We love to complain online and on social networks. It’s being slowly built into our nature. Have a problem with your sink? Get on Facebook and whine about it. Aunt Harriet causing a disturbance at the dinner table? Bitch about it to your Twitter followers. You get to vent, and if you’re lucky, someone will come along and help solve your problem.
Because we’re all doing this though, we start to tune out the noise of other people’s complaints. It’s too much to not only read the links they share and the snarky commentary and observations, but also the stuff they have to whine about. Don’t they realize we live in a time when we can communicate nearly instantly with anyone on the planet, and all they want to do is whine how their new iPhone isn’t as shiny as it could be?
There’s one of the problems. We’ve grown so accustomed to being online, we’re all egotistical narcissists. We only care about other people’s problems when we can do one of the following things:
- Share a similar story – There is nothing like wallowing in misery with someone who is experiencing the same problems as you.
- Share a story about the same thing with a different outcome – Sometimes, you just have to rub it in someone’s face that you were able to best a problem.
- Help them fix the problem to build trust – If you do it well, in the eyes of that person, you will be a god.
I’ve heard there is a rare breed of people who not only want to listen to people’s problems and help solve the problem out of the goodness of their hearts. Those people are few, far between, and nearly mythical on the internet.
We’re not going to quit complaining anytime soon. If I did, this blog would be “The Asocial Media,” and really, I’m not that apathetic. If everyone else did, Twitter would be rendered nearly useless. Start thinking if your public gripe is really going to get somewhere, or if it’s going to get on my nerves.
