Stop Nurturing Your e-Brand on social
If you do this…
You’re signing up for this…
And that’s okay, if you understand how the digital ecosystem works.
Since 1920’s Australians have been encouraged to consume. Initially through the power of print media, then radio and television.
Convenience has driven consumption of products and services for a hundred years, but somewhere in the last decade, you and I became the product being sold, under the guise of community and human’s inherent (or learned) desire for connection.
Social media and technology platforms have so expertly distracted us from realising our digital selves are a mirror of our most vulnerable selves, disguising itself as a free solution to building our networks.
However, social technology and mobile media doesn’t connect us, it ‘distracts’ us and from it new daily habits and new norms formed.
Not sure, what I mean…?
Imagine there is a black out for 24 hours. Your phone has just run out of battery and there is literally no way to charge your devices. Even if you could, there is no internet connection.
You’re officially (and without warning) disconnected with no control over when reconnection will occur.
Think about that.
As an individual, How will that impact your mobility, your connection with your partner, children, local community, friends, extended family? How will it affect your earning capacity, ability to be on time (or even know the time), your access to money…?
Can you thrive, your way, in your everyday without being ‘plugged in’?
For most, the simple loss of electricity, paralyses our ‘normal’ everyday routine.
If you’re a small business owner paying ‘influencers’ to do this:
Ask yourself how sustainable your approach to the market really is.
Social media nurtures a public profile for all to exploit.
It doesn’t organically provide you with community and opportunity or knowledge, merely access to information curated by an algorithm that it thinks you should like… and so you do.
The operational cost of participating is not just your privacy. It’s your intelligence. Now this is nothing new and you probably have felt very comfortable handing over your personal and business data to the AI-driven bots of the Big 7 for years.
But in the absence of legal protections and faint attempts by the ACCC to protect the business interests of media organisations above and beyond the actual human right to privacy for all Australians, your data will continue to be sold back to you, to increase your consumption of mobile and social platforms, because you continue to ride them.
Why do we capitulate so easily to being ‘dumbed down’ as both individuals and society?
The tide needs to turn and although an ethics discussion has been simmering, it is falling largely on deaf ears, possibly because of our collective apathy and the economics of a challenge seem unviable.
Civilisations have crumbled repeatedly throughout the history of man. Why?
Maybe it’s because we fail to recognise the patterns of history do apply to the living and rather than seek to amend our ways intelligently, sustainably and purposefully we default to the convenience of consuming the information provided to us, rather than proactively seeking what is in our collective best interest.
Do you care enough about yourself and your loved ones to seek out a future where your daily actions are your own, or don’t you feel your privacy is worth anything anymore…?
This week’s Challenge: Remove your social media platforms from your phone for a week and see what you are really missing out on.
Tiffanny Junee 
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