasty, head-splitting blur of activity. Just standing in it could induce migraine headaches and hyperventilating. There’s a nervous, coffee twitch that is steadily coursing through our hands and face muscles.

We all feel on edge and ages older than we should physically and mentally be. There’s always someone or some thing making the encouragement to do more and to move faster – hear those bleating traffic horns from behind if you haven’t stepped on the pedal when a light turns gloriously, finally (!!!) green. Your eyes probably hurt from all of that connectedness, all that text-messaging and computer screen-watching that you do all day long – skirting actual occupational responsibilities.

There’s a constant aching from head-to-toe and the rings under your eyes look like wedding bands for giants, thick as burrows. Health is a secondary concern. The emphasis is placed on productivity and products and progress and earning power. It’s about massiveness and mergers.

The only way to fight all that boredom – all of the marketers would suggest – is to buy more things, to be more technologically tuned in, to be wireless everywhere you move your feet. You should be able to smell the Internet in the air no matter where you are, you should be able to taste that sadness.

Words by Sean Moeller for Daytrotter about The Bowerbirds (via lprecords)