The Face(book) of progress

Who dreams up these nonsensical questionnaires?

What rock band are you? What era should you have been born in? How English are you? What flower are you? What is your spirit bird? What sort of wine are you? What superhero should you be? Are you a proper snob? What flavor of jam are you? To find out, one is presented with some quaint choice questions with pictures and - ta-da! You're very 60s, you have an owl, you're Batman, you're tart quince...

You are a Facebook lemming! We all are. I fall for this brain fluff, too.

This current epidemic of question content is part of the Buzzfeed market grab, social media marketing. It is the current thing.

It arrives in our Facebook faces beside conventional news sources which now, instead of factual breaking news headlines, offer:

Amazing video of what Russians are doing in the Ukraine

11 faults politicians would like to have

Who went faster? The cops or the robbers?

15 ways not to use energy

Tony Abbott upset the palace. What did he do?

500 ways celebrity cult gossip dominates the news

A $5m credit card bill. Why?

10 things that will make you laugh.

Best-ever recipe for boiled egg. Etc etc.

All this is the result of a lot of desperate enterprises to grab a market in new media. All of them are under the impression that the social media target market is pretty damned dumb and can only be lured to information if the information is promised in the form of trivia.

And so we discover our information revolution is upon us as a tidal wave of infotainment tid-bits.

Let's not forget cat videos. They have been beloved since the Internet was a kitten. They're a running joke, very funny and good for the soul. So, the social media information purveyors have grabbed them like a fist full of dollars and re-presented them to the world as their very own viral phenomenon and a magnet to their ad-laden sites.

They stop at nothing.

And they have a marketplace of wide-eyed and willing players who are having too much fun to notice the cynical game afoot which promises to turn our computers into a spamland of endless sales, promotion and greed.

And to think that, just a couple of decades ago, when the Internet was being explored by the scientists, academics and geeks, the excitement flowed from the idea that it could be the great free sharing of knowledge. It was for a while. Until the men in suits found it.

VIT - and proud of it

Very Important Tweeps have trounced the grand old status of the Very Important Person.

Now, suddenly, smart social media marketers have clued up to the fact that the Twitterati are the communicators of the moment. We are not simply as good as our follower figures in spreading the world, but have limitless exponential potential according to the powers of the ReTweet.

It was the marketing person for the Cavalia horse spectacular, which is some offshoot of the Cirque du Soleil mob, who first called me a VIT. She was inviting me, in that capacity, to a free night of the horse experience.

The idea was to bring the VITs together and have them ecstatically Tweeting en masse.

That is a great idea.

As cruel irony would have it, when this invitation arrived, I was suffering the rare indignation of being muted on Twitter. Poor me.

I was overseas in the ricefields of Bali. The invitation leaked slowly down a third world internet connection which optimistically called itself 'wireless".

We VITs have a frustrating time when we're denied instant communications. We're VITs because we're communication addicts. I've been at it since before day one, so I can remember back to the early days of dialup. I never want to go back.

More prestigious by far than being a VIP is being a VIT.

But out there amid farmer women hand-threshing the rice crops in the field, one feels churlish about complaining that your spam is at a trickle, your email is queued and that your Telco has extortionate roaming fees which forces one to keep the phone off. I did the enlightened thing. I let go of the First World.

So I did not even try to RSVP to this wonderful invitation.

But I certainly thought about it.

Way to go, I thought.

Zeitgeist, I thought.

Once, as a newspaper theatre critic, I represented the immense power of mainstream print. Those were the days when people were eager for newspapers to come out with the precious first reviews of new shows. Now those are the olden days. Print media is shrinking. At the same time, the public is wary of paying for online subscriptions. And no one wants to wait for anything.

Social media has stepped up and usurped the old publicity machinations. Instant gratification meets the global parish pump.

And, I'd better Tweet this before it goes out of date.

Don't keep these awesome pic's to yourself. Share them.

I've been tolerant. The Dalai Lama could not have been more so. About the forwards which go round and round and round the net.
I've thought, "oh, these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ingenuous folk who have found such freedom of expression online".
I've thought, "oh, they mean well."
I've abided by the old online protocol of not putting people down when they do forwards. Of not sending back the "seen it" snub.
That is the soul of discourtesy. Bad netiquette from way back.
But, of course, mostly I've seen it over and over and over. The same National Geographic Best of the Year pictures have been the best for a decade. It's okay. They are classics.
But, here's the rub.
They still come as if originating from the same goody two-shoes American moron.
They still come with:
Don't keep these awesome pic's to yourself. Share them.

Who the hell does this person think she is (and it is undoubtedly a she) to be adding these patronising instructions?
I will make on own decision on if and how I share things, thankyou.
I sure as hell won't be sending out something that exhorts my friends to share it. My friends, also, have powers of discernment.

Oh, and there's the personalised bit.
"The one with the zebras is an incredible photo."
Doh!
They are all incredible photos. Isn't that the point?
Oh. Or should I say photo's?