Soon it’ll all be forgotten. Taken up in the tornado that is Twitter and Facebook and Google + and whatever comes next…
But there are those of us, from the dark times, that remember when social meant talking to someone. When hearing about The Clash, came from a kid’s older brother. When listening to “Career Opportunities” destroyed anything that ever came from Dick Clark.
“You’ve got to hear Joe Strummer. This is cool shit,” was the message to the suburbs from a dude who had been away listening to college radio.
News in those days came via a thin line. Obtaining recordings, images, interviews, required effort, luck to track down. But that thin line stretched around the world.
Info came via cassette tapes, torn magazines, beat up copies of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and most important world of mouth – all handed over from one human to another. That’s the social.
Now that seams just as remote as a telegram. There just isn’t time to build up those kind of mythic stories from unfamiliar worlds.
Or perhaps it all just happens much, much, much faster.
And that brings us back to the ‘social.’ It’s the source that matters – a friend’s recommendation carries much more weight that any advertisement or mainstream source.
With social media you want to be the cool older brother and not American Bandstand.