My friends, the skeptics

I went to a wedding in Virginia this weekend and got to catch up with some old friends. Anyone who lives in LA needs to leave town once in a while to remember that the rest of the world isn't like us, and I had that experience in spades.

The wedding was of a son of long-time friends, a son whose parents I knew even before they were married. This is the first wedding of the next generation, and it was an emotional event for so many reasons. I really felt the generation gap that I wrote about in a previous post, but I was surprised by the vehemence with which social media is held in contempt by a few people I talked to.

There were mixed reactions when I talked about being back in school to study how new media is being used in marketing. "You always were ahead of things," a friend told me, and I just don't see it that way. (But thanks for the compliment anyway.) I see social media as a given, ubiquitous, and as essential to master in order to be current in my marketing career. Clearly, many of my contemporaries think that social media is for someone else, someone young who has lost their "real" social skills, and prefers to stay in touch via keyboard, whether on the computer or, even more amazing! by phone. I was met with grudging admiration for taking on something so huge, or with snorts of disgust for wasting my time on something so worthless. "It has no redeeming qualities" said a friend who had never used any social media.

Part of it is that I was out in the country, where people move to get away from things like traffic and texting. Part of it is that I was with people in their sixties, seventies and eighties. (BTW, when did I get to be the old one?) And part of it is the inevitable skepticism that new technologies have to overcome to reach the mainstream. When I told fellow guests at the wedding about having seen a video where the bride and groom update their Facebook status at the altar, there was a mix of amusement and horror. The horror was uniformly from people close to my age, and the guests of my parents' generation were curious and enthusiastic. I realize that this is not a statistically sound sampling of opinions, but it was definitely trending.

 I clearly remember a Sunday dinner conversation between my female relatives when microwave ovens first came out. NO! they didn't want a microwave, who wants all that radiation in your house? and who is in that much of a hurry anyway? I don't care if it will cook a potato in 6 minutes, baking potatoes in the "real" oven is fine, and why spend money on something you don't need? In a small town in Michigan like where I grew up, anything new was viewed with distrust and doubt. What I didn't expect to find was that some of  my friends, who I think of as very cool, had similar reservations. I was surprised at the heat of a few of the conversations.

Meanwhile, I was trying out Foursquare for the first time, practicing checking in wherever I went. I've already earned two badges, and I have the high score among my friends by a mile (that would be my digital friends.) Once I got the mechanics down, I had fun seeing what would come up as locations for a possible check-in at any given moment. My favorite was the Penis Station Vent that was apparently around the corner from where I was staying. Who could resist sharing that? That should get a few skeptics intrigued.