The overly-long title for this post comes from two posts that I read recently. They both relate to the degrees to which we edit ourselves in the social media world, and they got me thinking about how I do or don’t edit myself.
Justin Kownacki wrote about how, afraid to offend anyone, we censor ourselves, believing that we’ll be able to open up once we’ve built an audience. He highlights three social media “celebrities” that have made their mark largely by not censoring themselves — by being themselves.
The problem is not that you don’t yet have the clout to say what you really mean, or that you’re afraid of offending those who think better of you.
It’s that you have no idea what you really believe, or what you have to say.
Because if you did, you’d be speaking, acting and living the same way the idealized version of you would be doing.
Justin finishes with a bit of, as he calls it, “self help-ish” advice: “popularity — and grandmothers — come and go, but there’s only one you. Matter to someone, and you’ll end up mattering to everyone.”
Amber Naslund, conversely, describes three types of social media users: the casual users; the career-bolsterers; and (like Amber, Justin, or me) those whose “online presence is a central pillar of their careers.” The main question of her post was this:
Is it true that the more you participate and engage online, the more responsibility you have to act or behave in line with the expectations of the people around you, whether or not you purposely built them yourself? And can you shift them effectively?
These two posts both speak of limiting ourselves, but at two different periods. Justin points to those that want to grow, whereas Amber addresses those that, to one degree or another, have already built an audience.
Are we all just editing ourselves in different ways, at different points?
Personally, I can admit that I share more than most while still censoring myself. On this blog, I’ll write about encounters with homeless people or about my mother’s death, but only if I can somehow connect it with the overall theme of this site — my knowledge of marketing and building communities online.
On Twitter and Facebook, there isn’t much I won’t talk about. Whether marketing, current events, modern design, music, or tweets to my girlfriend, there’s not much of myself that I won’t expose.
But there are things that I won’t do. I won’t be rude. Sure, just like anyone else, I’ve had a fair share of snarky tweets come from my keyboard, but I’ll never openly attack someone — that’s just not my style.
And there’s always the question of whether my professional endeavors would be affected by adjusting what I type. I’ve questioned the logic of separating one part of what you do from the rest of you. Is there value in compartmentalizing?
Meg and I have lost at least one follower because of our online canoodling. Is it fair to assume that the handful of notable marketing and PR pros that have unfollowed me did so for similar reasoning? If that is the reason, does that reflect on them as much as it does me? If they can’t see the value I offer to the conversation, is that their problem, or mine? Is it both?
Is the attention of a few more followers worth not communicating with my long-distance girlfriend via the channels we met on? Hardly. Besides, we’ve gotten way more press attention by being a “Twitter couple” — the term gives me hives — than we (along with Matt Knell) have as SM4SC, or I have as a design blogger.
I don’t think I have an answer for this, other than to say, yes, we do edit ourselves, every day. But if we whittle down what we say, worried about not saying anything that will turn off someone, we’ll never say anything.
What do you think? Do you feel you edit yourself, and if so, in what way?
