For Tom Matlack, social media got in the way of being a good man.
“So you’ve abandoned social media.
Are you writing a book?
Working for the CIA?
Creating a new world order?
Or just spending time with the family and keeping a low profile.
Inquisitive minds want to know…”
—a recent email in my inbox
I truly believe the way to get attention as a writer in the modern world is via social media. We’ve built The Good Men Project around the idea. We have nearly three hundred evangelists who contribute content. Our Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and StumbleUpon efforts are organized and powerful. Lisa, our CEO and visionary, sends out weekly emails to our contributors and holds frequent social media conference calls to help folks build out their own person platforms as a part of our greater mission to spark a national conversation about manhood.
All this stuff is critically important to a modern media brand, whether you are running for president or selling diapers.
But I’ve hit the wall. I just can’t do it anymore. Since August, I have completely unplugged from the social media-sphere.
I’m begging you. Please blog, tweet, like, and comment profusely on that statement.
Just don’t ask me to do the same.
♦◊♦
It all started well and good. I hit 10,000 Twitter followers within a few weeks. I spent a lot of time on Facebook, finding famous people to friend, using a standard intro about the GMP mission and why it’s important. I focused on the media, infiltrating several hundred NYT reporters.
The first sign of trouble was when Facebook shut down my account because I had gathered several thousand friends too quickly. I blew past the warnings, and before I knew it, I had to start over from scratch. No worries. I was more selective this time, friending just the VIPs I already had formed relationships with. Then, working out from there.
I also built a robust contact Rolodex of several thousand people, from Op-Ed editors who actually published my stuff somewhat regularly to magazine editors and a few famous actors.
“Spamming” really wasn’t a word that I acknowledged. If I was interested in something, you must be too, and I would tell you about it via email, Twitter, and Facebook. I was nothing if not relentless in my social media tactics.
On vacation I would always promise to put down my social media obsession. But it never worked for more than a few days. Soon, I was back on, promoting just as hard as before.
♦◊♦
Then something clicked. I realized that the medium had overtaken the message. And that same medium had begun to eat away at my very person and the people I care most about.
I am not passing judgment on anyone else. I know many people feel social media allows them to communicate and become closer to family and friends. I am just speaking for my experience and myself here. I realized this was a dead-end, something that was consuming me in a way that clouded my ability to think and write and love the way I aspired to do.
Maybe the Google Plus circles are the answer. But I am really not willing to take that chance. Maybe if I hadn’t befriended thousands of strangers, things would have worked out differently. But communicating via Facebook and Twitter with people I have never met began to eat away at me. And I started to get a lot of creepy messages from people who pretended to know things about me that they really didn’t.
♦◊♦
So I shut it all down. My Facebook and Twitter accounts still exist for the greater good of the GMP, but I no longer know the passwords. Someone else posts my columns there. I have gone back to the days of communicating face to face with the people I care about most.
I’ve been riding my bike more, thinking more, writing without considering the social media impact, spending more time sprawled across my daughter’s bed talking about what it’s like to be 17 in this day and age. I’ve been reading books (OK, the one about the creation of ESPN but still…). I’ve been really trying to grapple with prison and pensions, education and income distribution, poverty and race. My ideas may be insane, but they aren’t formed with 60-character limits in mind.
The biggest change since I put down social media is that I am more relaxed. Before, I felt this relentless pressure to check, update, and comment on my various streams. I was spending hours every day, keeping up and expanding my empire. And to what end? Did it really make the world a better place? Did it help me love and think more clearly?
For this man, aspiring to be good it got in the way. It was a distraction. It cluttered my already very cluttered brain with bits and bites of information and connections that didn’t advance my cause or my humanity.
But that’s just me.
Feel free to share this piece on Facebook, like it on Reddit, and tweet a pithy headline and link. I won’t condemn you for it. Really.
(So, I sort of lied. After three months off, I am back on Twitter once in a while. I’m just dipping my toe in the water to see if I can control my urge to emerge myself completely. So far so good on that front. So if you want to connect with me there, it’s @tmatlack.)
—Photo webtreats/Flickr
When does a social media user cross over from being a social media user to social media addict? Lili Bee makes a good point, that some addicts use social media as a way to put distance between themselves and other people. I’m fairly new at social media and it’s been important for building a platform as a writer…I feel that I’ve “met” other like-minded writers/bloggers through the internet and I enjoy those relationships. But your post is a good reminder that the most important relationships are those at home, or in one’s intimate circle of friends, and how easy it… Read more »
Another great post Tom. I applaud the stones it must have taken you to just give it all up. I have felt many of the same thing, although I have yet to pull the plug on the whole thing because I feel it’s a critical part of my networking from a career perspective. I am nowhere near your volume of followers or FB friends, and that’s cool with me. I can see how it could get it overwhelming and consume your life. The bottom line is this: if you feel like you’re spending too much time with it and you’re… Read more »
Yes Mike. It’s a day to day deal for me. But obviously the quality of my relationships with the people I love is the most important thing I have to offer.
I think that we have a fine tuneable inner sense that tells us when we are over the edge, when we are, ‘addicted.’ Given validation, that gut feeling is tremendously reliable wisdom for suggestive behaviour change. Whether it’s a sense that your caffeine addiction is getting the better of you, your exercise regimen is becoming destructive or ‘knowing’ that one drink renders that little voice unconscious, I believe we are given clues which we choose to attend to or not. Social media has us by the balls. I have wondered what our world would be like with regular self imposed… Read more »
Carla I like to think of the positive energy/focus as passion. Passion is good. Obsession, for me, is destructive.
It’s as if you’re shouting “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME” in the abstract cave of cyberspace—but it’s not just you, it’s millions of other people doing the same exact thing, which, of course, fuels that feeling that you need to do it more (because, after all, someone always has more followers, or tweets more, or posts updates more frequently), and all of a sudden it explodes into some maniacal, out-of-control rat race. In the end—for what purpose? More pageviews? More likes? I hate how that’s how we’re starting to value a piece’s worth, because it usually means that we… Read more »
Exactly. A narcissistic craving for attention is still pathological, whether it’s in person or online.
John D couldn’t have said it any better. Amen.
John, this is so true! My biggest pet peeve is that the content of a post, and the key words in the title, have such a huge bearing on how “well” it does. It could be the most exquisitely written, emotionally complex, compelling read…but it can get very few page views and comments if it’s not one of those posts that snags eyeballs. I find that on almost every online publication, the formula for getting page views and comments is to write something–anything–about sex. I see poorly written posts that rehash content that has been served up 1000’s of times,… Read more »
I hear you but I love social media. And I don’t think it takes away from time with my family. Mainly because of how little time it takes to keep up. Seriously, I can shoot a video and as soon as it’s done it uploads to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Every time someone RTs me or give me a “Like” it’s forwarded to my phone. I pull it out, send a thank you and I’m done. It all takes less than 30 seconds. Sure I give my son my undivided attention when we’re playing or talking, but other times I… Read more »
“We have nearly three hundred evangelists who contribute content…. Lisa, our CEO and visionary…. ”
Such an interesting choice of words. Is this a discussion of gender or a tent revival meeting?
Well Thadeus, both actually.
That one stuck out to me too. “Evangelists” has a permanently negative connotation whenever I encounter it. Pundits or commentators would probably be preferable.
So let me get this straight, Tom: you believe masculinity needs to be discussed as some sort of field of revealed truth and that those people who do not agree with said revealed truth needs must be labled as “unsaved”? Because that would be the point of tent revivalism.
Loved this, Tom. Over here at Camp Posarc, we nicknamed FB “Faceplant” because that’s what can happen in front of it! One interesting aside: because FB has been instrumental in so many affairs and even divorces, many of those I work with have had to give it up, or if they absolutely need it for business, they pay someone else to deal with it. I haven’t heard of one single case where they regret it; to the contrary, they’re enjoying the free time that suddenly appeared, to engage in actual connection with friends and family. And their marriages are minus… Read more »
You should write a post about this LB:
“One interesting aside: because FB has been instrumental in so many affairs and even divorces, many of those I work with have had to give it up, or if they absolutely need it for business, they pay someone else to deal with it.”
I hear you on this one, Tom. Social media can quickly become an all-consuming black hole, and it takes a conscious effort to keep it all under control. Until Facebook made some major changes recently, I was ready to jump ship because my “friend” list was a far cry from the purely personal contacts I had when I signed up for Facebook as a college student. Now with the new list features and the ability to let people subscribe to my public updates instead of “friend” me, I’m starting to see a new life for Facebook. As a communications professional,… Read more »
I wondered what happened to you.
I’m on twitter and my blog. That’s it. I know I should social media more since I’m an aspiring author, but I like having a life. My 15 yr old’s cheerleading is expensive and time consuming.
I like your post a lot. During my divorce almost six years ago, I discovered myspace and later facebook. The keeping up with the jones/mean girls/social demonization was unbelievable. It also hurts marriages.
You post has been retweeted and recommended.
“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”
Good for you, Tom, and one could go a step further and add email to the mix. Balance is the key, at least in my perspective, but I’m an old school fogey.
Tom, great post. Just got it from you, BTW, as a DM on Twitter. 🙂 I feel the same way, often. I really struggle with it. I have days I want to quit. But I keep going, believing it will advance my writing and my career, here as a contributor on GMP and lots of other places. But sometime I feel schizoid. I can multitask really well. I can watch t.v., type, and talk to someone in the room with me at the same time and stay with all three threads. But is that a good thing? I may one… Read more »
Guilty as charged.