the futility of "keeping up with the e-joneses"

[“It’s Complicated”. You can buy the print here etc.]

So somehow or other you found yourself online in a big way.

Somehow or other you decided, like millions of other people, that if the future is online, it would be silly not to join in. So you decide to get with the program.

And so you get yourself hooked up with the usual stuff… a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and whatever Robert Scoble is using that week. And then wait for that aforementioned future thing to start happening.

While you’re waiting for that future thing to begin, you can’t help noticing that certain people in the same field as you- people far more successful and well-known than you, people who you aspire to be like one day- have fifty times the amount of Twitter followers as you do. Or whatever.

So you spend the next two years of your life trying to get as many Twitter followers as those people. Not only do you fail, meanwhile, your wife leaves you, your car is repossessed, and you have to move back in with your parents.

The futility of “Keeping up with the e-Joneses”. You’re better off spending that time and energy trying to have a “smarter conversation”. Of course you are.

[Bonus link:] Seth has a few thoughts on the subject, as well. Well worth a look.