The Method of Madness

On the Internet, everyone is an expert. I’ve come to realize this from being on Twitter and roving around the HR and Recruitment social media space, and this disturbs me.

One of the most important things to me is authenticity, which goes hand-in-hand with truth and other qualities like it. Authenticity is important to building an audience and building credibility, but I’ve witnessed a lot of people building authenticity and had myself thinking, “How in the world can they be doing this?” I thought about it, cursed a few times, had a beer, and then it came to me. Well, really, it just came to me, but whatever.

Community. In other words, these “authentic” people (Bloggers, Tweeters, what-have-you) have essentially found others willing to agree with their ideas and opinions. In this world of social media, those folks are also (usually) willing to reshare the content. And so the cycle goes, turning into a self-sustaining circle jerk of like-minded personalities that does nothing but recycle and re-hash the same content and ideas.

Cliques, anyone? My, how little changes from high school…

The next step, of course, is the “community” self-styling itself as a collective of experts. This works, by the way, because of how “authenticity” is constructed; it’s akin to a virus, really. And bingo: you’ve got a load of bullshit coming down the pipeline, probably 2/3′s of which is more self-serving drivel to position the community as experts, and the other 1/3 consisting of the recycled content.

So in the beginning of my post, I singled out the HR/Recruitment social media space. My bottom line opinion about it is just what I’ve written here: a bunch of self-styled (and self-rewarded) influencers who do more collective hot-air blowing than any real change. I can’t even count how many blog posts, Tweets, and statuses have reflected and condemned some of the worst HR practices – discrimination, bad decisions, etc. – and yet, I’ve seen nothing remarkably changed about the industry by all of these “influencers.” So, again, my contention is that their “influence” stops as soon as it hits the computer screen.

And so the illusion of expertise. Expertise on a subject goes beyond just knowing it and talking about it. Expertise would have you effectively sharing these ideas to enact meaningful change. If these “influencers” can’t produce meaningful change in the industry they purport to represent, the only thing they’re influencing is other people’s perceptions of them.

Sorry, I’m just not that into you.

I think there’s value in feeling sorry for yourself.

Right now I’m feeling sorry for myself for a variety of things, which has placed me into a mindset where I want to do the following, in exactly this order:

1. Crawl up in a ball with a blanket;
2. Turn on the TV to some History/BIO/Science channel and focus on whatever special they’ve got.

I feel like a lot of bloggers spend a lot of their time advocating using every moment that you have to do something – start a business, find a job, change your life – but sitting on your duff and being depressed? There simply isn’t time! Turn that frown upside down! And so on. Simply put, the American lifestyle does not want to permit you to be sad.

People are like this partly for selfish reasons. Emotions are contagious, so if you’re unhappy, you’ll tend to make others unhappy when they’re around you. Hence, they want to make you happy so they can feel happy. Feeling sorry for yourself, though, to me is like grieving: it happens. It’s a natural part of life. You eventually move on and move forward. People pushing you to “get happy” need to “get fucked” because they’ve been in the same boat of self-pity before.

If you’re feeling sorry for yourself, wallow in it; it’ll get better. If you’ve got a friend or family member in the same condition, support them and help them work through it. There’s no harm in indulging in self-pity every once in a while.