My ideas for blog posts often come to me like second-rate debutantes, all coiffed and polished, but lacking a partner to usher them onto the dance floor and astound the audience with their grace.
Luckily this past week brought me both a debutant and escort in the form of two pieces of media — an article from Psychotherapy Networker and the movie, Inception.
The common theme I noted between the two?
What exactly is “reality”?
More specifically, is social media an alternate version of “reality” or is it simply an illusion (a dream within a dream, if you will) that we have given ourselves global permission to distort in order to fit our perception of what we’d like reality to be?
Welcome to the “Screenworld.”
The subject of the article in Psychotherapy Networker was “The art of connecting in the age of Screenworld” by Michael Ventura.
“Screenworld” is simply a word Ventura uses to describe our world – a highly networked, virtual environment where “screens” (computers, TV’s, phones, kiosks, etc.) are one of the primary connection points for our interaction with other humans.
While pretty commonplace for most of us who live here, Screenworld is pretty foreign terrain for (historically, low-tech) psychotherapists to even consider visiting.
(For what is a greater antithesis to the hyper-connected, crowdsourced and stimulus-driven environment of social media than a therapist and client sitting together quietly in a room, face-to-face, trying to a gain deeper understanding of the human condition?)
Like it or not though, psychotherapists need to buy a ticket for the social media cluetrain because increasingly they will need to understand Screenworld in order to understand people.
As Ventura suggests, Screenworld isn’t a real world. It’s a distorted vision of the world. So, if we’re increasingly viewing the world through its warped lens, might it be distorting us in turn?
“As animals, we’re built to live in a physical world; in Screenworld, we’re living in something else. In our overlay of cyberspace and physical space, bodily reality is devalued, while the adage that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ gets distorted into ‘what the screen does not record or project is not really happening.’”
While I’ve pondered this phenomenon before, and agree that the lack of a physical connection in social media 
does distort reality, I’m not so sure I would go so far to say that it has replaced reality.
What I think it has done is augment reality in such a way that it suits the design of the engineer of the social experience – you and I.
And that opens a whole other can of worms.
The paradox in the inception.
While people like to go round and round unraveling the maze of dreams within dreams in Inception, what interested me most about the movie (especially in light of the magazine article) was the role of the Engineer (played by Ellen Page) in constructing dream layers.
In the movie, it was not critical for the Engineer to replicate the dreamer’s reality, but simply to suggest it. The dreamer’s perception of that reality would, in effect, fill in any blanks and complete the Engineer’s picture.
This is best illustrated in the paradoxes that existed on the seams of dreams (like the staircase in the movie that simply stops). We know that a staircase goes up or down. So, if we are presented with one that simply goes, our mind glosses over the lack of logic in that option and instead, defines it is as either up or down.
Our mind’s ability to incorporate a paradox into reality (or in fact, make a paradox reality) is problematic when it comes to social media.
In social media we, quite literally, see what we want to see. And, over time, we forget that what we have being viewing was never a complete picture to begin with.
Or as Ventura says in his article:
“In Screenworld, images of reality supersede reality itself, editing it, transforming it, playing with it in any fashion, until the source of the image ceases to matter while the image itself becomes all that matters.”
Our online social world feels whole, so therefore it is whole.
And that might be okay if we were just using social media to form connections. But we use social media to form relationships – relationships filled with love, hate, fear, envy, or joy.
What happens when those are built upon perceptions, too?
Perhaps that is the real danger of the Screenworld…what if it forgives us for ignoring the staircases at the edges of our world and rewards us for building our lives upon them instead?
Jen… Wow! This post hit on something I have been worried/thinking about lately. Perception vs. reality in social media and how it affects one’s search for a new position.
Although we may try, we can’t control what others think WE are or who THEY think we should be in this “screenworld” and that can be an a major issue for the person on the receiving end.
For example, I am told a lot that I am an “influencer.” Personally, I don’t buy that perceived popularity (what else can you call it?!) equals influence.
And yet, companies interviewing or looking for new employees tend to think that “influence” will give them something they have been lacking. That only sets the so-called influencer up for failure. Why? Because there are inherent management procedures, policies, cultures that set the stage for business. No level of influence can really change that unless you are the CEO.
I hope I am not too far off topic from the point you are trying to make… But your post struck a chord for where I am today (looking for a new job).
Happy New Year!
Beth Harte
@bethharte
Good point. I think it totally does apply with job searches (and may be even more critical in the context of a job search). I’m hoping to do a podcast soon with an HR person and am looking forward to hearing her take on this topic from the other side of the table.
Like you, I get that influence is relative. However, I agree that companies may (and probably are) looking at it very differently. Hadn’t considered that these days people are probably looking to add “influencer oomph” to their companies in the form of a powerful new hire. That does put an enormous amount of pressure on the new hire and isn’t the most rock-solid strategy. 🙂
I think the problem with influence is that it’s rarely vetted. There is no throng of folks standing outside our offices waving signs saying “You influence me!” and a goodly amount of the peeps in our networks are phantoms who will never engage with us. Unless a person offers up a random “I think you’re great” testimonial, it’s really hard to known where you stand.
I was reminded of that this morning with this post (which, as you can see, appears to have been read by few) and was thinking to myself, “Why do I bother blogging? No one reads this stuff anyway.” So the fact that it resonated with you on any level, and that you took the time to share a comment, was influential in my books.
Best of luck to you on your job search. You’re a smartie. Any company would be lucky to have you. Hope you’ll keep me posted on how it goes.
Ok this is totally messing with my thought processes, which is a good thing. You strike up an interesting conversation about, What we view online about a person, may not be reality, but our form of reality. I agree and disagree to an extent. I agree yes this happens way too much and people do not take the time to really form relationships with people offline. I will challenge anyone reading this blog pick three people you have a perception of online that you do not agree with or think a certain way about that person and invite them to lunch or coffee, I will bet once they meet and understand the person their perception will change 90% of the time!
On the disagreement side is that don’t we do this offline too with 1st impressions? We judge people based on their cover everyday walking in the skyway, shopping at the Mall, going to church, and going out to dinner. How is the real world vs the screen world any different than this? Secondly, we does this with people who are not online also in regards to influence. Think about the people you talk to at a company with a significant title, do you perceive they have influence based on title? Then you come to find out by getting to know them that within their culture or business unit they have little or no influence or they would just pull the trigger, right?
I do like the jab in the gut to think about this in the way you presented it! Nice work. You keep writing and I will keep reading! But I understand where you are coming from about why? I have been struggling with this question for the last 2 months…..
Maybe it is time to sit down and plan out the Do you have the balls? then attend the “Say it to my Face Conference” Maybe with this we could tackle the both above. Clients tell agencies off, Non-Influencers tell Influencers to go fly a kite, Business folks tell the Marketers and Social to stop wasting money on followers and fans and sell some shit for the bottomline, the topics I think would be enriching, but the agreement would have to be is connected action must be taken afterwards and we will be publicly following up on each other to have some accountability!
This I think gets us closer to connected action and less from following and back slapping….what do you think?
Well anytime I can mess with someone’s head it’s a good day 🙂
Great points Keith. Although I do think people aren’t aware of how much of a factor our other senses are when we meet a person. People do make first impressions on people offline too, but at least in a face-to-face encounter they are processing and therefore factoring in a lot more data into the picture. Online, all you have is an avatar and words on a screen — no nuance, no body language, no facial expressions — hence I’m thinking we tend to use our imaginations to “fill in the blanks” way more online than off.
I agree with both you and Beth that perception and influence could be a whole other blog post entirely. All sorts of good psychological stuff going on in with that topic!
As to the why question, well…it’s a good question 🙂 I like your idea, but I think quite frankly most people don’t have the balls (especially in the midwest) to sit down and hash things out like that. However, should you ever decide to produce such a conference, be assured that I’d be the first one to sign up.
Yes I forgot about that pesky 96% of communication that is not communicated in social media. Thank you for the reminder. Yes that type of communication is so important to building perception and impression.
Produce a conference….umm, maybe this could be a 2011 goal, but I would definitely need you and Kary’s extreme expertise when it comes to doing something like this. I would never assume that I could pull off something like this by myself and you two would be my first call!
Damn.
I mean, I wrote a post on Inception too, but…..damn.
Way to go.
You wrote an Inception post? Link, please!
Eager to read your take.
Ask and ye shall receive.
http://joeystrawn.com/2010/07/19/inception-marketing-an-infection-of-ideas/
🙂
Awesomesauce!
So now the big question…do you think the top fell over at the end or just kept spinning?
Jen,
Very interesting post, got me scratching my head and saying “Aha!” at the same time.
This reminds me of something I just read about in Stephen Hawking’s book, “The Grand Design”. He talks about how a goldfish might perceive the world through the curved glass of his bowl. The goldfish, having never seen any other reality and unaware that things are different outside the bowl, could formulate scientific laws from this distorted view that would be hold true and predict future motion of objects outside the bowl. Hawking points out that as long as a one’s model agrees with observation, there is little way to tell what is “real”. What it comes down to is what is useful. You could accurately predict the movement of planets through the perception of a goldfish, but that would over complicate things and not be useful to anyone who happened to live outside a curved glass bowl.
This also brings up the point that trying to figure out exactly what is “real” is futile effort, because, as Inception and The Matrix point out, a false reality can be backed up by observation most of the time, especially if you’re not actively trying to disprove it.
Instead of pursuing “ultimate truth” or “reality” Hawking says we should look for a good model which:
1. Is elegant
2. Contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements
3. Agrees with and explains all existing observations
4. Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out
Now it’s hard to apply this to social media because, unlike physics, social media is not based on universal truths that can be boiled down into formulae. But we can take something away from Hawking’s parameters for a good model and apply them to our perceptions.
We can try to be more scientific about our perceptions (models) of ourselves and social media. The first three rules may be difficult to numerically test but we can make a point of asking ourselves,
-“What do I think about X (social media in general, specific network, our group of friend, our own role or influence)?” and then follow it up by asking
-“How can I test that?” or “Why do I think that?”
If you find yourself answering the “Why do I think that?” question with a lot of arbitrary or adjustable elements or long winded qualifiers, you’ve probably just disproved your own model. The key is to be looking to disprove it, to go over your answer and look for the qualifiers and seek out specific observation that support it in all context.
The final rule is especially difficult to employ on the subject of social media because it is ever changing and perceptions move around, but attempting predictions about future events that can falsify a model is key to any thoughtful model. I will leave it to you and other people much smarter than me to figure that one out.
I apologize if this post was not fully coherent. I’m mixing two things in which I am truly an amateur, physics and social media, and trying to make a cogent analogy. I just thought of it while reading your post and felt compelled to reply. If nothing else, an attempt at testing our models of our social media and ourselves at least gets us questioning our surroundings and might wake us up to the seams that exist in the dream.
Footnote: The book “The Grand Design” is actually written by Stephen Hawking AND Leonard Mlodinow, but it was easier to write Hawking throughout the post.
Yowza Kirby. Thank you for such a well thought out response. Lots of good things in here.
I actually took notes on your ideas so I could be sure to reply with an equal amount of enthusiasm (a comment like that seems to warrant more than a “thanks for your comment!” blanket response). None of these are, “well let me see if you can answer this, Mr. Smartypants” kind of questions, but rather rhetorical ones that your thoughts have spurred in my own head.
(In short, feel free to ignore everything below 🙂
I love the fishbowl analogy and always appreciate a little Hawkings perspective on things (as one who is constrained to a fishbowl-like existence, I’m thinking he probably knows more about the life of “the fish” than any of us.) So, then if reality is dependent on the lens through which (or the vantage point from which) you conduct the observation, what might this mean for a future where there is an increasingly blurred line between “here” and “there” — a virtual world and a real one? I guess, in essence, what happens when the fish no longer realizes there is a bowl?
Your questions to test the perception got me to thinking that the problem I keep coming back to (and which has made me interested in exploring these ideas in this and other posts), is that — when I talk to people about social media — the rules (or the test) never seems to progress past the “what?” I think that’s the thing that freaks me out. People seem so sure of the “what,” that they never move to the “why.” So if someone says, “Oh, I love so and so” and they’ve never met them, only shared tweets with them, I’m always curious as to “why” they think they love them. What was it in all those exchanges that led them to label this as “love” — or is love simply the easiest way for them to label a series of highly positive encounters viewed through a potentially skewed lens? In short, why does the scientific process so often fall so short when applied to the messy business of human interaction?
I’m also struggling with the notion of how we could ever make a detailed predictions about our future observations of social media. My concern is not that attempting predictions about future events would falsify the model…it’s that they’d CREATE the model. In this space, more than any other, what you think and say is what you create — entire industries, movements and conversations are created, grow and die every day. So if you need only to think it to create it, if we try to THINK of the future of social, would we then just be, in fact, CREATING it?
Good stuff to think about. My brain kinda hurts.
Lastly, I must of course take issue with one thing you mentioned in your post….I don’t think that it’s me that’s the smart one in this conversation 🙂
Thanks for such a quick response. I love the point about people not getting to the “why”, and if we push ourselves to really answer that “why” we might get a more honest picture of our network.
I see your point about the issue with prediction and the threat of creating something because your predicting it. My gut still wants to seek a way to test theories of social media, and measured prediction really makes you get your ideas in order and helps you to follow up. Maybe the solution is to make secret predictions, or to make multiple predictions? Not really sure on that one, maybe that’s where the analogy really breaks down.
Anyway, I guess all we can do now is keep swimming and running into the glass of our fish bowls 🙂
Jen, let me know when you do the podcast. I’d love to hear what HR pros out there are thinking.
Oh, and by the way… Your blog is great and thought-provoking. I just wish I had more time to comment so you knew that I appreciated your efforts. 😉
Jen,
You’re a great writer, Jen. Thank you for this post. I love the way you broke this down. Phenomenal reference points with Inception and the article. I particularly enjoyed this:
“Perhaps that is the real danger of the Screenworld… what if it forgives us for ignoring the staircases at the edges of our world and rewards us for building our lives upon them instead?”
My take on some of the data, mainly that put forth by Ventura is that it operates under the assumption that people know the edges of the staircase in their ‘physical world,’ which I argue many do not. So, when we hop into the ‘screenworld,’ it follows because wherever we go there we are.
There was a great little docu that premiered the same weekend as The Social Network (I think), called Catfish. It illustrates perfectly the theory and discussion here.
I’ve had a number of conversations with practitioners in our field that I have a lot of respect for and whose work is out in the light, where I can see it. These conversations consist of the question, “How is it that no one else sees this?” Referring to the subject matter you’ve outlined here and the various activities that are contrived, disingenuous or lacking in substance and talent. The level of saturation is epic and the rate at which people vett is astonishingly low. Few seek out the information necessary to make informed decisions. That is not an affect of the screen, but a character flaw in the human controlling the screen.
Humanity infers imperfection, and it exists in the physical and screen realms. Forgiving some of our humanity is a given, but the ability to know ourselves and present our best selves wherever we go, personally, professionally and the like is another piece of the conversation. If we aren’t right with ourselves, our professions, skill set, relationships and so on, we will take this with us to our screen life. And I believe that is the biggest problem we face. A problem neither of the screenworld, nor social media, but our ability to be not ‘use’ outlets as an escape mechanism.
I thank you for inspiring me to think about this tonight… and blabber about it on your blog:-) I had to just hit comment because I feel like I got too heady here;-) Wow!
Great stuff Lisa. Very true about people blundering about on the staircases in real life too. And I’ve always found it odd that people replicate their imperfections in the screenworld. when they technically have a “blank slate” there to build a persona for themselves that is maybe even a better version of their “real life” “best self.” I think you’re right that people don’t see always see those things in themselves in this world or the virtual one.
It’s pretty apparent that some people transport a load of personal baggage to the social space where they can sit and display it (and subject it) to a much wider audience. A narcissist in the cube next to you? Annoying. A narcissist with a blog and a podcast who tweets incessantly and gets off of his or her implied “thought-leadership? and starts implying that they should be revered by “their followers”? Well…those people keep me up at night.
I grew up with a mom who’s a psychologist, so I’m very much in support of people doing the work to get their heads together just like they work on their bodies or their careers. But I have found that, particularly in the Midwest, that kind of talk doesn’t go over so well in casual conversation. So I’m usually the odd one out when it comes to this topic.
Thanks for mentioning Catfish. I’ve read a lot about it (particularly all the talk lately about if the whole movie itself is a fake) and would like to see it. Very paradox-y stuff 🙂
Real or fake, Catfish is a prime example of what we’re talking about here. Still worth seeing. Talk about utilizing the blank slate. Would love to chat about it after you’ve seen it – if you do. I completely agree about the Midwest. While I have Minnesota nice tendencies here and there, I’m somewhat of a straight shooter. Out east it’s old hat, in Minn. I’m a bitch — and I don’t really care;-) It is hard to have these conversations publicly though. Albert and I were talking about it last week. If you call the kettle (especially in the business we’re in), it’s a big to do, received like the anti-Christ because it didn’t come in a package that everyone is used to. I’ve experienced an abundance of things in life that don’t come in that package, so I almost prefer it that way. Love your follow up comments. Thanks again, Jen.
Oh Lisa that was no blabber that was very thought provoking. Man alive I think I just flipped the whole street over the top of my head after thinking about all this stuff! Catfish you say….will check that out!