Social Media is making me lose my social instincts

I am a student of social media as you can't really be a good designer unless you know how to communicate through todays channels, design is all about communication.

I follow some amazing, insightful social media experts on twitter and am learning every day. Lately I've realised all this reading I'm doing on social media is weakening my social instincts. The more you read the more you think and the more you think, the more you second guess yourself. Going on a hunch and trusting our natural social instincts has become a lot harder, ironically.

It used to be if someone asks you a question, be helpful, its the nice thing to do, and yeah of course stop talking about yourself constantly, listen just as much. Even though we humans are sort of programmed to take turns to talk, most of us like talking and not listening, its a human thing and technology isn't going to change that. But today there are many theories on how to be genuine. (the upside is of course, the sheer wonderful humour in irony! :)

If you literally concentrate on your breathing, you'd immediately start to either breathe funny or hyperventilate a little and that's the feeling I get when I examine my 'social human business' too much.

On twitter I've realised time and time again, 'genuine' people are often the most popular. People pretending to be genuine get found out eventually, as you can't fake being genuine all day in 140 characters. This is brilliant of course, twitter is like a nice-o-meter constantly judging, constantly posting judgments.

Of course the downside of twitter's nice-o-meter is it also creates a little bit of panic, pressure and fear of judgment, it's like we're in the playground again. Its also causing a barrage of 'nice campaigns', carefully crafted campaigns, a constantly increasing number of businesses re-branding themselves to connect with the people, be casual, be human!

Social media is teaching us to be more human but in theorising what it is to be socially human, many genuine people who popped into the world with good instincts are losing the plot a little.

So anyway, I will keep being a student of social media of course and it does excite me, but I've been consciously thinking about using my social instincts a lot more and giving social hostage a bit of a birdie.