Will The Last Person To Leave Please Turn Off the Social Media?
This scenario happens far too often to be good for anybody's mental health.
An influential person on Twitter is leaving on a jet plane, so they throw out a tweet to their people to recommend a good book for the trip.
What follows is hundreds upon hundred of recommendations for marketing, business, self-help and entrepreneurial books that nobody in their right mind would read on an airplane, but recommending it conveys a sense of savviness and marketing smarts.
Absolutely nobody recommends a work of fiction.
Of course, said person thanks everybody for playing and says they decided on "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution"! This makes matters worse, and serves to solidify two false truths in our Twitter-addled brains:
1. In order to stay relevant on Twitter and in the eyes of influentials, everything you tweet must be grounded in your field of business. (Don't we all follow that guy who tweets stuff like "How to Attract New Customers Through Social Media" at 10 p.m. on a Friday night?)
2. If you decide to stray from your area of expertise, you will be shot on site.
The beauty of a site like Twitter is that it gives us access to like-minded individuals who are likely in search of similar dialogue. But these conversations are never-ending, so if you disappear for even a few days — like, I don't know, taking a vacation? — you risk missing out.
As it is in any type of social environment, there is pressure to keep up appearances.
How far are you willing to go to stay relevant?
