Farm and Food Session 2

Second session was on social media… Bleh! If you’re reading this you don’t need to know anything about that. What I am annoyed by, as a blogger and twitter-er, is the idea that social media is going to save us. Okay, nobody said that exactly, but too many people hype up social media as something that will revolutionize the world, your life, etc. I see blogging, twitter, etc. as tools to get out your message. Those tools will only be as effective as the relationships within those tools. Otherwise you are just so much foodie spam.

There was also some generational speak thrown out which also causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. Gen Y, Millenials, etc. is just so much nonsense. I’ve never understood these terms or found them helpful. Kids are always different than their parents. Yes, some things have radically changed, but I think a lot of studies and anecdotal evidence have made it clear that this is not limited to an age bracket. Of course more young people use the internet, social media, etc. than retired people. They have no concept of a world without Facebook. How do these categories help us?

All this leads me to something I have thought about for a while and something that I did find helpful about the session. People have mixed feelings about both old media and new media. Some people reluctantly get into media of some form trying to market their products or get a message out and then get burned. They get misquoted by a newspaper or they actually get feedback from customers on their blog and its negative. Whether its old or new media, if you’re going to play the game, then you have to play the game. If you don’t want to play the game then don’t play the game. It doesn’t really matter to me which way someone feels. The worst thing people can do is play the game when they don’t really want to. I’ve seen people do it and get killed. It looks bad. It doesn’t work and it makes you unhappy. We need people to shake hands and kiss babies, but not people who don’t like babies.