Blogging, Social Media and the Joy of Interaction!

"Way back when," I was actually quite excited about social media.

Social media was a pretty limited thing you could engage in primarily by belonging to forum or message board group online, and through social blogging which in some way was Steemit's very early predecessor, in the late 1990s.

I've always been an introvert, and I did my best communication in writing because it seemed like my brain could "keep up" with my two finger typing, and my mouth never had a backspace key!

Back in my 20's, I also suffered from some degree of Social Anxiety, but even while that was the case I could still be quite eloquent in writing and so the social aspects of both blogging and message boards were very appealing to me.

In some ways, they helped me come out of my shell.

Then came Facebook. I was actually kind of excited about the promise of Facebook in its early days, until I gradually recognized that it was becoming less and less social. It seemed more like a big game of collecting "likes" and having the biggest "friends list." In some ways, I credit — or should it be blame? — Facebook for being one of the original cogs in the wheel that seems to be driving our growing lack of social connection these days.

For a lot of people, it seems like they view being social — whether online or in person — as hard work.

Which brings me back to Steemit and the way people periodically point out that we have suffered (are suffering) from a considerable lack of engagement here. Indeed. When I first started here in early 2017, it was precisely the high level of engagement that lent a lot of appeal to this place. It was not that unusual for me to create a relatively interesting post and have 20 to 30 comments on it!

I say that, and should also add that at the time I was pretty much a nobody and I still got 20 to 30 comments.

Of course, I was also an active commenter myself, going out and about on the site and engaging with people's content — not so much because I was trying to fish for upvotes, but just because I was trying to establish connection with different people who seemed to have interesting things to say.

In other words, that was the part of the experience I thought of as being rather fun!

I say this in part as a bit of a counterpoint to the ongoing discussions about the way AI increasingly is creeping into the world of social media, including right here.

Whereas I'm not prepared to stick my head in the sand and pretend that AI isn't going to become a greater and greater part of the world, I'm not really all that interested in AI as part of the social aspects of content creation, be that blogging or something else.

I have no beef with AI being in the role of an informational or service provider.

For example, and AI comment coming in and saying "congratulation this is your 10,000th comment" or perhaps saying "I noticed that you have written about your garden and growing things on a number of occasions — have you considered joining Steemit's Gardening community, like here" seems like an appropriate use. Not only might it be an appropriate use, but it might be an appropriate use that would generate a greater degree of interaction between the human participants of the community, by pointing them in the direction of content they find interesting.

Of course the danger we face is that people look at AI as a shortcut to getting something for nothing. The lure of money for nothing is something that's been with us for a very long time, probably for centuries for all I know.

In short, we want some kind of benefit, but we have a certain inner voice of sloth that says I wonder if I can get this benefit without actually having to do anything. Those who have perhaps not the strongest sense of personal ethics are the ones likely to use AI to pretend that they are something which they're not.

It's good to have this discussion before the problem gets so far out of hand that we have no control over it. Where does AI really belong? How do we detect and mark it as being AI rather than a contribution by a human being? Or are we simply going to go to the road of not caring?

But — to get back on point here — I am a human being, and my interest (to the degree that I follow social media and participate in online social sites) is a desire to communicate with other human beings. I have no more desire to be communicating with an AI bot then I have a desire to go to the world famous Wimbledon tennis tournament and watch the finals being played between two robots directed by AI. Call me old fashioned, but that's just not my species!

Perhaps the lesson we can ultimately learn here is that not everything needs to be for personal monetary gain, or for some other kind of gain. Sometimes we just want interaction for interaction sake!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? What is your opinion about the "social" part of social media? Do you enjoy the engagement? Do you enjoy connecting with people? How do you feel about the growing presence of AI? Do you think AI will destroy social media? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.09.18 23:36 PDT
x849/2083