well, this one might get me ostracized

It’s not that different from television. There’s 90% crap or repitition on the screen, and now and then you’ve got a show worth your attention and time. So it’s all about filtering. It’s the same for Twitter, blogs, articles, videos. There’s a lot of themes & threads which are being repeated over & over again (which is why they’re threads…), it’s just a matter of keeping your eye on the bigger trends, and not get too distracted by the ongoing noise.

For some time now, I’ve stopped following Twitter and blogs from ubercloseby. The real new, fresh themes float to the top without me having to search for them.

For the same reason it’s absolutely pointless to spend your life going from conference to conference. There’s an absolute overabundance of two-hour, half-day, one-day, two-day and three-day conferences, and I find that very few of them present really new thoughts. And that includes the Making Digital Work conference in Boulder. I’m not saying the presenters don’t have interesting arguments, it’s just that most of those have already been discussed, explored and expressed in many different places and in many different ways before. Scan through the 55 summary slides (http://www.slideshare.net/gabereilly/makinf), and ask yourself: is there anything in there you didn’t already know or were familiar with?

I love this post for its honesty – and for the frank admission from the author that – sometimes – she has also gotten caught up in what her post ultimately criticizes (have any of us not?). Like other commenters have also noted, I see two aspects to this rant – the desire to philosophize less and actually create, test more and the growing contempt/disgust with the transparent incestuousness and back-patting in our industry – and the self-inflected pressure to get into the game if you want to advance your perception within that collective (vs. just doing good work and getting on with a great, beneficial life offline).

Our industry is small enough that any of us following the conversation on Twitter or online start to see a very clearly and narrowly defined conversation among that echo chamber of perceived ‘thought leaders’. It’s that latter aspect that is particularly leaving a bad taste in my mouth, as well. Is it human nature to look out for yourself, your perception & spot on a pyramid and to scratch the backs of those that are helping you (i.e., the immediate Tweet of ‘great brainstorm with @__, @___, and @___) is one of my favorites – if the thinking was strong, then share the thinking & not just the participants, whom should be the PS, not the subject). As masters of the art of perception (it’s our business), we should also realize how transparent – and oftentimes distasteful – this echo-chamber can become.

I will do my part by keeping my own head a bit ‘down’ – writing about what inspires me, using that education and inspiration to DO better work – and keeping my mouth (and Tweets) shut if I have nothing positive and actionable to say. I’m a work in progress, as well as my approach to the sometimes necessarily public nature of our industry.

Two discrete points being made here, I’d think. One the sheer amount of negative energy being wasted in comments and the other, an echo-chamber of commentary.

A caveat here – am writing this from a different cultural context, but similar industry/profession. I’ve mentioned exactly this issue apropos of snide comments being made on commercials & people (in my local market). Never understood why we cannot celebrate the great and thereby, inspire a ‘different’ quality of work. The only solution may be to ignore what is said. Simple.

It would be bit much to quote the venerable Sir Hegarty here. But he did say, ‘in life you can oppose, but you always have to propose’. Or as Sir Frank Lowe put it, ‘The best response is simply, a better ad’.

Your second point is far more interesting. The echo chamber of monkey chatter. What bothers me is that if we are all speaking about the same stuff, where are the different ideas coming from? Obviously not from the spaces we dwell in. Nic Carr inadvertently offers a solution – that of operating in two modes – tweeting & living in the moment. As you do. Maybe, that’s the way forward. I’d also like to draw your attention to this excellent, provocatively titled post via bbh-labs; http://bbh-labs.com/will-social-media-eat-itself

Worth a think. And thank you for giving a voice to a commonly held sentiment.

As a curious mind, I’m probably more interested in how these insertions of info/opinion are being set into motion, rather than arguing whether it should be happening or not. Yeah, there’s an echo-chamber; and for the most part, yeah, that shit sucks. But what can we glean from the creative process and ourselves from it? How will we *change* it?

I’m young and participate in the online conversation because it’s natural for me–Twitter’s like my weird, auxiliary phantom limb. I can discern between what’s good and what’s not. But what worries me is that there will always be a new class of creative types that look to those perpetuating ideas–the “best” ideas, the “new” ideas, the “groundbreaking models” that churn them out in the “most innovative” campaigns–and that it might limit them (us) to think for ourselves.

I think a good deal has to do with the media we use and how their contextual nature is to celebrify individuals and orgs–and yes, even ideas. With Twitter, for instance, the medium is processed and valued by # of followers and RTs. And I’m down with that, but it can be difficult and frustrating to introduce *real* new ideas into the larger conversation if no one wants to pay attention because I have less than 500 followers.

You know what I mean, Twitterati?

Yeah – making stuff and talking about it is a lot more useful than talking about making stuff.

P.S. The whole Internet’s got trolls. Nothing new here:)

my friend melissa posted a quote from your entry on her tumblr. it struck me because i had a similar cathartic release a couple days ago (only mine was really just a ranting tweetr saying, “how is it that some people never get bored of talking about the business?”).

Am I only one who’s sick of writing, writes uberblonde.

Am I the only one who’s sick of reading about everyone agreeing, asks uberblonde.

‘No’, agrees everyone. ‘Me too, me too’. We’re sick of people agreeing, too.

Oh but I’m just a pissed off copywriter, right? (and I’m not even working on a novel) – or did you just say that to put people like me off from commenting.

But if you don’t read agency spy (apart from when you do), then who is there to be ostracised from?

Surely if you think it’s all such an echo chamber, you should be encouraging debate, not debating its merit?

Honesty… what I love about this post and really about you as a strategy/planner-y person. You say the stuff we think of but can’t always articulate. So thank you. It’s not easy and I respect that 1000%.

I’ve totally fallen by the wayside with my blogging ways, particularly since the “day job” ramped up. And sometimes the stuff I put out on my blog feels kinda sub-par… who WANTS to make sub-par stuff to sit on a shelf? None of us. At some point we do need to sit back, think and make stuff the substantively move conversations forward. Or just do other things, which is cool too.

That said, I guess one could say that I a bit of the planning twitterati. I’m guilty as many are for jumping on bandwagons of thought as the next guy/gal. But for what it’s worth, I try very hard to always stay honest and true to myself. If I find something interesting that maybe a bunch of other folks have, yeah, I’ll share it, because chances are there’ll be a couple people that don’t crossover. And if I do think it furthers a conversation, or spark a bit of curiosity in someone the way it did for me, I’ll share.

I can’t hate on this little world, because if it wasn’t for this, this little strategist who was in a tiny shop in San Diego a year ago, would have never met you and other super rad/interesting planning/creative people. It was so empowering to hear/be a part of something that wasn’t within my walls. And while it is a bit of an echo chamber at times, I think it also provides a “safe zone” of sorts for planners/strategists/creatives who don’t necessarily have that and can feel like they can express their ideas where they won’t be ostracized.

End of it all, I feel like the beauty of what we do and even the little world that we’re a part of is that (I hope) we have a really open, progressive group of thinkers who welcome discourse over ego-coddling, and if they (we) are getting stagnant, saying the same ish, it’s time to recharge and recognize it’s time to up the ante…thanks for the challenge!!

I gotta say that as a planner, I really don’t have much interest in blogging or tweeting about our craft. I’d just be talking in circles with likeminded people, and I would neither be learning nor teaching anything new. I much prefer to approach social media just like every other normal civilian because then maybe I’ll actually learn how it’s used in the real world as a form of expression or documentation rather than just a platform for me to toot my own horn to show how smart i am.

thanks for the thoughtful post, heidi.

I also found this really really refreshing to read, cheers Heidi. It’s hard not to feel disappointed sometimes by the twitter echo chamber of our industry, the self-congratulatory mutual back-patting of some participants, the time-suck of reading interesting stuff vs doing interesting stuff. I like the exhortation to stay focused on coming up with great original output, great original material – sure, we must keep up to speed on new possibilities, but realize it’s always a means to an end. Common sense, excellently expressed.

while I’m here I’ll add though that I was nothing short of horrified by the agencyspy comment stream in response to faris’s piece. Even if there was a reasonable point being made, it was utterly nullified by the nature of most comments. The vitriol and abuse and lowness were just repulsive, I simply can’t believe that anyone thinks this is an acceptable way to talk about someone else – especially in a public forum.

Amen.

So glad to hear you say these things, Heidi. To be honest it’s the sentiment that’s been building among the not-so-Twitterati for quite a while now (I happen to be a representative of that group.) I was afraid you were going to get lost to them as well. It was looking that way.

I know and respect many of the folks who may be in question (highly paid strategic thinkers who blog & tweet constantly and are quick to mention each other to the world, but rarely make things or even get credit for making things anymore.) I’ve worked with some of them and I believe their contribution to be vital at times for client relations, and highly effective for creative inspiration and direction.

I do wonder, though, how in the world any of them have time to produce as much content as they do, while still doing real “work.” Like you said, Heidi – it’s a heck of a time drain that takes away from potentially productive activities. If the answer is “well, all I really do is produce blogs and tweets and articles now,” then fine – change your title to digital philosopher and op ed anthro-journalist extraordinaire. You can even keep the same paycheck, if your organization thinks that output is worth the dough.

I’m eager to hear these Twitter & blog stars’ thoughts on the AgencySpy post & comments, as well as this piece. Strangely, for being so amazingly connected I don’t think they’ve made any statements or reactions yet. What happened to those tweeters who never sleep or break for dinner.?

I think this week marks a major change in the industry and conversation. Somebody needed to call out the Twitter time-drain, the circle-jerking, the pontificating, the foolery. Many of us have been saying it for a long time and more people need to join in – in word AND in action. Make things. Help creative people make things. Take part in the world. Making a blog post is not making things. A tweet is not a thing. (Magritte is finally relevant. Ceci n’est pas une pipe – it’s not a pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe.)

Irony: I want this post to circulate around the Twittersphere so that the talking-to-ourselves will stop. Will the bomb-makers dismantle their own bomb?

Beautifully articulated. There’s quite a bit of self aggrandizement as well as loathing in our industry, some of it driven by anger, some by frustration, some by pure ego. But there’s a more important reason why we do what we do, why we passionately dedicate ourselves to creativity, innovation, new ways of thinking, collaboration and reinvention. It’s what defines us as individuals. The rest is background noise which I tend to tune out.

I totally agree with you. This was the most refreshing piece I’ve read about our quest to keep up with all that’s going on in our industry.

I agree with all of your points, especially the one about sleep! There was a period of time when I followed all of the big-whigs of social media on Twitter and the like and found, ultimately, that so much of it was self-referential. It’s not that the content lacked value per se, but that in its aggregate it ceased to be valuable. I kept seeing the same links over and over and I couldn’t take it. My response was to stop trying to follow it.

Another issue I’ve found with all of the discourse around social media and personal brand it sometimes forgets that people online are human beings not brands. At the heart of social media is social experience which does not always involve buying something or selling an individual brand.
People are multifarious and complex, which is both a strength and weakness of online communities.

These are things I try to wrestle with on my own blog, sometimes with success and sometimes unsuccessfully. Even if you’re ostracized, you definitely won’t be alone.

Wow, just spent some time in the cesspool that is AgencySpy’s comments. I need a shower. Most of us who aren’t afraid of using our real names, and have actually met Faris, consider him to be an inspired voice inside our discipline. Sometimes I might disagree with him, but usually I’m much more excited to be talking about something new, or something old in a new way. It’s a gift to be given a debate.

I’m just as cliche’d as most, I’ve always had one foot in this industry, and the other pointed to run the fuck away – partly because of the glacier like speed of change, partly due to the repulsive vitriol that is spun at our colleagues, our clients, our consumers, and our culture. Some days it seems like we must work with a miserable bunch of twats, and on bad days, like this it seems true.

Lately, due to the circumstances of illness, I’ve spent much more of my time trying to sort out what’s next, what’s new, and what’s needed. And the little bit of client work I have been doing has been resonating with what I’m after. Perhaps not coincidentally, I’ve been reading far less blogs too, abandoned all of my social media news subscriptions, and I’ve been reading the news that is actually affecting all of us. We’ve built this desperation for ourselves, about feeling left out of what’s new, or what our colleagues might be up to, that sort of addiction to comparison is one reason I left NY … “look at that apartment!” .. and it’s absolutely stealing mental cycles from our industry.

Every social organization is at its heart, a problem solving strategy. The question we face is, what problems are we trying to solve, ones of our own ego, or those that actually move us forward to some sense of prosperity?

Thanks for the rant. Hope you don’t mind my own.

Totally agree. I said the same to a few of our mutual friends and acquaintances last week. The pace of our innovation as a (great) community doesn’t match the always on nature of the echo chamber. It’s not that the innovation/thinking is too slow. It’s the need to plug into the twittersphere et al.

To me it’s the same as getting stuck at the airport underneath the CNN News TV blaring. Then your flight is delayed. The stories are repeated over and over, with slightly different spins, commenters, etc. I care about the news, just not so repetitive and disrespectful of the listener as able to break down thoughts.

I want to give the same clarification about digging this set of folks and thinking they are brilliant.

The only place I differ with you is that it is physically impossible for me to sit in silence.