Thinking Big

Updating this has been at the back of my mind for the last week, but I have been rather time-poor. In amongst work, socialising, and hammering Fifa 11 I haven't had the chance to piece together an articulate entry, so you get this instead.

I've always considered myself a bit of a social media whore. I've kept my life relatively public since 2001 and have traversed the online landscape, with ICQ, discovering forums back in 2005, and even online dating (can't post links to that from work but I would be game).

I've kept it relatively stable these days and have learned some lessons. You'll notice I don't mention anybody else's name in this blog, and I'm a bit more polite on this than I am on Inthemix. I guess you get a feel for what you can or can't say across social media and what the effects are.

Or so I thought.

Three things happened over the weekend that made me reassess my social media presence, and made it seem quite small by comparison to others. The first, was my uploading my first Youtube video. There was a call-to-action through work for a video entry telling your (interesting) story to try and get a trip to New York. Being the game person I am, I submitted an entry recalling my attempts to get into media, and eventual success and struggles. It can be seen here. (Sorry can't be bothered looking at how to embed video).

Feeling aspirational, I checked out what other people have done. I stumbled across communitychannel. This was nothing short of awesome. Natalie Tran has built a cult following across the Internet by sharing skits and self-deprecating witticisms and broadcasting them for all the world to see. It's the number one channel in Australia for Youtube and in the Top 50 for the world. The level of overshare is epic, maybe not as protruding as some of my online gaffes, but definitely more endearing.

The third thing that happened was seeing The Social Network. Now let's face it. I'm ambitious but I'm never going to catch up to Mark Zuckerberg. I openly self-cringed when I saw the opening scenes of him blogging about his ex-girlfriend. Ah, my OpenDiary anyone? I pretty much did the same thing to my ex and others. Sorry about that folks - we live and learn!

So what did these three revelatory explorations facilitate for an aspirational social media whore? Do I need to ramp it up? Should I start a video blog? Can there ever really be too much online Marshy/Marshwah?

I'm thinking... nah, and if anything the combination of the above three experiences has only spurred me on to do more.

Run for cover motherfucker ;-)