Two Cents: Sneaky sound systems

18 October 2012

I’m a bit old school when it comes to technology. I'm not an early adopter, I don't have twitter and I definitely don't carry an iPad around to meetings (you know who you are).

It's for this reason, I was pretty chuffed with myself for my speedy introduction to me ol’mate Spotify. Now I don't want to brag or make a big deal about me being ahead of the social curve (because I totally am) but you could say that now with a grand total of 3 social media platforms under my belt, I’ve been riding on the highs of being what us industry insiders call a “social media buff”.
 
But then, it happened… Alex Ryan listened to Enrique Iglesias "Don't turn off the lights" on Spotify.

I could have sworn the share functionality was disabled! With my social cred plummeting faster than Felix Baumgartner, I could only watch in horror and think that this is the exact thing, I thought I had already protected myself from. Apparently you need a degree in coding to enjoy an app these days without exposing your deepest darkest secrets. 

I can’t help but notice that this is happening across the board with new programs, apps and software and quite frankly we are losing the plot. There is a clear difference between making something inherently social and tricking people into sharing stuff through complexity. Reality is, if someone invented a web browser app now, it would automatically share the sites we visit and let’s be honest… No one wants to share their internet history.

The ridiculous thing is that it has had a profound effect on the way I listen to music. Ever since this moment, there is an air of panic whenever I listen to awesome bad music. I shouldn’t feel a sense of liberation and freedom when I go back to my old iPod… but I do.

Somewhere along the line, whoever is creating these new fandangle apps has decided that our lives are made to be shared all the time and that a level of sharing should be standard. Sharing has now become something we opt out of rather than opt in, something that couldn’t be further from the real world.

Because of this, Facebook is now a wasteland of uninteresting, over shared automated rubbish... I actually long for the days when people told us what they had for breakfast... At least that was a person and the information was volunteered.

It’s behaviour like this that makes me think social media is still in its awkward teen years. It’s still fumbling through people’s lives, popping up at the wrong time and not exactly knowing where it fits in. Let’s just hope for all of our sake it matures into adulthood and begins to understand where people like to be touched, when they like to be touched, when to shout out and when to shut up!

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