Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content.
These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.
Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere.
From businesses we’ve never heard of, to countries we’ve never visited, to infants who’ve had the random misfortune to be born into a family that’s on TV – it’s all grist for obvious jokes and shortsighted commentary that, for at least a few minutes, helps both the maker and the consumer feel a little less bored, a little less vulnerable, and a little less disconnected. For a minute, anyway, it makes us feel more alive. Does me, anyway.
But, in my observation, the long-term effect of each of these can be surprisingly different.
What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into {something else}. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks – empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.
Don’t get me wrong. Gumming the edges of popular culture and occasionally rolling the results into a wicked spitball has a noble tradition that includes the best work of of Voltaire, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, and a handful of people I count as good friends and brilliant editors. There’s nothing wrong with *screwing* *things* up every single day. But you have to bring some art to it. Not just typing.
What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.
With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato – regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.
This doesn’t mean I’ll be liveblogging a lot of ham-fisted attempts to turn “everything” off. But it does mean making mindful decisions about the quality of any input that I check repeatedly – as well as any “stuff” I produce. Everything. From news sources to entertainment programming, and from ephemeral web content down to each email message I decide to respond to. The *crap* has to go, inclusive.
To be honest, I don’t have a specific agenda for what I want to do all that differently, apart from what I’m already trying to do every day:
- identify and destroy small-return *nonsense*;
- shut off anything that’s noisier than it is useful;
- make brutally fast decisions about what I don’t need to be doing;
- avoid anything that feels like fake sincerity (esp. where it may touch money);
- demand personal focus on making good things;
- put a handful of real people near the center of everything.
All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.
To underscore, I have no plan to stop making jokes in poor taste or to swear off ragging people who clearly have it coming to them. It’s just that it’s important to me to make world-class tasteless jokes and to rag the worthy in a way that no one is expecting. I want to become an evangelist for hard work and editing, and I want to get to a place where it shows in everything that I do, make, and share. Yes, even if it makes me sound like a fancy guy who just doesn’t get it.
So, yes. I am cutting way back on trips to the steam table of half-finished, half-useful, half-ideas that I both make and consume. And, with respect, I encourage you to consider doing the same; especially if that all-you-can-eat buffet of snark and streaming produces (or encourages) anything short of your “A” game.
If I’m not laughing at your joke, complimenting your insight, or leading the Standing O for something you spent 10 seconds pecking up on your phone, it may not be because I don’t get it; it may be because I think we’re both capable of better and just need to find the courage to say so. In as many characters as it takes.
Thanks to Nick for pointing me towards this blog by Merlin Mann. I’m sorry if the language bothers some of you— but I felt that the message was worth it.
Twitter, Tweet-chats and all have been wonderful in terms of enabling me to meet some very diverse, interesting intelligent, and driven new virtual *friends*.
At this stage we seem to be still simply noting how important #hcsm is; why we should still engage, etc? What is the *cost* of further engagement at this level of discourse? Initially we were engaging and we identified a need… especially the #hcsm crowd. But then we seemed to enter into an echo chamber phase.
I think we can all agree… Social Media is here to stay and #HCSM can help push the envelope in gaining adoption by all who should be at the table.
Do we need another blog about why twitter is important, do we need another blog post about why physicians should engage, when we should engage, etc????
Maybe… but I won’t be reading them.
Of course physicians should be engaged in social media… of course patients should be the center of the health care debate… and so on. In my opinion it’s time to move on and push forward… we need to move to the next platform– or the next phase where we can design, implement and deploy actionable steps to drive adoption — awaken, educate, encourage, mentor and promote everyone to be a team member of their (a) health care team.
Too harsh? Too naive? Disagree?
Let me have it! :-)
We ARE ALL Patients… but we will all be far better off if we figure out how to drive this beyond the discussion phase.
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Welcome to the summit of Mount Frustration. :)We puff and wheeze to get to the top, only to find that everyone is either still following along behind us, or has already begun their descent into the Land of Possibility that lies beyond.We all tread the same path. We all experience the disappointment of finding that not everyone is ready to act at the same time as we are, in the same ways that we want to. We all feel that change isn’t happening fast enough. And we’re all right.Overworked though the maxim may be: the social web merely foregrounds the necessity of our having to be the change we want to see in the world. It does not resolve the eternal question of temporal variance with regard to the evolution of personal perspectives.We are all going to have our own epiphanies for our own reasons in our own time.However, what the social web *does* provide us with is a matrix of strong and weak ties to a community of amazingly talented, capable people who are acting on their own behalves to create the changes that we are individually and collectively shaping into a vision of what we would like the future to look like.There is no moment of sudden rupture, when things suddenly transition from How They Were into How They Want Them To Be. Rather, change is happening around us, constantly.If we can find a moment of quiet contemplation in our working lives to look around the virtual environments we labour within, we can almost believe we can steal a glimpse of change happening in real time at a nearly-imperceptible speed.Where?In the flow of data in our stream.In the new voices joining the health conversation every day asking the questions that have just occurred to them that we may have discussed last year, but that remain axial to their lived experience in their own ontological present.Now, they want to converse and listen. Soon, they will act. And we will act with them.
Great comment @andrewspong . Can you tell that I am a surgeon :-) Sometimes that surgical personality comes through and leads to frustration at my perceived rate of change. True, incremental change is better than no change at all… but those of us who have been bouncing this around for quite a while now should have more to offer the newcomers other than seasoned advice. No?
I followed Merlin Mann 4 years ago before he left the infosphere in despair. He hated the nonsense and in many ways was way ahead of all of us. I know your frustration but would encourage you to find a way to make this dialog fit in somehow for you. This is one big experiment in its early stages. The doctors are just starting to show up and they need some direction. We’ll keep the light on for you.
Howard –Yes, we can tell you’re a surgeon.This sense of frustration is not unique to social media or health care social media. In many contexts, I know the right answer (even though I’m *not* a surgeon), but I can’t just shout it out and expect everyone to fall in line. “Getting to yes” is a process that involves the development of consensus among all affected stakeholders.The key to not getting frustrated is defining each stage of the problem you want to solve (Q: How do you eat an elephant? A: One bite at a time.), and defining the community of stakeholders you need in order to address and solve the problem. This approach will extricate you from having the introductory conversation over and over again, and move you into more fertile territory, where you can have a series of incremental “wins.” The wins allow you to move the ball forward on a broader front.You have acted on this advice (before I even had the chance to offer it!) by ramping up your own professional social media efforts, and you’ve let us know that those efforts have yielded you wins — new patients through the door. They also give you a bully pulpit from which you have the opportunity to educate and inform your patients and the general public, and influence other clinicians (all good things).Don’t fold your tents yet.
Thanks everyone who took the time to leave a thoughtful comment!! Your points are valid and well taken…even from a surgeon :-) !! No wonder there are so few surgeons engaging in social media