Social media is just replacing the journey, not the destination

It started this morning with a simple tweet from Shannon Paul:

Airports really aren’t as fun as they could be :-/

More accurately, I tweeted back, that airports aren’t as much fun as they USED to be. And then it hit me that they aren’t fun anymore because we have made travel all about the destination rather than the journey. In our quest for über-efficiency and profit, we have stripped out everything fun about what happens between point A and point B. It’s not a bad thing; it is just who we are.

But the human being needs fun. It needs a place to experience and enjoy the journey, the process.

And right then and there, the whole purpose of social media became clear to me. In the absence of a journey between the handshake and the close, human beings have created this thing called social media where we have permission to enjoy the journey. The rules are clear; be kind, be friendly, help others, don’t self-promote, don’t hard-sell. In a culture that seeks to carve away all the human inefficiencies of getting from point A to point B, nature has found a way to adapt.

And what frustrates the closers and the efficiency experts is that the journey takes too long. It wanders from the path too often and doesn’t close a sale with deft. They demand an ROI.

But, sadly, like airports, social media way stations will eventually become an efficient place to transact stuff. I wonder where else we will find a place to hang out, enjoy the journey.

Shannon Paul can be found hanging out online, enjoying the journey at her blog, Very Official Blog. Pull up a chair; her door is always open.