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How often do you lament the fact that you can\u2019t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\nHow often do you lament the fact that you can\u2019t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\n
Do you feel guilty when you unsubscribe something or unfriend someone in your network? Why?<\/p>\n
Consumption of content is not a democracy. Giving of attention is not a democracy. We each have to decide what we find value in, and leave the rest behind. If that\u2019s one blog or no blogs or five Twitter followers or a hundred, it\u2019s up to us. And there is no standard that\u2019s fit for everyone.<\/p>\n
Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster have been discussing whether the social web is an economy of favors<\/strong><\/a>, and to a certain extent in the content realm, it might just be. We look at people reading our blog or following us on Twitter as some kind of personal validation that we have something important to say, or simply that people like us enough to pay attention. And the quid pro quo \u2013 you comment on or share my post and I\u2019ll share yours \u2013 simply isn\u2019t doing us any favors to ensure that the content we\u2019re reading makes a difference in our work, our lives, or our minds. (This goes for that silly \u201cwhy aren\u2019t you following me back\u201d thing, too.) We have this irrational fear that by not being up on everything, we\u2019ll be connected to nothing. Which is outrageous. By merely participating<\/em> online, we are immersed in a great sea of information, and from there we can choose what \u2013 or if \u2013 to consume. And the relative sameness or related nature of so many of the things we find and read means, very simply, that we just don\u2019t need it all.<\/p>\n Justin Kownacki issued the Read It All Week challenge<\/strong><\/a> to get us to examine our reading habits more closely as well as what content we actually consume and get value from. I jumped the gun on Justin a bit and did something a bit extreme but cathartic: I nuked my reader. All of it. I unsubscribed from every single blog I had in there.<\/p>\n I kept a note about a few that I might want to revisit. But the rest? If it\u2019s worthwhile, I\u2019ll find it again. If it\u2019s really valuable content that made a difference to me, I\u2019ll notice its absence and perhaps seek it out again, on different terms. I might discover new content that fits my current state of mind. And at every turn, I consume the content. It does not consume me.<\/p>\n Our tastes change, as do our ideas, and the way we take in and use information. We need not be shackled to a wave of words, people, and information that doesn\u2019t fit our lifestyle or our work. And it\u2019s about time we evaluate our own motivations for this quicksand we\u2019ve voluntarily walked into, and stop with the melodrama when we\u2019re the victim our own choices, or when our behaviors aren\u2019t reflected in those of others.<\/p>\n The beauty of the web is that we can each bend it to our will. Won\u2019t you join me in taking control of your own online universe, and ceasing to apologize for what that means for you?<\/p>\n I look forward to your comments. <\/p>\n Amber Naslund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How often do you lament the fact that you can\u2019t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I\u2019ve done it. Do you feel guilty when you unsubscribe something or unfriend someone in your network? Why? Consumption of content is not a democracy. Giving of attention is not a democracy. We each … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,55],"tags":[552,554,553,551,555,556],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-ambernaslund","tag-content","tag-economy-of-favors","tag-guilt","tag-overload","tag-reading","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThe firehose we complain about is a monster of our own making.<\/strong><\/p>\n