Will you quit poking me, already!

What is social media? While it sounds like something that happens when all of your Encyclopedia Britannica volumes start to chat with one another after you drop them off at the donation room at the Salvation Army at night, there is another definition. I have been able to consult with one of the world’s most renowned and recognized sources of expertise to answer this question: Wikipedia.

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities,and individuals.


That sounds all well and good, but it’s the whole “interactive” aspect that needs to be emphasized. Most people use Facebook, the leading social media website, as a means to interact as passively as possible with hundreds of "friends" so they don’t have to be inconvenienced by having to leave the house and talk to somebody face to face. For some people, the interaction needs to be ramped up a bit instead of just looking at other people’s posts on Facebook and then bring a post topic up randomly in a live conversation and you are trying to figure out how this person knew about the bacon-scented shower gel you bought at Bath and Bodyworks and wound up drinking half the bottle on the drive home from the store.

Facebook is also a great way to allow people to bond around common interests like "The Society For The Awareness To Promote The Proper Milking Of Northern Amazonian Tree Slugs" because it gives people a microphone to the world and they can talk and share about whatever they want whenever they want. But I have an idea to help restore a shred of dignity to Facebook. If anyone abuses their liberties to share freely by loading up your news feed with non-stop pictures of cats dressed as clowns or Farmville requests for help obtaining pig butter, you should be able to demote them to Twitter, where they only have 140 characters and then limit them to only post once a week. Otherwise, these people may hear a knock at the door and it's Mark Zuckerberg who walks into their house and smashes their keyboard on the table.

But in the end, I don’t know that most people feel that much more connected with one another or organizations on these websites. Because nothing beats that wonderful face-to-face interaction you have with the kid selling magazine subscriptions at your front door so he can go to Harvard in the fall. And no one wants to lose out on the ingenious advertising campaign of the mattress store that has a guy stand outside on the corner in an Elmo costume in 110-degree weather, because that is the commercial marketing that I want to see in person.