You see what I did with this post’s title? When this post gets tweeted (which will be about 5 times over the next year) by automatic features of Twitter clients , that hashtag will be entered into the stream.

Regular readers – the community who loves what I do here – get the humor. That’s part of the character – persona – of this service.

I see all sorts of self-promoting behavior. It’s cool…except when it’s not.

You see, what’s missing in most Healthcare communications is the ability to sustain an interactive audience rallying around relevant social objects.

The real test of a community’s love of its members and leaders is not having to rely on tricks and spam and linkbait – or a hashtag. Think of how lame that is: to think that a hashtag is a marketing strategy. Wow. But I see it. It’s kind of funny…but not really since it’s drowns out the voices of those who have something smarter to say than you.

Now, more than ever, we need true community leaders in Healthcare.

We don’t care about your blog post.

We don’t care about your Pinterest announcement.

We don’t care about your claim that you “respect nurses” or that you’re a top hospital in a magazine.

We care about Care.

We care about your competence.

We care about your wisdom.

We care about what you’re actually doing behind the PR mask that tells us you’re transparent because it’s not transparent to us that you’re transparent.

We care about your humor – because without any humor you simply are not human.

I don’t tell you I’m cute. Either I am, or I’m not. I let you decide based on how I look and act and tell bad jokes.

Don’t do what I just did in the title of this post. It’s a negative model. In fact, unfollow me if you’re insulted. My job is to inform, not to flatter. Get it?

Millions of machines tweeting their data.

Millions of machines following other machines, retweeting to other machines following the ever-expanding Cloud of tweets.

Billions of tweets propounding per second: news of their work…calls to action.

Trillions of nanobots moving guanine, cytosine…reverse transcriptase…transmuting carbon molecules into alchemical dreams.

All this mechanical purposing evolves into an ecosystem of invisible purposes – maturing into a purposing onto itself.

Amid the alien world dusted around them, the human feels a deepened need for meaning.

What’s a human to do when the galaxy of technology does the lifting?

At last, the human confronts the pressure of isolating what being human is all about.

The human remembers: it is a lost creature – cut off from nature and now cut off from technology.

The human re-cognizes the world.

The human is no longer just a being.

The human is a presence.

For the future of technological survival belongs to the wise, to the ones who know the balance between focus and serendipity, between searching and conversing, between nature and technology.

Do not become lost. The seduction is great, and few will journey into the treasury chests of their hopes.

William, through the persona of Macbeth, told us about this Age. He wasn’t talking about life. He was talking about the show of technology – of pen and ink and papper, shared between author and reader, actor and audience. He was talking about…social media.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The Tower of Babble. It always falls, no matter the material with which we attempt to build it.

The Tale of Social Media signifies nothing.

Your life, however, signifies everything.

What I’m saying is: Don’t be a Social Media Idiot.

RT

Share

+1

Let’s be honest: the media we have begun to use aren’t exactly social.

“Social” means living or communicating or collaborating directly with other people: I like you. I don’t Like you.

As we Like, RT, Share and + away, what we’re doing is pushing buttons which activate vicarious ecosystems.

The platforms that engender these ecosystems are Vicarious Media.

Vicarious Media do enable certain kinds of indirect connections among people, but it’s information accumulation through other people’s media, not with them.

Yes, we can say that there are/is Social Media.

But: living socially and living vicariously are vastly different from each other.

Please don’t confuse the two.

What was worse – the pain of swelling, having to hold her arm above her broken heart, or the loss of her first child’s suckling grace – mound of milk she tendered to his mouth thirteen years ago?

The world is so full with pain that some people just don’t know what to do.

The clinic services stopped racing six months ago.

She sank. She sank down into the bed. Melted down into it.

Not to cry nor to disappear nor to sleep.

She sank, so she could return to where all good things return: to motherhood – dark secret depth of creation’s light.

To mother herself was to give new birth, was to endure new labor pains, was to see both death and birth in ways nobody ever showed her.

We can choose to be offended or choose to be informed. Most of us choose the first option. Obviously.

— Health Is Social (@HealthIsSocial) January 29, 2012

This applies to cars as much as to health initiatives.

Being liked and being sold are different matters.

In fact, the best things sold to the world are too often the most disliked:

• Civil rights
• Exercise
• Forgiveness

Leaders sell.

Followers like.

But who buys?

Ah, that’s a question.