With some of the stuff I have been seeing in posts on popular professional social networks lately, I am realizing all bets are off, and the gloves too…
From affiliate links for buying blackhead squeezing/removers, to testimonies of embarrassing failures, I see a NGAF trend emerging. Trying to promote an outward image on social media of everything happy and filtered is just not cutting the mustard anymore, and it doesn’t lead to ‘jobs’.
In fact, the majority of users (bots, perhaps) offering to help others find fulfilling employment on these popular sites are merely selling their services, like everyone else. It’s a sales game, and it’s just getting silly. So, let’s get silly.
Rather than an act of downgrading the professional posture of these ‘communities’, perhaps we can see through the cruft to the intentionality of authenticity instead. Some of the most engaging, reposted, reacted, and commented posts lately have been those which:
express a real vulnerability,
ask for help, rather than pose to offer it,
tell an authentic story of failure or disappointment,
show another, real, side of a day-in-the-life,
offer contrarian views to the AI and best (over spouted soup) practices claimed,
focus on real writing that can be read and absorbed (not glamor or stock images and listicles).
If you are like me in the past, since overcoming the barrier of being afraid (of what others may think), then you’re ready for this. Don’t be afraid how you’ll come across to many, be excited how you’ll come through to those that matter.
“Those who mind, don’t matter, and those who matter won’t mind.”
In fact.
Write like your life and vocation depend upon it, because they do in the new economics. As we venture through the waning and waxing attention economy toward something new, The Meaning Economy, we must value and recognize the minority (and scarce commodity) of those valuable practitioners of communication who can actually write.
I’m not talking about quantity, nor satisfying the algorithms, nor garnering either adulation or the attention of trolls and controversy.
I’m talking about the kind of characteristics and quality of the content (in any niche, or no niche at all) that cannot be written by ChatGPT, because it is driven from an individual’s irreplaceable experience:
Do you know what I mean?
What is your story that nobody else knows, and nobody else can possibly tell?
Are you afraid to tell it like it is?
Do you fear criticism, rejection, or being forever committed to ‘the record’ on the internet?
Well, if your motives and mindsets were drastically altered, you may adopt an attitude (and remove the resistance) to being silly. Now, I’m saying this word ‘silly’ in the meaning that you may underrate the value of it, but that others will value.
That’s the difference between fluff and blackhead removers, versus one person saying “damn, this person can actually write for a living, I will pay them.”