The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

That’s how Malcolm Gladwell expressed it in The New Yorker. far better than I have, which is as it should be given that he gets paid the big bucks.  But he goes on to say:

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

There is a tendency to love or hate, praise or condemn, technology for all purposes.  Such views are overly simplistic, and the imposition of overarching views on limited criticism is worthless.  Technology is wonderful for some things and less so for others.  The key is recognizing which is which.

As twitter “matures,” I see groups and relationships that developed superficially explode and implode.  Suddenly, the cutest 140 character twit ever isn’t enough to ignore that stupidest twit that followed.  The person who followed you, with whom you share major interests and who you followed back, doesn’t turn out to be someone with whom you would like to share a meal.  Maybe you disclosed a bit of personal information, and found out that you put a gun in the hands of a child.

You don’t know who you’re talking to.  This doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t sell them your product, or offer words of encouragement.  After all, if we are in the business of selling products, then selling products is what we do.  Everyone likes words of encouragement, and it’s the quickest and easiest way to make friends with people about whom you otherwise know nothing.

But in the real world, there are plenty of people with whom you share major interests, but don’t care to become BFFs.  Maybe they are unsavory.  Maybe they smell funny.  Maybe the seem so wonderfully likeable until you learn that they are a staunch supporter of Carl Paladino.  They may make a fine twitter buddy, but not someone you would give the keys to your home.

That’s fine.  It really is fine to enjoy what social media offers, to the extent it works well. 

Gladwell’s issue is that the means of activism has been confused with the substance of activism. 

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece.

No one takes their life into their hands by signing on as a friend or retwitting.  It’s easy.  It’s just not necessarily meaningful. 

Bringing Gladwell’s issue closer to home, I often find myself writing about something that’s happened in some distant city or state, pointing out what went wrong and what could have been done to make it better.  People will comment, stating their agreement or, on occasion, their disagreement. Either way, we’re all just whistling Dixie.  We’re not there.  We have nothing at risk.  The worst that can happen to me is that a bunch of people I don’t actually know will tell me what a moron I am.  The worst that can happen to them is that I’ll respond in kind.  Big deal.

This struck me a while back during the tumult in Maricopa County, when I asked, Are We Mere Blawgers? I worried that we thought to highly of our own importance, attributing far greater power to ourselves than we deserved.  It was as if the blawgosphere could move mountains, and we were beginning to believe it.  Others ripped me a new one for suggesting our lack of potence in such matters.  Mark Bennett , who has never shied away from telling me when I’m wrong, commented :

Our lights are little—candles, maybe, instead of spotlights; distant stars instead of the sun—but they are still lights.

I suppose every 9 cents helps, but it’s still only 9 cents.  I’ve met for real with some of the people I’ve “met” online.  Some have become friends.  Some real acquaintances.  Some became nothing.  If I was stuck in a trench under enemy fire, I would expect my friends to save my sorry butt.  Doing so involves taking a personal risk.  That’s what friends do for each other. 

It really wouldn’t matter a lot to me how many people later twitted about it.  Especially if I was never able to make it out of that trench because my only “friends” were on Twitter and Facebook.