Why I'm finished with 'social media'

Facebook, as I'm sure everyone will be telling you today, is now five years old. Other things that happened five years ago? George Bush won a second term in office, serial killer Harold Shipman ended his life and South Korean scientists announced they'd cloned human embryos (and then revealed that they'd faked it).

It wasn't necessarily a vintage year.

I'm not knocking Facebook, but I think I've had it with social media. Not social networking per se, but the incessant chatter about how "social media" is changing the world. How it's going mainstream. How it's the biggest change we've ever seen. Here's why:

Listen. I have blog. I use Twitter. I idly flick through lists of people I'd forgotten I ever knew on Facebook. I've even got a MySpace page, although I don't like to talk about it. They are great ways of connecting people, and they're very exciting when you start using them, because they allow virtual contact in ways that are analogous to - if not the same as - real life. You know, communicate with people. That old thing.

The particular event that sent me over the edge wasn't Facebook's birthday, but reading this post on the Mashable blog claiming that Batman actor Christian Bale's incredible hissy tirade was an important milestone for social media. I quote:

Perhaps the biggest "social media going mainstream" event since a plane landed in the Hudson River, the Bale incident has sparked an endless number of Tweets (it's been the #1 or #2 trending topic since the story hit), blog posts, and parodies.

Note: it's the biggest social media going mainstream event since the last one three weeks ago. The "proof" that it's going mainstream? That it has produced a lot of activity on Twitter.

Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing about Bale's expletive-laden bullying as a "social drinking sensation". They don't call people giggling about it on the phone as a "social telecommunications sensation". They call it joking, or they call it gossip, because that's what people do. Whether they do it online or offline, down the pub or on Facebook doesn't matter. "Social media" is mainstream - we don't need to claim any more victories for it.

So, that's it. I'm sick of "social media experts". (If I know you and you are one, then obviously I'm not talking about you). I'm sick of "social media sensations". And I'm sick of social media.

Social media is people. People talk about stuff. The end.