When I was your age, Pluto was still a planet
Paul Dyer commits the sin of equating knowledge of social media with youth.
If you were in high school or even college during the Cold War, getting involved in Social Media communities is like learning Russian
In other words, the kids and their Googles and MySpace, or you can’t teach an old dog, well you know.
Full post here.
What’s wrong with this? Well three things actually…
For one thing, I’m not sure how old Paul is, but the Internet didn’t start with MySpace. I’ve been using the Web and the Internet and BBSs and the like since the early 90s, which means his “Mr. Billingsworth” was in his late 30s when this all started, and I in my late 20s.
Secondly, yes I’m 43 . I remember the Moon landing. I saw the Ramones in the 70s. And I was in High School and College during the Cold War. That doesn’t mean I’m dead. Or incapable of learning Russian.
Third, absent any of those elusive qualities we get with age, you know.. wisdom and experience, all that futzing around with social media is just… futzing.
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Comments
Hi David,
Thanks for your thoughts and I do want to clarify in regards to your first point that I do not pretend to be an expert on all things Web. Just on the sites most often designated as Social Media sites, which are admittedly a very different thing from static or e-commerce websites.
To put the quotation you pulled in context, I’d point to earlier in the post when I stated that
“In Social Media, age does not equate with experience. Rather it is like trying to learn Russian at 50. Sure you can do it, but it’s almost impossible to get rid of the accent.”
And I stand by that. Of course you could go learn Russian or get experience with Social Media, but advising companies on Social Media strategy is not like speaking Russian, it’s like TEACHING Russian. For that, you have to be fluent.
—–
When I was in college, I minored in Chinese. Afterwards I traveled to China on my own for a summer taking just cash and a plane ticket home. I worked, traveled to almost every province, ate every manner of Chinese cuisine (and establishment), spoke multiple dialects of the language, participated in local festivals and stayed with strangers who were gracious enough to bring me into their homes.
That same year, my Grandparents also went to China. They took a 35mm camera, a digital camera, and a video camera. They saw the Great Wall, ate Moon Cakes, went to a Chinese play, and boated down the Yellow River.
If your company was considering entry to the Chinese market and seeking advise on the culture, language, and lifestyle, whose experience would be more relevant?
Sure, members of older demographics can visit, catalogue, and appreciate the culture of Social Media sites. However, as companies are evaluating immersion of their brand in these sites, experiential fluency is necessary. Until older demographics are able to experience Social Media on the same level as their younger counterparts (see my response to Francine’s comment for example), that sort of fluency is simply not possible.
Thanks again for your thoughts. By the way, did you know the title of this post is also a Facebook group with more than a million members?
Paul
Tim.. yep.
Paul.. yes I did know that and I would pick your grandparents.
Have you ever heard of Shel Israel? Or Hugh MacLeod? Or Robert Scoble? Or Dave Winer? Any of us are old enough to be your father and we were doing this social media stuff before you were in college. Some of us were sending emails, posting on Usenet or using BBSs when you were learning to write.
Thanks for playing.
Paul, when I worked at the large PR firm, I dealt with junior staff like you all the time.
You’re on MySpace and Facebook, so you MUST know what you are talking about. Well, so am I, been on it longer than most people, and still know enough to know that I don’t know everything.
You know what Paul - they were usually so full of shit and wrong, they would potentially hurt both the client AND the agency. Now, go sit down in the corner and realize that you are still a student in media, PR and life. As we all are.
Oh, and my excuse for being on blogspot is that my blog is 4 1/2 years old now. What’s yours?
Funny, I draw my experience on the Usenet groups and IRC chat rooms as well… Unfortunately they are about as relevant to today’s Social Media space as the fact that you remember the Moon Landing. Of course I also know the members of the Old Guard who heralded the coming of Social Media. I said it “almost impossible” to lose that accent… Not impossible.
Regardless of where you were or who you played Jacks with while I was learning to write, what’s far more important is that I was in college when Facebook started. In fact, I was one of the earliest users of Friendster, Facebook, Myspace, et al. Why? Because that is how people my age communicate for all aspects of our life.
In the meantime, you are welcome to flip through photo albums with my grandparents. For those of us looking to actually engage the members of Social Media sites, we’re more than happy to perform above where our elders have set the proverbial bar.
- Paul
And Jeremy, I can appreciate a good generalization as much as the next guy, but I made no claim to being God’s gift to PR. What I did point out (and rightly so) is that young people are at least positioned to make a useful contribution to PR for Social Media. Whether they are individually capable of doing so depends on much more than whether or not they have a Facebook profile, but what is important is that this is an opportunity that older generations can only guess at.
Paul… I give up.
Yes, I am old and dumb and your grandparents come come over to play checkers anytime.
This is an interesting discussion. Alas, there is no rightly or wrongly. There is no age for getting what it means to have a productive and civil conversation. There is no limit on knowing the language of connection. There is no division on being human beings - for that we’re all natives. I will concede that common sense cannot be taught. The tools change, people do not 
If I were 50, I’d apply for a job at NewMediAwake LLC and have a bulletproof age discrimination suit when I didn’t get it
Paul, you speak in circles, and not even well. And, that’s just sad.
You bring very little value to the table because you do not understand the past, nor seem to have much grasp of the present or future. You failed to address the question about Blogspot, your MySpace page reeks of unprofessionalism (yes, there is a separation between public and professional lives), and you have yet to showcase your knowledge of social media in any substantial way.
You can whine about these old men writing books on social media. Well, you can certainly talk a good game - can you highlight what you have done with your firm, or for Marketwire? I tried to find information on your corporate site, but, well, it’s a static page.
Jeremy,
This discussion had no circles until you introduced entirely irrelevant elements to it. My Blog is on Blogspot because it’s always been there, as with most people who are still on that platform. All of my clients’ Blogs are WordPress, as you’d imagine. If you’d like to know why my public MySpace looks like crap, you are welcome to read my Blog post on the Etiquette of Professional Social Networking. My true MySpace page is not available to the Public and the pages I’ve made for clients remain proprietary to my clients.
This discussion has nothing to do with my expertise or the significant impact I’ve had on the PR for Social Media sector through high level speaking engagements, published articles, content development and website creation for my clients, and product development at my company.
What it does have to do with is the ability of older practitioners to truly immerse themselves in a communication medium that is not central to their lives. Would you hire a PR professional that had listened to a Webinar about, ordered a few subscriptions, and thumbed through a handful of newspapers? Or how about someone who barely understood the content and spoke broken English?
The truth is that business has always made its judgments of expertise based on experience. Traditionally, that has been based on years of experience in the field. With Social Media, however, the tables are turned and experience comes from immersion in the medium. With adoption levels at their current status, older generations do not have access to the same type of immersion their younger counterparts, who connect with nearly every person they’ve met over the years through these sites.
It’s about time we left David’s Blog alone, so if you are interested in continuing this conversation you are welcome to do so on my Blog or by email.
Paul, David’s a friend of mine, so I’ll leave it at this: is this how Marketwire would want you to represent them?
I’ll not be baited Jeremy, but I do appreciate your Devil’s Advocacy. I’ll look forward to further debates as time unfolds.
Paul
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Wow - what a discussion, makes my mere comments on my blog seem boring. Here’s to the old and young! http://becki325.wordpress.com/
Like the other old farts, I’ve been active in social media for more than a decade. I like to think I “get it,” but my knowledge isn’t on par with David or Jeremy, who live and breathe it daily. But I’m one of those geezers who knows that learning never stops. (And Jeremy, I know you aren’t a geezer.)
I’m more than willing to forgive Paul for insulting the 40somethings (or in my case 50somethings), as I recall too well being young and cocksure. The older you get the more you appreciate how much more there is to learn — and experience. I would also caution Paul about insulting potential clients. That’s bad for business.
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Hi Bill, although I’ve made it clear I am through with Jeremy’s comments, I find yours intriguing. First and foremost, I assure you that “insulting potential clients” is something I avoid as much as the next guy 
Secondly, however, I am intrigued by your rather innocent assertion that “I recall too well being young and cocksure…” Will that always be the mantle behind which older generations hide? It’s perfectly acceptable to say a younger professional is ignorant because, “He just doesn’t know better yet.” However, if the tables are turned and the question becomes whether or not the more senior practitioner is worth their salt, will it always be that the accuser is just “Young/brash and doesn’t UNDERSTAND because of his age.” ?? At what point do the older practitioners have to take accountability for their own inexperience?
I make no claim to knowing everything. Rather, I say that I have much to learn from people within a realm of experience that is necessarily limited by age. Why is that so difficult for older practitioners to understand?
Sorry to be returning to this thread belatedly, but actually I’m glad I waited, because the comment that interests me most comes right at the end:
“…within a realm of experience that is necessarily limited by age.”
Paul, I suggest an important parsing of terms here to amend your view and make it (more) compatible with David’s: the word “necessarily” in this phrase is false as a point of both logic and observation.
Deep grokking of social media may be mostly limited by age or even overwhelmingly limited by age, but it is not — cannot be — necessarily limited by age. We can say this either by abstract analogy to other situations (*some* older language students acquire accentless Russian) or by observation of exceptions to your would-be rule (e.g. Robert Scoble).
Yes, I agree that it’s about immersion; yes, a 22-year-old is far likelier to get that immersion than a 35-year-old (me), or a 40- or 50-something. All true. But this doesn’t somehow preclude your elders from grokking social media deeply.
Also, sometimes those elders will include an Ed Sullivan: an older stiff who may or may not get the music these crazy kids are playing today . . . but who wields massive influence on what the kids are doing and how they will be understood more broadly.
It’s an ecosystem with niches that are mostly well delimited . . . but only mostly, not “necessarily” or utterly.
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Amen, sir.
There are a lot of people who are just dead-set-sure that they can’t learn Russian — to stick with Dyer’s example — past a certain age. But that’s clearly b.s. Edmund Wilson was learning *Hungarian* in his old age because that’s the direction his intellectual interests took him. (He *already* spoke Russian, btw.)
Now, why don’t I, a mere stripling of 35, start taking Russian right now? Well, there are opportunity costs to everything, and I have plenty of other projects (raising my kids, finishing my Ph.D., becoming famous, getting rich, etc.) that come ahead of learning Russian on my list of priorities. But I don’t tell myself the lie that I *couldn’t* do it. If older folks find the opportunity costs of learning social media too high, fine.
Meanwhile, there are waaaaay too many eldsters (including the real ones who remember when the Cold War *started*) who are learning to use social media just fine, Dyer’s comments notwithstanding.
Oh, and Pluto IS still a planet. Just because the International Astronomical Union adopts a harebrained stance on something doesn’t make it so.