The other day on the Shrinking Violets blog I posted a rant about marketing on social sites. The various responses to it got me thinking.

I was cheating a little, calling it a rant, because doing so allowed me to frame the discussion a certain way. To “rant” is to admit right up front to being unreasonable and obnoxious and opinionated, and to overstating one’s feelings about the subject, and framing it as a rant doesn’t exactly invite reasoned response. I was psyched to see that most of the commenters in various places did engage in thoughtful debate.

The comment that really got me thinking was from lisa_schroeder, who feels that our online community has lost something. She said

And I think what's sad is that our blogging community that used to be about friendship and community has drastically changed. Hardly anyone comments anymore. Is that because people stopped reading because so many blogs became like billboards? I don't know. But I miss the way it used to be.

I think she’s right. As I said in a comment, I did take a strong, ranty stand, and I stand by that stand because I think it’s important for us to have social spaces where we can talk and be friends and not worry about all that marketing crap.

In an authentic conversation, you have give and take. One person talks while the other listens, and then there is a response. When marketing intrudes on social spaces, there can be no conversational transaction. One person talks about the thing she’s selling, and the appropriate response is not to answer, but to go buy the thing.

I don’t like that. It makes me ranty.

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I should probably lay down some context for why such a stand is important to me.

First is that I have a horror of marketing, of branding, of the selling that intrudes into our personal spaces. I haven’t had a TV since 1991 because, and I paraphrase Barbara Kingsolver here, having a TV is like running a sewer line into the house. And the trash it brings in is commercials. Ads for stuff. I can’t stand it.


The other thing is that, as you may know, I have a PhD in English literature. My dissertation was on the uses of conversation in various social spheres in eighteenth-century England. So it’s an area of interest. In the blog I ranted about the way conversational spaces online are being coopted by marketing efforts, basically. This is nothing new; conversational spaces have been coopted by various constituencies for various purposes since the drawing room and the coffeehouse were invented. And before that, too.

There’s a reason why I chose that dissertation topic. I’m interested in how people talk to each other. I’m interested in the words they choose, the things they say—and the things they don’t say. I’m interested in the fact that the way people say something changes depending on where they’re saying it, and to whom. I’m interested in the different registers we all use when we communicate, whether it’s chat or rant or confession or polemic or twittering or real conversation.

Plus I like talking to people. And hearing what you have to say.