Slow And Steady Wins The Social Media Race
An old fable still has relevance for teaching us in our hyper-technology-driven online world today.
The year was 2010, and I was a mere babe in the woods on Twitter. Having only created my account on a whim nearly two years prior because I needed to keep up with games news as part of a spur-of-the-moment contract gig that would somehow eventually end up with me spending a decade in the industry, I was still in that phase where I was amazed at the real-time nature of a platform that limited people to short posts.
On a particular day in this year, while I was deciding what food to post on my feed to my tiny Twitter audience, a dire-sounding tweet shot through my feed:
RT @CNN: Breaking News: actor Morgan Freeman has passed away in his Burbank home<< wow legendary actor #RIPmorganfreeman
Within seconds, tons of other people had retweeted the horrible news that everyone's favorite narrator and one of Hollywood's most iconic actors had passed away. Even "official" accounts, like Borders' bookstore, boosted the news. Hell, if one of my favorite bookstores that I was completely confident in the 10's would last forever was saying it, it had to be true, right?
Except it wasn't.
Morgan Freeman was very much alive, and CNN had to clarify that they never tweeted the fake post in the first place - a random guy who figured they'd do something funny on Twitter before watching "Pulp Fiction" for a couple hours did. Little did he know the shitstorm he'd cause.
Social media as a whole learned a lesson that day - don't always trust and immediately react to what you see.
Fifteen years later, I feel like we haven't learned this lesson as social media has ballooned to far more than just posting about how neat it is to update from the toilet, or see what cool yet overexposed joke was going to be spread around. I'd say it's gotten a lot worse - especially as there's pressure to be not only first to post something but fastest to do it, information and verification be damned.
And unlike hoaxes, which back in the infancy of social media shortposting are mostly harmless fun, this kind of peer pressure to be the hare from the famous Tortoise and the Hare fable and be quick to the draw for those sweet, sweet social media engagement endorphins has become patently harmful, if not downright toxic.
What sucks is that I feel like my hobbies cross at least two spheres where fast Hare-like reactions are valued over Tortoise-like rationality. In both K-Pop and in Games, the hot, nuclear takes that are shot from the hip immediately are far more likely to be seen than the posts that show up five days later after there's been some time to gather info and evidence. In a matter of a week, famous K-Pop group BTS's Suga was vilified, then questioned, then ultimately cleared of most wrongdoing for an unfortunate incident where he ended up a bit tipsy after a few drinks. Fake CCTV footage that was irresponsibly reported as true was debunked, but not until after a week of what passed for discourse on Twitter. Such things are common in the circles I run in, where rushing to judgment isn't just a bug but a feature in today's social media climate.
I don't know about you guys, but being as old as I am, and being online before we could instantly let thousands of people around the world know about how amazing the KFC Double Down was, has made me shift my priorities and check my sources. Like the Tortoise in the fable, I've usually been left behind in the dust as others have formulated, posted (and sometimes un-posted) their reaction to things. Yet in the end, I've felt generally better informed and most of all, a bit saner having not run straight to my favorite social platforms to react to things.
Because few, if any, modern social media platforms have made efforts to discourage the Hare-ish Hot Takes in favor of Tortoise-like Temperance, I feel we're left to our own devices, struggling to resist the urge to post immediately about something so we can get our social media fix or feel some level of camaraderie with our fellow real-time reactors. Yet holding off even a day, to allow for news to be reported, read, and commented on by subject matter experts and well-connected sources is ultimately better - or at the very least saves you from having to run back an opinion you posted about something that turns out to be the wrong one.
Next time you see something online that's worthy of a reaction from you, be the Tortoise and not the Hare. Your mental health will thank you for it.
