A couple of things led to today’s rant. Considering the fact that my daughter will be 14 this fall and watching her friends become more and more concerned with their style, wearing makeup, and the friends they have and how many. Considering this forum and a recent funny on my “Preppy” look in high school – and how quickly this defined me for the current audience, it became clear to me how incredibly powerful this social networking technology shift just is.

There are other areas in my professional life that have changed and continue to change based on both the web development tools available and the platforms that these applications can now reside. Specifically SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) are removing barriers to creativity and extending the reach of new ideas exponentially. When you combine that with the emotional impact of social networking sites it really changes the social dynamic of our culture immensely.

On Facebook it really is very comparative to middle and high school. We are all trying to create our image, define our personality, and express ourselves in one picture, description or witty comment. Just like my daughter and her friends seek to create the right image with the clothes they wear, the amount of makeup they put on or the company they choose to keep (or exclude). This happening on social sites is very unnatural – at least in traditional social circles.

Think about how we all shifted our self image from this superficial fragment of what we are to deeper understanding of ourselves and the friends we kept either in college or our first jobs out of high-school (I’m talking about my generation of course – in my case the “Tweenies” that are not Baby Boomers nor Generation X). Today we have all these FB or MySpace friends that are really acquaintances, mostly irrelevant to our daily lives – but becoming increasingly more relevant.

Think of a Book and its Cover. We were all taught to not judge a book by its cover – usually in Middle School and then High School when these self centered and socially judgmental habits formed. No one was more conscious of this then me, I went to three high-schools and friends (many of you now connected to me on Facebook) all saw a different “cover” in each of them. Seeking to be cool in 9th grade I was a bit of a “freak” as I rebelled against the shitty social situations I dealt with in Middle-school and my parent’s divorce. But moving to Rochester in 10th grade I realized that I had a chance to get a new “cover” deciding that being “Preppie” and a “Jock” would help me to shake some bad habits. It was so irrelevant really – I was still who I was inside (and I continued to pickle my brain in different clothing – often still enjoying my zip up sweatshirt, painters pants and shit-kickers over alligator shirts and chinos). What became apparent to me only at my going away party was what really mattered were the few amazing people I had met and the friendships I managed to develop in only 18 months.

By the time I hit my last high school in 12th grade I was still thinking about my cover but already thinking more of the book inside. I was still a “Prep” and I hung out with a handful of “Jocks” but looking back the combination of this “cover” and my shyness probably seemed like arrogance and definitely prevented me from gaining friendships from some really great people. I did, just like before, make some very close friends – friends that had nothing to do with what we looked like and everything to do with how we treated each other. What I didn’t know was what to do with what I had; and I often made stupid choices based on the image I had created and wanted to maintain, or the pressure to be socially accepted. This correlation to a book and its cover are so relevant here on the internet on social websites from Facebook to the simplest “blogs” in that there is so much pressure we often forget to stay true to what really matters inside: Being “real” vs. living in the moment for an image or a self serving response.

I’m just rambling here – vomiting a bunch of thoughts rattling around in my head. I don’t have anything really profound to share and am not asking nor expecting myself to change. What I need to do is use this to help my kids get thorough the next few years as they make this discovery about the lives they are living and the people they become. My simple rules for them include “Look for Good”; "Seek First to Understand Then to Be Understood”; and “Treat Other People the Way You Want to be Treated" (or “That Which is Hurtful to You Don’t Do to Others”). Can I practice this in my daily life, not get distracted by having the right look or to worry about what others think about me – as I ask them to do the same? Is it a mistake to be this personal here or should I be worrying about what you all think? Can you do the same?

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