In a Past Life, Social Media Turned Me Into a People Hater (But Now I Love People Again :-)

Barack Obama is in my LinkedIn network. Should I ask him to stumble my stuff? I'd be like, "Dude, are we voting for each other, or not?"

You could be like "Seriously, Barack... I'm trying to hit the Digg front page for crying out loud. I fucking gave you $12 bucks last month you think you could at least give me a vote."

@Hunter: that's fucking hilarious. OMG.

Great post on being real, as usual, Clay. I've felt the same way at times. It seems like social media can sometimes become just a free marketing tool. It can start to lose some of it's social value. Thanks for coming back. We need more 'social' social media people.

heh... I'm probably more of an anti-social social media person :-). I like people despite social media :-)

In a way it's a nice problem to have. People are reaching out, even if it's badly!

True that. It's a quality problem.

People have asked me to add them to my blogroll, or comment on their blog or stumble a post. My blog, however, is very specific - personal development. I don't add people who aren't in that niche unless I have a REALLY good reason. As for commenting on other blogs, I only do that when I am moved to. I read your blog all the time, for example, but don't comment unless I have something to say. As for stumbling posts upon requests, I'll consider it. I'll read the post and decide if it is something I think is worth stumbling. It's, for me, an issue of personal ethics. I would never promote something IRL that I didn't think was a great item, and the rules aren't different for me online.

Anyway, I still have a group of core, committed readers who are not bent out of shape that I do not have them on my blogroll. I do comment on their blogs, but only on posts that move me to comment.

Hm. So I guess my point is, don't worry about the haters. If they don't respond to your style, they can move on and hold someone else's time hostage.

Funny Hunter :)

I’ve sometimes thought about starting a blog for fun but the phenomenon you describe is one of the factors that makes me think blogging may not be for me. Maybe it’s cart before horse thinking, but I deal with so many super entitled people at my day job that I really don’t want to go someplace where I’ll encounter more of them.

There are certain popular blogs I enjoy and I used to frequently read the comments as well as the posts for the conversation that went on there. But now I’ll scroll down and see 50+ comments and so many of them are from the same people every day, basically saying, “Great post! We’re really on the same wavelength! I wrote about the same subject recently in this post: blog.com/shamelessplug” Bloggers write that a great way to support them is by commenting on their posts but, especially once someone has a decent amount of traffic, does this kind of commenting really contribute much?

Great video. The first time I've seen a self-shot video on a blog that was outside! :)

Our social spaces online and off have all-too-frequently become places where we lead with our well-crafted "personal brand" in an attempt to turn our friends into customers. It's becoming difficult to find places where we can just hang out without selling anything or being sold on anything.

Having boundaries with people and being real (e.g. stumbling things you actually find value in) are wonderful ways to approach this problem.

Here's a confession.... I sense a burn out for myself coming sometime...... now.

Welcome back to the social media stuff Clay! Liking the videos that you've been making recently, especially for those that are outdoors. I just realized the friendfeed widget on your sidebar, and you have 116 domain names! That's alot.

Glad you are back, Clay!

Great post, Clay. Sometimes people can be a little "desperate" in how they reach out. That really sucks because these desperate people probably DO have value to bring to a relationship. This is great advice and I hope folks will stop and think.