A while back, I begged blawgers to stand for something.  As blawging devolved into the amorphous “social media,” words were murdered with no greater purpose than to fill blank space.  Posts were pointless, lazy, meaningless, thoughtless.  Most of all, they were safe.  Bloggers who wrote to jump aboard the social media bandwagon wrote, well, meaningless garbage.

Jason Falls, who isn’t a lawyer but rather a social media type, posts that bloggers need to get out of their comfort zone.  His observations apply to anyone who wants to play in the social media sandbox.

The social media world is very much a bubble. And too much of one in my opinion. Consultants, practitioners, bloggers and enthusiastic agency types sit around in a big circle jerk telling each other how much they love each other’s blogs and hash-tagging the crap out of useless drivel on Twitter all day.

For every one practitioner who actually offers up useful insight that shows they live in reality, not righteousness, there are 25 more who expose their inexperience like a streaker in church. I feel bad for them, though I don’t condemn them. Good ideas have been known to come from people not wearing pants.

Oddly, Falls doesn’t really like lawyers much, as we tend to shine a little too much light on the emptiness of social media.  Falls, like self-proclaimed social media rock star and vapid twinkie, Tamar Weinberg, got all hot and bothered when we didn’t bow and scrape to their guru-dom sufficiently.  But that doesn’t mean that Falls doesn’t know his social media.

While Falls goes on to implore other social media gurus to break free of the “circle jerk” by telling people to get out there and use Facebook (hey, they are social media types, you know), his point is well-taken.  The blawgosphere generates its own circle jerk, pointless posts applauded by the Hallelujah Choir.  The posts say nothing and the applause for this crap is embarrassing.  You’re not fooling anyone.  You can do better.  And if you can’t, then what are you doing here?

Don’t tell me the excuses, that you’re afraid of alienating potential clients or saying something controversial that might attract negative attention.  Nobody wants a milquetoast criminal defense lawyer, and you can avoid the potential of negative attention by just a little bit of thought before posting something stupid. If you’re writing useless drivel, then no amount of love from your pals is going to make it meaningful.  For every person applauding, there are ten thinking, “what an idiot.”  Is that what you’re trying to achieve?

And what if you write a post that actually takes a stand, demonstrates some hard thought and means something, and others don’t like it?  For crying out loud, take a chance.  Posting crap because it’s safe is still posting crap.  Posting crap because you have nothing to say and just want to post is still posting crap.  Stop posting crap.   Or maybe you are clueless, and have no business posting online as if you’ve got something meaningful to say. Afraid to find out?

I’m no social media guru, but I’ve got a little experience doing this under my belt.  If you don’t have the balls to write something meaningful, then you’re just a teletubby on the internet.  Break out of your comfort zone and be a lawyer.  Show some moxie. Care about something enough to take a chance.