Donald Trump: The Social Media President
Over the years, I’ve written about politics (and business) quite a few times. I’ve made it clear that I believe Barack Obama to have been — ultimately — a terrific President. I’ve also made it clear that Donald Trump seems like about the worst choice for President we could dream up. But in a couple of months Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States.
https://youtu.be/i0wcQR9kmsM
In coming to grips with that, I’ve been unusually active on social media. Donald Trump isn’t really the social media President, of course; truth is, his tweets are scattered and amateurish. If anything, Donald Trump will be the unsocial media President. But President-elect Trump came to be after “we were all using social media”, and while talking to my peeps, something I’d never before considered happened.
A couple of hours before the magnitude of what was about to happen became clear, I posted this question:
Who Else Hates Florida?
An hour or so later, someone who works for me jumped into the message stream, asking, simply, “Why?”. And I accept that this person might not have understood the context of my question … except, later on, he made it clear that he understood me just fine. He made it clear that he was gloating.
I’m happy — I mean this, seriously — that the folks who work for me are comfortable engaging in this kind of ribbing with me. And I believe that many of them are; this wan’t an isolated example of someone stepping into territory that could have caused problems if I was a different kind of manager. Nevertheless, it was incredibly dumb to gloat, publicly, at the guy responsible for his livelihood.
Or maybe it was irresponsible of me to have accepted his friend request. So here’s where this conversation has the potential to go off the rails.
The very nature of social media is that building links among everyone you know is supposed to be “good”. That means, for example, that you need to be clean; I’ve said before that swearing in writing is a bad idea, unless the context of what you’re writing relies on the bad words. But was it stupid of this guy to get familiar with me in public, or was it stupid of me to open up my circles to him?
There’s no one answer, of course, but the question brings us back to the idea of The Social Media President The UNsocial Media President.
The Social Media President
Remember that racist remark on Facebook? You’re Fired!
I wrote that over five years ago, and it seems that whether it’s you or “the other guy” responsible, sooner or later (maybe just later; maybe you need to be running for President), you can be a racist in writing and it won’t cost you your job. Social Media is REAL Business Change, and maybe social networks always become unsocial networks.
Maybe in the era of The Social Media President it comes down to avoiding social media depression. Or maybe we’ve entered a time where “I Didn’t Mean It” is good enough. It’s good enough for Donald Trump, right?
The Social Media President is about to be more than just a theoretical thing. I’m hoping Mr. Trump learns to adjust his rhetoric.
And if you haven’t already figure this out, you may want to adjust yours. Need Help?
