Here's a real Debbie Downer way to start a conversation: how many of your blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends will come to your real-life funeral? There have been a lot or recent studies and magazine articles trying to make sense of new evolutionary shifts in 21st Century interpersonal communication, but I'm not paid by the word and didn't feel like pussyfooting around. Someday, you and I are going to be just as dead as 18th Century people. We'll be remembered, or we won't, and we'll each have our own lasting legacy based on our contributions -- that's an eternal equation that's not going to change for anything, not even MySpace.
The modern way to make online friends with virtual strangers is to make soft, safe statements about popular topics. In June 2009, here are some good ones to start out with:
- Iran's ruling government is bad
- iPhones are cool, but AT&T's policies are bad
- #inaperfectworld, cats would audibly speak in LOLcat language
All this will get you, however, is a tiny and anonymous place in a massive crowd, which can be a lonelier existential state than the emptiest room. Some internet-people rebel against this dejection by saying the exact opposite, in order to draw a sharp reaction. Examples include, "Ahmadinejad is awesome!" and "I like killing kitties with my gun." These people are called trolls, which is a bad name for them because there isn't anything particularly fearsome, powerful or Norse about them. They're just dicks.
A more effective form of getting sharp reactions involves taking an established side in an established cultural debate. There are people who have made a lot of money and achieved a lot of fame doing this, like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann. Yesterday, for example, I was watching a professional baseball game on teevee. A famous rich ideologue threw out the ceremonial first pitch, while half the crowd cheered loudly and the other half booed its collective lungs out. It must be weird having strangers hate you, but I suppose those people consider it a cost of doing business. And that business is conflict and divisiveness.
Many internet-people are smart and clever and have figured out this dynamic, and want a piece of the pie for themselves. Sacrificing half of the potential audience is worth it if it means a deeper, richer relationship with strangers that is based on real stuff like doctrines and beliefs; if internet-people on the other "side" shout them down, it just means they're making an impact that's important.
It doesn't always work out, though. In most cases, internet-people who try to split the audience just sound like boring complainers, or cartoon pirate parrots.
It's much easier to set one's sights lower, to settle for being less known, to be an expert at something small and inclusive. It's a good way to be happy, content, free of desperation, and to avoid the endless stream of hateful negative spew that famous dividers get. Better to be a specialist, a guru, a value-added conduit (VAC).
Not better by much, however. Experts make easy caricatures, fit well into cubbyholes, and are easily disposed once exhausted. For instance, there's a friend of mine, someone with whom I've talked with a lot recently, who has a website about a sport that only a few thousand people care about. As soon as he starts talking about other things, including himself and his personal problems, people get weirded out and jump off. Experts on the internet are designed to be one-dimensional, and there's little room for their surgeries or families. This is a dead end.
But there's a rare class of internet-people who have keyed the lock, solved the conundrum. These folks work really hard to make certain groups of people happy, creating things that make them smile and laugh (songs and videos and cartoons, most often).
What separates these internet stuff-makers from navel-gazing YouTube vloggers and those who make momentary meme-diversions is consistency and quality... as well as that they make a point of openly inviting and inspiring creativity from their audiences, make others feel good about themselves, blur the line between creator and consumer. If you've been on the web for a while, and if you think about it for a second, you've probably encountered someone like this.
I'm fairly certain I'll never be one of these internet-people, because my East Coast cynicism keeps me from transcending distrust of strangers and their motives. Indeed, there aren't many of these chosen few right now, not enough to turn the tide against drones and dividers and gurus... so there's plenty of room out there for this magic to happen. I just hope this is the next growth industry on the web, not monetizing Twitter feeds, pharmaceutical timeshares or mechanical turks. There's still plenty of opportunity to become somebody worth remembering.
