Dancing With Myself

Dancing With Myself
Mirror, Mirror, on the wall; Who’s the sharingest of them all? Let’s play a little game. I’ll describe an object, and you tell me what it is.

• It has feathers
• It is yellow
• It has a beak
• It has webbed feet
• It’s cute
• It’s not fully grown
• It cannot yet fly

What would you say it is? Yeah, I probably would have said “Duck” too, don’t feel bad.

The problem is that once we start assimilating descriptions and characteristics within our minds, we jump to unwarranted conclusions. Often, we end up assuming other attributes that aren’t relevant, and fail to recognize when the analogy isn’t working for us anymore.

I have the same thoughts, for similar reasons, when I hear people trumpeting the importance of “the Conversation.” I stew on those thoughts even longer when the phrase “the Conversation” is preceded by the word “Join.”

Did we make a mistake a long time ago by assuming “Conversation” where it doesn’t exist?

Filling the Echo Chamber

There are many ways to probe an analogy for its worthiness. Personally, I enjoy parody.

Last week, I embarked on a little project, just to see what would happen. “#Solochat” was born.

There are many regularly scheduled chats on Twitter. Each week at a designated time, people interested in ___________ will jump on Twitter together, and talk with each other using the #__________ identifier. That way, they can pay attention to the stream of #___________ mentions, and ignore the rest. Conversely, if you’re following people who are talking about #___________ for an hour at a time, you need technological assistance to shut down the noise that #___________ generates.

Mind you, I am not belittling the value of the discussions, and they can be a great way for people to connect. But are they a “conversation?” Well, they look like a duck, and they seem rather ducky, but in the end it might just be one guy dancing with himself.

On first glance, it sure seems like I was talking to a bunch of other people. Really, I was just talking to myself, with a bunch of other people chiming in around me, like a Greek Chorus that sings to an unaware protagonist. (Irony!)

If it’s not a Duck, what IS it?

In the real-life Twitter chats, you’ll see the same behavior, just not quite drilled down to an absurd singularity. You instead have several threads of separate interactions woven into one cloth. And in that respect, it’s not really a conversation. We’ve pretended up until now that it is, but it’s not. It’s not a conversation, it’s not cocktail-party blather, it’s not formal writing… it’s something else. And as long as we get hung up on the conventions of Conversation, we’ll keep making inaccurate assumptions about etiquette and effectiveness and impact and measurement.

I have participated in several of these chats in the past, and moderated one (#crisisdata.) I’m even considering starting up a regular online ____________ about online crisis communications and management.

Notice that I left that word blank, because I don’t rightly know exactly what it is. Whatever it is, it’s hard work, and my experience tells me that having 200 people instead of 50 is not four times better. After a certain point, the non-conversation non-chat non-interview shoutfest echoes with so many retweets that you’re really just looking for your next opportunity to chime in — and you don’t know if it was a success until you read the transcript later. How is that a “conversation”?

If I had the chance I’d ask the world to dance…
If I had the chance I’d ask the world to dance…
If I had the chance I’d ask the world to dance…

…but I was dancing with myself. (Uh oh, uh oh.)