Trivial Conversations and POTUS.

The social networking craze has created an infinite stage for numerous playful conversations. Everyone has an opinion on something and the more provocative the subject the more fascinating the conversation seems to be. Radio and TV hosts are compelled to extract what someone said completely out of context in order to make their show more hyper-provocative than the competition. Sometimes the host appears to forget what the point was to begin with.

The web conversations are more numerous, but no different. Most web based conversations after a few iterations do not resemble the original issue, take past positions out of context and become diverging points of view, rather than converging on a resolution of the conversation at hand.

I am in 26 different conversation groups on LinkedIn. It is a popular web spot to have conversations on everything from high tech innovation to discussing the notion that exporting soybeans from Missouri to China results in lower clothes prices for Americans at Wal-Mart. If there is a subject, there is a place on LinkedIn where people are having a conversation about it.

That is the problem. Conversations have become trivialized. There are so many conversations and so varied that we can hardly distinguish what is important from what is not. It seems all causes are equal. All causes are worthy of our time and participation. But that is clearly wrong. The issue for all of us, with limited time, is which causes, which conversations are worth our chiming in to lobby for our own position or  agree with another's.

Further, the term conversation is over-used and pervasive.  For example, it has been adopted in some marketing circles. It is cute to describe a old marketing program as a new conversation with customers.

For me, I am going to log in to LinkedIn today. I am going to delete every group conversation that is going nowhere. That should kill my LinkedIn membership and free a lot of time to have a conversation with someone on important issues. Do you have something you wish to talk about?

How about the POTUS election? Is that still happening?