American Social Media Whoredom Personified

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Post Post Modern, Internet Era; my name is Cameron Michael Fehring and this is my blog.  As a member of "Generation Y" I have never been resistant to technology.  In fact I, like most of us have embraced its ever changing sometimes fickle face.  However, there were certain aspects that I avoided like the plague.

Something that has always bothered me about "Social Networking" is the constant stream of unnecessary information from everyone about everything.  This is the purpose and yet, this can also be a tedious blunder.  I personally enjoy reading about certain aspects of peoples lives.  Facebook has changed the way we keep in touch forever and most of my college acquaintances, the three people from high school that I actually want to keep in touch with, and all of my dearest friends and family are a click away.  Vacation photos, life events, date nights, and random ironic events from daily life or clever observations about humanity and our endeavors are what I enjoy most.  I don't enjoy workout routines, crappy homemade dinner photos, inner monologues or desperate pleas for attention.  I have a hard time believing that anyone honestly cares about my opinions on most things, much less everything.

Maybe that is the reason that up until this day I have avoided Twitter.  My outsider perspective is probably waving like a banner of ignorance, but that particular area of the internet seemed like an excuse to do all of the things I mentioned above: complete with a hyper-popular and specialized method to call attention to amateur photography, uncensored undereducated opinions, oblivious hateful bashing of things a person doesn't understand, desperate pleas for attention and admiration, and mental masturbation: "hashtags."

The pound symbol (I personally will always view this little symbol as a sharp; the opposite of flat) is now used to add common searchable edifices to everyday situations and photos.  "Hashtags" have also become an excuse to type out subtext in long, grammatically incorrect, un-punctuated sentences for an attempt and usual failure of comic relief.  This simple method has changed the technological world and though it represented the bane of my social networking existence, it also created the recent allusion to requirement.

A few weeks ago, my lovely wife attended the Photography EXPO here in NYC.  The workshops she attended were all about the importance of social networking in establishing a brand and advertising in the initial years of starting a business.  This may have been for visual arts, but the statements are just as true in the performing arts.  People are making shorts, documentaries, full length films and parodies for the internet exclusively.  Future fans can now find you in a single search on any of the social networks via the "hashtag" and start following your pages.  Fan clubs are no longer an exclusive badge of nerddom, they are the norm.

As a result, as someone who is even attempting to develop a career in the arts, I have given in to the call of all social media, including Twitter...and this blog.  I still have a hard time believing anyone will even read this or my tweets, and I am fairly tolerant with this realization; but in the last week my wife's amazing work has received lots of attention via Twitter and her blog is delightful. So I'm giving this a shot.


Twitter: CMFehring