When I’m writing a book I try to get at least 3500 words down every working day. Sometimes they come easily, and I’m done in a couple of hours. More often it takes me just about the time I have available, between the kids leaving for school, and coming back again. And then there are days where I just plain fail, and my defences against the twin evils of procrastination and snacking collapse like a sandcastle on a fast-rising tide. It doesn’t happen too often, but today was one such day. So, in order to claw something back from the disaster of zero words written, I’m going to tell you about my weekend, and what it might say about social media and life in general.
The core problem in this instance is easy to diagnose. It’s Monday, and we just got back from the sort of weekend that Instagram was built for. I’m not exaggerating. As a family we went off in the camping van (it’s not quite a camper van, but we can, and did, sleep in it). We took our paddleboards and went down a river estuary to a secret, hidden beach that only reveals itself at low tide. The sun was shining, the water was warm, and the summer crowds have gone. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous area, and it was absurdly idyllic. I’ve included some photos because you wouldn’t quite believe me if I didn’t.
We arrived at the beach just as the tide was pulling back, and for a couple of hours were alone, scrambling on the rocks, diving from the sand into the deep green water, and exploring the caves. And then, off in the distance, we saw some other paddleboarders heading our way. Then it was like the scene from the film The Beach, when Leonardo DiCaprio sees his secret island invaded by outsiders, except that we didn’t beat them to death with rocks. But what happened next was nevertheless interesting.
There were three of them. A young attractive couple and a slightly older man, and it quickly became apparent that they were there to work, at least sort of. On arriving, and casting us slightly annoyed looks, one of the men pulled out a large camera, and pointed it at the woman. And as he did so, she changed from looking a bit bored to gazing around, as if awestruck at the incredible beauty of her surroundings. She posed against the rocks. She spun around in her sarong and matching bikini. She skipped along the shoreline. They launched a drone, and she drifted dreamily along the only section of the beach we hadn’t polluted with our footprints. Then they pushed her out on the paddleboard and she sunbathed on it, one arm draped lazily in the water. She stayed there just long enough for the drone to get the shot, then she came back and had a sandwich. I got it by now, and you probably have too. They were that strange modern phenomena of social media influencers.
It’s tempting to poke fun. After all, they weren’t spending any time in this wonderful place having actual fun, but all of their time pretending to do so. But that would be unfair, and also – I realise after giving this some thought – a bit hypocritical. A further anecdote might help illustrate why.
You see, the river actually splits into two branches, a few miles before it meets the sea. The first, where we saw the influencers, really is as idyllic as I’ve described. The other, which we paddled down the next day, is still nice, but the beach there sits below a campsite, and there were a dozen or so people wandering about. One of them (we suspect a rather large man who went swimming naked) did a little poo, which floated, and sort of bobbed around in front of where we were having our picnic. In the end I used the paddle to push it out into the current, where it finally got swept out to sea, presumably to join all the other poos that humanity discharges into the ocean every day.
The point of this story is that I didn’t take a photograph of the poo, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to include it in the images above. On the contrary, I spent some time selecting the very best of the photos from the hundred or so we shot, over the whole weekend. Similarly I selected the best anecdotes from what we did on the whole weekend – until I realised what I was doing, and included the poo moment, just to put you off your dinner.
So is this selection really different from what the influencers were doing? Even if I wasn’t writing this in an email, I’d still tell people what a great weekend I’d had, and I’d still choose the best moments, show them the best photos. I’d still edit and curate my weekend, showing off the best parts and keeping the worst as a sort of dirty secret. And I think we all would, or rather, we all do.
It seems to me in this sense social media is a kind of turbo charger to a behaviour we all do. Revving up our human habit of showing our best sides, and hiding our worst.
It’s also what killed my words for the day. When I got back to my desk this morning I got thinking about whether I was doing social media well enough. And I basically spent the day half-heartedly updating my website and unloved Facebook account, and browsing the social media of several very much more successful people. And it made me realise just how much time it takes to create the perfect post, find the ideal image. There’s a reason those influencers didn’t take the time to actually enjoy paradise before they documented it, there wasn’t time.
But it’s made me think of using this post to open a conversation. Regardless of the absurdity of social media, and everything I’ve said above. I still feel, and have felt for some time, that I ought to be doing something more. As an author who – if nothing else – could really do with selling a few more books, but just as a human too, who lives in a world where it’s very much a thing. So I’m going to open the question to you, dear reader. Would you like to hear (more) from me, and if so how? What platforms, what kind of posts? Which authors (if any) do social media really well, and how might I blatantly steal their ideas? I certainly don’t promise I’ll do everything you suggest. I might end up doing nothing. But I think it would help me to hear your thoughts.
I’m going to send this out by email, put it on my website and stick it on my Facebook page (oh the irony). Please do write back via any channel, and I’ll do my best to answer and join in. Maybe, somehow, it’ll help stop me losing more writing days like this one.
Thank you!
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