Begrudgingly, I was born into Generation Y (Born 1980-1995ish). We, the many, are known as the generation that grew up with technology, such as internet, cell phones and all that other shit we take for granted. Lucky us, eh?

What people seem to forget about Generation Y is that many of us went through most of school without cell phones, Facebook and other social media, while others had all of this introduced to them in high school. This newfangled shit is still pretty recent in the grand scheme of things, and the jury is still out on whether I actually like it or not.

Times have changed, things are moving faster than ever, and I believe that many in Generation Y are being left in the dust far sooner than any other generation that grew up in the 20th Century. Christ, every day I feel more out of the loop than ever, unable to catch up to the swarming storm of social media that’s constantly whirring around us like a tempest throwing us about and drowning us in “likes”, follows and retweets. And that’s only if we’re lucky enough to get enough attention to actually drown.

It’s true that back in the glorious 90’s we had the internet. It was a relatively harmless little thing by today’s standards. Most of us (guys anyway) used it to look up news on our favorite bands, play video games, or type in “boobs” on Askjeeves while your buddy watched the door to make sure no one was coming. To load a webpage it took anywhere from 10 seconds to an entire minute, and that was only if there were two or three images to load on the front page. Now, 15 years later, I fucking vibrate when it takes longer than three seconds to load a 50MB video, and I’m sure many of you feel the same way.

Most of Generation Y didn’t grow up liking Facebook posts, tweeting random strangers, or sharing our photos with anyone and everyone, nor did we text our friends to tell them to sit around and watch Youtube cat videos from the comfort of their own bedroom. We called our friends, biked the fuck over to their place, grabbed a bag of cheetos on the way and played Nintendo until our eyes fell out and our bladders exploded (ok not that much better…).

What I’m trying to get at here is that social media and all its fuckeries has changed us forever,and some of us, including myself, have been slow to the change. Most telling for me was when I tried to have a conversation with a teen the other day, and halfway through the chat I wanted to strangle the little bastard because I couldn’t understand the half of what he was saying. In fact I might have actually strangled him, because everything went hazy for a good minute when I started daydreaming about going back in time to hand Mark Zuckerberg’s father a pamphlet or two on the pros of getting a vasectomy. Sorry possibly-strangled kid. We’re all victims of something.

Now, just looking at my (poorly-constructed) blog page you’ve probably already noted, I’m quite the hypocrite. For instance I’m on Twitter, building a follower base in anticipation for the release of my novel at the end of the month. I’ve started this blog, because I literally watch paint dry at work. I’ve created a Facebook fan page which I will get to actually finishing here in the next few days, and I’m constantly on this shit, obsessing over it like many of you, whether you like to admit it or not. I’m in social media with both feet, and even though I used to despise it, I see its worth now… sort of.

In two weeks I have seen mixed results with social media – namely Twitter on which I’ll largely focus. A few real connections were made, and to those of you reading this, you know who you are and I thank you for that – you’re really the only reason I’m plugging away at this still. However, it didn’t take me long to find out that the majority of the writing community on Twitter is just…I don’t know how to say this without coming off rude, but you’re more irritating than gout.

A while back, a friend told me that Twitter is where authors go to die, and fuck ain’t it the truth for some of us. Without naming accounts, I’ve seen people re-tweet EVERYTHING that pops up on their homepage, with the obvious intent of garnering attention to their own account and, consequently, their book that they advertise 20+ times a day. Guess what, no one gives a flying shit about an indie author spamming their book quotes and prices all over every other desperate indie-author’s timeline. There’s a reason no one is buying your $0.99 book marketed through Twitter referrals. I’m sure you’re a wonderful author, but that will never shine through as long as 99% of your 45k tweets over the past few weeks say something like:

” ‘⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆ / 5 – impossible to put down, amazing read!!!’ – soccergurl1994   bityl.amazon.com BUY BUY BUY”

THAT is what is wrong with social media in the writer’s world.

Some things change, but there are a few things that never will. People don’t like to be advertised to, nor have we ever liked being blatantly told to buy shit. All of us want something out of Twitter, even I do, but have the decency to care enough and post something interesting and informative. If I find YOU interesting, there’s a damn good chance I’ll take a look at your book, ogle over your beautiful cover, read the reviews and buy the masterpiece you’ve been working on for the past three years. Give readers, reviewers and publishers a taste of who you are, and then maybe you’ll find success.

I understand there has been a weird progression from top to bottom, but I wrote this post for a reason. I almost fell into this desperate author trap – I started pulling quotes from my book and had more than a few queued up on my Twitter. I was going to start a spamming sequence in preparation for my book launch, just so all of those invisible ravenous fans of mine would automatically buy The Tournament of Hearts as soon as it hit the e-shelves. I was going to retweet everyone, regardless of whether they posted something of worth. Essentially, I was setting myself up for disappointment when the book sales didn’t come in, because I had the misconception that I was actually putting in “work” and actively marketing my book.

And then, late last night, I said fuck it. I’m going to use Twitter to share what I think are sometimes thought-provoking, helpful links – things that actually matter to me and blogs/webpages that I have or would like to actually read. It was a social media epiphany, and for that I’m grateful. Maybe I can actually have fun with this now, and I hope that you ‘ll join me. Let’s make real connections, and put the “social” back into social media.