My personal journey with social media almost pre-dates the World Wide Web itself. When I was working for the NSW Public Service in 1991, one of my jobs was downloading online data via Usenet. It was such an exciting job, especially at 2,400 baud. (For all of you under 30, that means a really slow and unreliable Internet connection.) I loved waiting hours and hours for the data to download. Now, I’ve always been a curious fellow, so after a bit of research I discovered that not only could I use Usenet to download statistical data sets, there were also things called “newsgroups” that people used to share information about different subjects. So I would read through some of these newsgroups while waiting for the statistics to download.
Yeltsin stands on a tank to defy the August Coup in 1991.
It was on one of these newsgroups that I first discovered the true power of the Internet and what would later become known as “social media”. It was during the 1991 Russian coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. You know, the one where Boris Yeltsin stood on some tanks in front of the Russian White House. Instead of waiting for the 6pm news, I actually spent the day (and a very long night) reading eyewitness accounts of the “coup” in real-time over Usenet. It was amazing. It almost felt as if I was there. I had never experienced that feeling before. I wasn’t just reading or watching what the media wanted me to see, and certainly not what the Soviet Union wanted me to see…I was reading the unedited eye-witness accounts of real people who were really there…while it was happening.
A few years later I bought myself a modem and joined the World Wide Web. Having experienced the power of the Internet with my first-hand experience of Usenet, I was really excited about this new technology. I soon found myself joining in with e-mail mailing lists and Internet chat rooms. I made some short-lived friendships with people from all around the world. My online contacts also led me to being involved with a couple of fan-based tribute albums; Kate Bush Covered and Lost in Static 18 (a Mike Oldfield tribute album). For a brief moment I was a minor Internet celebrity. It felt good.
But then something unexpected happened. I lost interest in the Internet and social media. From 2000 through to 2010 I barely used the Internet for more than reading the Sydney Morning Herald and sending e-mails. I completely dropped out of the social side of the Internet altogether. I’m still not sure why. I think I simply got bored with it. In 2000, social media was still primarily the domain of nerds and geeks, and although I work in the IT industry, I’m actually bored by nerd-culture. I was vaguely aware of blogs, and heard rumours of Facebook and Twitter, but I never wanted to join in. I’d “been there” and “done that”.
Then in 2010, I was asked by my manager to look into developing a social media strategy for the research and development lab I work for. So to do some research into social media and how it now worked, I joined Facebook and Twitter. I did what everyone does when they first join these things. I looked up old school-friends and stalked old girlfriends on Facebook. I tweeted what I had for breakfast in the morning, and how cute my cat was at night. (I might actually still do that…) But even then, I still wasn’t that enamoured of social media. My Facebook friends bored me, and I could barely attract 40 Twitter followers. Although I was happy running a social media strategy for my work, I was seriously thinking of tossing in my personal social media accounts.
My about.me profile...
As often happens with me, my dissatisfaction with something manifested in satire and ridicule. Some friends and I, in reaction to a bunch of vacuous and self-indulgent personal profiles on a website called about.me, decided to create our own profiles. This was mine: http://about.me/jaj
I initially came up with the slogan “You are your own brand. Own it! Live it! Be it!” as a piss-take on the Nike slogan of “Just Do It”. But as so often happens with something that starts as a joke, I realised that there may be some truth to it. I thought about the nature of social media and the validity of posting anonymously. Up until then, I had either been using nicknames and silly avatars to post under or commenting anonymously, but this was making me uncomfortable. I felt there was an opportunity for using social media for more than just silly tweets or anonymous comments. I realised that social media was a medium just like any other media, and that branding and identity was important. So I decided to re-brand all my personal social media to only use my real name and image.
And then I stumbled upon the MamaMia website. It was like kismet. MamaMia arrived in my life at exactly the same point that I decided to own my brand and find my own voice. I can’t remember how I stumbled on the site. I think a friend may have sent me a link. At first I read the occasional post, but I never commented on the site. But then I started commenting, and then I started commenting more. And then I started noticing that people were “liking” my comments…quite a lot actually. And people were making comments like “I love reading your comments in the morning” and “I like the way you write” and “You should submit a post to MamaMia”. Which I did…and it was accepted.
It was like crack-cocaine. Not only had I found my voice and my love of writing again, I suddenly had an audience, both in the posts that were published on MamaMia, and in the comments where a whole community of people had formed…a community of people that both existed within MamaMia itself, but also separately on other social media like Twitter. I commented more and more on MamaMia and had more posts published, and I tweeted more. My followers on Twitter jumped, and I found myself in the middle of a new social group of tweeters, writers and commentators.
But once again, despite my new-found audience, I started to become disenchanted with social media. I started to get tired of the trolls who loved to ruin a good discussion on MamaMia, and I was beginning to become tired of the complaining and whining of some of the people I followed on Twitter. There were too many people tweeting negative things all the time. Sometimes funny, but still negative. I felt quite depressed actually. Then I had another epiphany. I would reject all things negative. I unfollowed everyone who I found to be tweeting nothing but negativity and vowed that I would no longer do the same. I even updated my Twitter profile with my own social media pledge:
I, John Anthony James, pledge that I will use social media
to educate and inform, not complain and abuse. #socialmediapledge
Once again I found I had renewed my interest in social media, and like the arrival of MamaMia into my life 18 months before, Kiki & Tea then manifested itself before me. It was quite simple really. I was having a conversation on Twitter with a few people about how difficult it was to build a following for my blog when I suggested “why don’t we all start blogging together?” It was a throw-away line and I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. But the next thing I know, I’m starting to discuss the design of a new website with Tamsin Howse (who had already been thinking about doing the same thing) and her husband, and KiKi & Tea was born.
So, from being completely over “social media” in the 2000s, I have now gone from an occasionally tweeter and blogger, to someone who has had multiple articles published on a major website, and I’m now helping to run a dynamic new website with my friend Tamsin Howse and her husband. The three of us have moved on from being consumers of online media, to publishers of online media, which is something that we are all excited about and proud of. Other online friends of ours are contributing articles to our site, and yet more online friends are reading and commenting. I guess the main thing I’ve learnt over the past few years is not to give in to social media fatigue. The boring, dull and obnoxious side of social media will always get to us sometimes, but by setting boundaries and reinventing yourself, you can stay engaged.
It’s been an exciting journey over the past two years, but my personal journey with social media and the Internet is still evolving. I have decided to take my new-found confidence as a writer to finally do something I have threatened to do for decades. Write a book. I have taken 11 weeks long service leave, and instead of doing something sensible like go on a holiday like normal people, I am instead sitting inside typing madly on my laptop. Will my book ever be published? I have no idea. There’s still a chance that it will be crap. But that’s not really important is it? The important thing is that I am writing, and that can’t be a bad thing. Who knows, I may even decide to continue my social media journey by self-publishing and promoting my book online. I haven’t decided yet. Maybe my friends on social media will help me decide when the time comes.
Photos: Kremlin.ru, Paola Peralta, and Ale Okada via Wikimedia Commons
