The Groove 160 - How to Survive Social Media
HOW TO SURVIVE SOCIAL MEDIA
Nobody has ever regretted forming thoughtful and informed opinions before expressing them through social media, art, literature, or a company-wide email. The opposite, however, seems to be the pervasive current trend.
If people would take more time to understand every side of a narrative and absorb several points of view into their own accounts, we would live in less reactive and extreme societies which, let's be honest, haven’t given us anything of value or provided any long-term solutions to the world ’s biggest problems.
I will never tire of writing about the fact that we live in our own Tower of Babel; that half-baked knowledge is perilous; that we have lost all forms of nuance and are plagued by an erosion of empathy. All of this effectively kills creativity and hinders progress.
One thing that I vowed to myself during the 2016 elections was to not fall prey to fanatics on either side of the spectrum. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fanatic (noun) as a person exhibiting excessive enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion toward some controversial matter (as in religion or politics). Social media is a breeding ground for fanaticism.
When you let your emotions control you to the point of no return, you lose the intellectual capacity to hold thoughtful arguments. Whether you embed those arguments in your art, your business, your marketing or your social media, it’s important to remember that two very opposite things can be true at the same time.
As I sit right now with a lot of questions and a whole lot less answers, I turned to the wisdom of Henri Matisse, arguably the most important and influential French artist of the 20th century, and a man whose even-keeled attitude was expressed in his written and spoken ideas as much as it was in his art.
Avoid Infecting Others with Your Annoyances
Henri Matisse in Nice in 1949. Photograph: Gjon Mili//Time Life/Getty
I wonder if it’s necessary to have an opinion on everything all the time? Who holds absolute truths on anything? Every time there’s a conflict, a war, an election somewhere, the “TikTok experts” and the celebrities du jour, many of whom don’t have any part or parcel on any of these issues, believe that they ought to react to catch followers, sympathizers, and attention by unleashing their undeveloped thoughts out in the world.
Matisse wasn’t a stranger to war zones, having lived in France during both World War I and II. “It is impossible that an artist should not feel the after effects of the war. That makes him take things more profoundly. For what he has to do, that cannot change his work.”
What was Matisse saying? If your line of work as an artist, entrepreneur or whatever you do hasn’t been specific to the issue you are arguing or impacts you directly, don’t succumb to the temptation of going with collective hysteria just to gain points with one group or another. It’s not going to feel authentic and what’s worse, it is not going to age well.
In a 1946 interview, Matisse said: “One doesn't need to infect people with his annoyances. One should make a serene thing. One should make a stimulating art which leads the spirit of the spectator into a domain which puts him outside of his annoyances.”
If you are a true expert and your objective is to bring unbiased education or something that positively stimulates the spirit of your audience or constituents for the greater good, then by all means, I want to hear from you. But don’t bring just your one-sided righteousness and half-researched thoughts to the front based on your annoyances. Aim for depth, aim for analysis, find nuance.
Release Your Work After Giving Your All
Henri Matisse, Dance (I), 1909, oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
We live in the world of sound-bites. Simplifying issues of a grand scale to a 30-second video or a slide with words on Instagram is often disrespectful.
Whether we like it or not, everything we do is part of our work, and yes, that includes our opinions on social media.
In early 1942, Matisse gave an interview broadcast over the radio where he was asked if he worried about the future of his work. His answer left me thinking for a long time. “Since I am convinced that an artist can have no greater enemies than his bad paintings, I do not release a painting or a drawing until I have given it every possible effort; and if after that it still has life, I am happy as to the impression that it will make on the minds of those who see it.”
The implications of releasing work or opinions where you haven’t given your maximum effort (and that actually means taking every possible look to every side), will become your greatest enemy in the future. Even if you retract it and delete it. People who have been nurtured in and fueled by the echo chambers of social media won’t forget. Ask yourself the same question that Matisse did: “Will this have life in the future?”
Aim to Grasp Deeper Significance
The goal of a fanatic is to gain acolytes or to make the undecided sway toward them. In social media this means more frequent posting, or ramping up comments on other people’s post, relying on confirmation bias, building thin, reactive arguments that only look at certain parts of an issue, and of course, attacking everything that doesn’t fit into the fanatic’s frame.
Reductive arguments cannot give birth to profound statements of weight. Much less to meaningful paths forward.
In the 1908 “Notes of a Painter,” Matisse’s first theoretical statement and one of the most important artists’ statements of the 20th century, he wrote: “The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance.”
Being an observant and a student means having to deal with uncomfortable moments of uncertainty. A scholar knows that there’s not one truth or one answer to big problems. That’s what Matisse was expressing that an artist should do. And I dare to say, this should be extended to all of us who want to remain in a place of openness and curiosity and make our ideas visible through any public means.
While the forces of social media are pushing to divide us by taking sides and reacting, true wisdom comes from peacemakers, historians, artists, scholars, and those who took (and take) the time to understand what their views are. Succumbing to pressures when emotions run high not only produces flawed arguments but takes away from the true meaning of your work.
As Matisse told us: “There are two ways of expressing things; one is to show them crudely, the other is to evoke them through art.”
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