I’ve written before about a proud moment in my past as CEO of AIIM -- inviting Sir Tim Berners-Lee to be a keynote at the AIIM Show in Anaheim. Remember, this was in 1998. A lot of the AIIM crowd couldn’t figure out why on earth we had the generally acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web as a keynote given that our industry at the time was mostly LAN-based document management.

Sir Tim offered some lofty goals for the Web:

A space of information that: 1) we share; 2) we are in equilibrium with; 3) which represents our work and play; 4) which allows us to build a society we are happy with.

Needless to say, this hasn’t quite turned out the way we hoped. The dominance of an advertising-based model for content distribution and the concentration of this power in a few rather than many hands has allowed social networks to be weaponized for all sorts of nefarious political purposes. In the process, we’ve become ever-more siloed in our opinions and less rather than more tolerant of opinions that are at variance with our own.

But that’s not the point of this post. Rather, I’d like to discuss something a bit more benign -- how social media has transformed the way we present ourselves to the world. More specifically, the need for the image we present to the world in social media to always be perfect and curated. Call it the “Pinteresting of expectations,” requiring each and every major occurrence in our lives to be more staged and more grand than what came previously. And the expectation that each of us must demonstrate a commitment to high social art, lest we be viewed as less than perfect in the Mean Girls eyes of the social world. 

Don’t worry, I’ll also try to be a little funny.

Think back to what it was like when you proposed to your wife (or when your future husband proposed to you). In my case, it was for Valentine’s Day, although not quite on the day. Bad planning for me. I made a cardboard diamond ring. Secretly, I had also bought a real one at Springfield Mall, all by myself, feigning deep knowledge of the four Cs -- color, clarity, cut, and most definitely, cost. We went out to dinner. I had a couple of Wild Turkeys. I proposed. She fortunately said yes. We sang some Billy Joel songs with the piano player at the restaurant, including Piano Man. We called our friends Patty and Dobes. Fairly modest production values. No pictures, at least that I know of.

But now...think about the latest proposal stories you’ve heard on-line. Huge events planned months in advance. Rings pre-selected by committee. An abundance of perfectly font-ed Pinterest arts and crafts. A release of doves or perhaps rental of the message board at a stadium. Everything captured by pre-arranged photographers and videographers, and a welcoming committee of friends, all of whom knew about the event in advance. If photographers and videographers were not present the first time, no problem. A reenactment! Everything seemingly perfect, and then released into the social media wild, to gather likes and shares. And to raise the bar even higher for the next proposal and increase the pressure for every proposal to follow.

Yes, I know that all sounds very old farty. 

But my point is that as we enter into these uncharted social distancing times, let’s give ourselves a break. Let’s let each other off the hook. Life is not perfect, and never was, no matter what it looks like on Facebook and Instagram. Let’s go back to the vision of Sir Tim for a Web that “allows us to build a society we are happy with.”

So in the interest of pulling back the veil, after EXTENSIVE research, here are my findings on what is REALLY going on out there during social distancing.

Stay safe. Thank the folks who are on the front lines of this mess. Keep an eye out for those who need help.

We’re all in the same boat. Don’t worry about being perfect; we’re in for the long haul here. 

And for my work video calls, I’ll be making sure the camera is always only on the upper half.