But You Didn’t Like It?

The Little Travellers are down at the beach with G and some friends. As they were leaving I was plugging in my laptop to the power socket. “Are you coming?” G asked with a hint of weariness. He’s seen it before.

“Let me just work out how this works…”

Technology and I have a love/hate relationship. I love it, I need it, but it doesn’t come easily.

I spend a lot of time looking like I’m just dicking around on my computer, when the real truth is I’m trying to teach myself all things social. How to podcast, how to get a clip to download in a different format, how WordPress works differently to Blogger. Why should I change from this platform to this platform? Do I need Canva? Is it bad I don’t do Google + or Pinterest?

“Why are you late? What is it that you’re doing?” a girlfriend asked earlier this year.

I’ve never been sure how to explain that I’m learning how to share.

Blogging appears to be such an easy business. Open a page, write, push publish and walk away. I remember it being like that. But somewhere along the line blogging turned into widgets, apps, plugins and attachments. Recently a social media manager looked me straight in the eye and said “it’s not enough for them to just like you, they need to keep liking you.”

“Shit. That sounds exhausting?” I replied.

The weird bit? It’s not even about people really liking you. It’s about them “like” liking you.

It reminded me of a story a girlfriend told me about her teenage daughters having an argument over a shared photo on Facebook.

“I posted my photo and you didn’t like it” One announced to the other at the dinner table.

“But I do like it?”

“Yes but you haven’t like liked it”

I had a beer with an old friend who works for a magazine, he’s also in charge of their Facebook page.

“I’ve just learnt that it’s not as important for people to like us, what we really want is for people to share us.”

We all nodded in agreement. As if it was important. As if speaking in this very different language of likes, shares, hits and memes, actually meant anything to the state of the world.

But here’s the thing. I like to write, and every writer likes to share, that’s why they write. I love to hear other people’s stories of family, travel and starting afresh; whether it’s a new job, new location, new house or new baby. And as much as learning how to condense something into 15 seconds so the sound matches the picture can have me curled into a fetal position rocking in the corner – I love it when it all comes together.

I’m off to the beach.

Thanks for liking me, like like liking me.

And by the way, it took me about an hour to work out how to insert this video into WordPress. Me, technology, it’s not pretty. xx