People reveal who they are. It just happens.
One of the battle cries of the social media movement has been, “transparency!” We’ve been encouraged to “be transparent” in our online communication in order to gain the trust of our networks. It’s generally good advice, as far as it goes.
Of course it doesn’t go far enough, and it’s not a new concept. Transparency has been applied to media for years. We like transparency in the media. We like to know where and how information used in reporting was gathered. In the social space, it also carries a secondary meaning. Transparency in the social space means that if I’m engaging in conversations, anywhere at anytime, I’m doing so without any hidden agendas.
I’m not sure that’s a realistic expectation.
We all have our hidden agendas. But what I’ve come to learn is that time provides its own form of transparency. People can only put on a show for so long. Eventually, over the course of time, patterns emerge in our communication that reveal our sometimes hidden agendas. Those patterns reveal the truth about who we are. They reveal the truth about our secret intentions.
Eventually, we all reveal ourselves.
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Photo by Gisela Giardino
Oh my… so true.
““You can bend it and twist it… You can misuse and abuse it… But even God cannot change the Truth.” … Michael Levy
Great quote. 🙂
Jeff – interesting read. I’d like to think we all eventually reveal ourselves, but I am not convinced patterns of our behaviour as derived from our social media interactions would make for an accurate chronicle of our beings. One need to delve deeply to perceive the patterns that make up the little pieces of us, and delving deeply can’t be done with our many hundreds of friends, only the ones that stand out for one reason or another. In the end, the rest of those personas will be no less transparent to us than we are to anyone we haven’t touched in some meaningful way.
Pardon the lengthy comment here…
It won’t be true for everyone, but I do think the more people use social media, and the more tools emerge to analyze conversations, those patterns will present themselves. This will not be true for people who have very small numbers of conversations, data points. But for those who engage a great deal, I think this is true. I know it’s become easier, over time, for me to see beyond the words for a good number of people and organizations. And this comes from watching their various conversations over time.
Beautifully said, Jeff. The real picture of an individual eventually shows through the smoke and mirrors.
Jeff – I hadn’t considered use of tools for this sort of analyses. That would certainly change things…:-)
The tools will come.
For example, apparently I am preoccupied with sex, though I can’t remember ever tweeting about sex. 🙂 http://tweetpsych.com/?q=respres
I’m coming back to this later but your overarching point is extremely valid., I agree with the general premise that people can run but they cannot hide. You will always be found out for who/what you are. :.You can’t judge a book by it’s cover. First impressions count. Time reveals all. Etc etc. These are all great quotes and cliches we’ve all been ingrained with.
I absolutely agree that healthy analysis over time is good… I often call it “the sniff test”.. …. But sometimes a coconut is just a coconut.
As far as your result on tweetpsych goes Jeff….I don’t think they analyzed your tweets. I think you’ll find that they called Rocky for an opinion.
🙂 😉
The real good thing is @jeffturner thinks just like @respres. Whew, I was never worried but I bet you are sure glad.
Nicely said. May I add a quote from Maya Angelou, “When people show you who they are the first time, believe them.” Social media is an interesting view of humans. We can just see too much about them too soon, or they can truly hide behind their keyboard and be someone different in “real” life. You are right, patterns emerge in human behavior. I love the Ektachrome. (I have shoe boxes full of those from the 80s.)
I’ve been thinking about the subject of transparency for a while now. I’m not sure it’s necessary or even in anyone’s best interest to be transparent. We need to choose carefully how much of ourselves we reveal in the social media realm and let the sum of our actions speak for themselves.
On the other hand, I do believe we should be our genuine selves. I can be wholly myself on Twitter, Facebook, et. al. without being wholly transparent. There is a difference.
Oh – those tools. Well, being the curious being that I am, I ran my name and apparently I like sex a WHOLE lot more than you do, JT. 🙂
http://tweetpsych.com/?q=innahamedia
Oh – and this bit of analytical brilliance is based on a total of some 130 tweets…
Methinks we’d need better tools, much better.
Oh… we need MUCH better tools. Thought you’d enjoy that. 🙂