008 – Seeking Context in an Increasingly Contextless World

We live in a TikTok world. We assume everything will be short. We think everything will be quick and easy. We hope to get the maximum possible value out of something without having put our best foot forward. But is this realistic? In this episode of Creativity Excitement Emotion, David explores the importance of context in an increasingly contextless world. Sponsors: Clean Slate: The most exciting and inspirational New Year live music and multi-media event you’ve ever been to. Get your tickets now, before they’re gone! Highlights: 00:17 – Building a library of social media content 00:51 – The issue with clips and snippets 01:42 – Politics 03:21 – Do you live life in soundbites? 04:09 – What do you hope to achieve by responding to things you don’t like? 04:36 – Could you redirect your frustrated energy elsewhere? 06:01 – Does the statement fit with the person posting? 06:35 – Not everything lends itself to short-form content 07:04 – Being more intentional Transcript: When you've been doing social media for a while, after a while, you kind of get smart with it. And so, you start building a catalog or a library of content that you can pull from. The more you have, the better, especially if you know that you're I have a tweet library. I have a couple of tweet libraries depending on which account I'm looking to grow, but a lot of this content was built over time, and it's been pulled from blog posts and podcast episodes and videos and other content that I've produced over the years. And we kind of live in a world that encourages snippets and tidbits and soundbites and all that kind of stuff. Which means people are liable to respond to the content in whatever way they choose to respond or feel like responding to. That can mean that there can also be a lot of knee jerk reactions. I know I'm not the only one that gets this. In fact, it’s the top marketers or entrepreneurs – some I look up to, some I don't but that's kind of beside the point – you get criticism too, right? And this is not about responding to the specific comment I got. I wanted to ask a few questions to everyone listening. Look in your own life where maybe you're at effect where you really could be in power. The tweet that got responded to is around politics. And of course, as they say, if there's one thing not to talk about at the dinner table, it's politics. But in effect, it said “A lot of people are quick to blame politicians without even looking at themselves.” For me, anyway, there's a deeper context to that, and I can easily see how you could respond to that in probably dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways. But when I look at that, I'm thinking like I may not be responsible for wars that have happened across the world, or I may not be responsible for natural disasters, and I guess nobody really is responsible for those, but let's just say, you know, massive catastrophes couldn't necessarily be tied back to me, specifically. And yet there are things about me… like if we were to trust these personal development books that we all engage in, that everything reflects who we are, and when we look out into the world, we find what we are. And we attract what we are. So, if all we're seeing is devastation then what part of us is that channeling? That's what that quote would mean to me, but… again, the content of the response doesn't matter that much, but if I was summarizing one of the responses I got was, in effect, “Are you saying that I could cause a minor mishap in my own life that could lead to massive catastrophe across the world?” In our fast-paced, tidbit-, snippet-oriented kind of world, there are a few questions that I think you need to begin asking yourself. The first question is, do you live life in soundbites? I understand well the tendency to want to respond in a knee jerk kind of way to things that come up, right? Do you live life in soundbites?Share on X I really do, because sometimes I'll see comments that I completely don't agree with and may be inclined to type something in, even if just to be a troll, but I usually reserve my opinion and hold stuff back because I'm like, “Well, what's that going to do?” Right? So, the question is are you willing and do you as a habit choose to go deeper into those subjects before deciding how you feel about them? Are you willing to go deeper into subjects before deciding how you feel about them?Share on X Because how you feel about them is not everything. It's not objective necessarily, or even subjective reality. The next thing would be what are you hoping to achieve by responding to things you don't like, don't agree with, can't see the full viewpoint of, or not willing to dig deeper into? Are you just going to stay at a shallow level, or a at some point, are you going to dig deeper into the subject? And if so, then maybe reserving your judgment and coming back to it later is a better option. Number three is – could you redirect this energy in some other direction? You might feel frustrated. You might feel angry. You might have a lot of different feelings attached to the statement, whatever it may be. Could you redirect your knee-jerk reactions?Share on X Would it be possible to take that in a more productive direction? Starting arguments with people, at least what I've found anyway, is these people just love arguments. And so, arguing with them, or proving them wrong, or entertaining their responses, usually just is more pleasurable to them. And now you're on the other end responding intelligently and calmly starting to feel frustrated. So, they win in that scenario every single time. If people took all the time they spent complaining over the course of a lifetime and were able to accumulate it, they could probably write a book in that time. They could probably write multiple books. To me, it comes down to how do you want to spend your time and are you intentional about it? And do you want to move things in a productive direction, or are you here to judge others, to stir things up? Trolling is one thing, because I mean, sometimes it has a comedic effect. But if you're just here to poke holes in others, I think you should begin finding something better to do with your time. You're not going to be here for very long. Another question that's well worth asking is does this statement fit in with the person that I know and the type of content that they produce? Does the content fit with the person you know and the type of content that they produce?Share on X And if the answer is, “I don't know this person,” you haven't done adequate research yet, right? And if the answer is “No, the content doesn't seem consistent with the character I know.” It could just be that their account was hacked or something like that. So, in either case, I don't know what being reactive is really going to do for you. Unless it is the case that you enjoy criticizing others. In which case, whatever. Again, I know it's so easy to live in “snippet world” because tweets are only allowed to be 280 characters, right? And TikTok videos used to be, what, 30, 50 seconds or whatever? And I think they're up to four minutes now, but regardless, short form content is sort of the thing. And not everything lends itself well to short form content and not everything you see is necessarily something that you must react to. To me, it's not very intentional as far as browsing and scanning social media goes. There's much better use of your time there, following your Dream 100, commenting on their stuff, modeling their posts. To me, that's where the value is.