Over the past few weeks I have found myself going online to ask for advice more than once.
I have pain in the back of my thigh but it’s not sciatic. What could it be? What should I do?
Where’s a trustworthy local place to sell gold jewelry?
My car’s check engine light just came on. Where should I take it?
Any book recommendations for children’s novels which will help me keep the stress of current events at bay?
There’s a word for this kind of social media interaction. It’s called crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. - - Merriam Webster
Now, obviously, when an individual like me goes online to find a trustworthy mechanic or the best place to find a root beer snowball it is a far cry from the process described above. It is more like asking one’s neighbor over the fence, but in an expanded sort of way. We’re not going to use our friends and acquaintances as sources to be mined in order to create a product we can sell.
We just need help.
In a similar way, Buy Nothing Groups create a community where folks can connect to share physical items and/or requests for assistance within a specific geographic location. Again, members aren’t looking to market a product or sell goods or services. They just need help, either to part with things they no longer need or want or to find the thing they do need or want.
As odd as it may seem, people look to be every bit as happy to be able to fulfill someone else’s need as they are to find the thing that they want. Sometimes moreso. And there’s a special kind of joy involved in finding just the right person to take something that you have really cared about but that you realize you must now part with.
It’s almost like matchmaking.
So, we all need help sometimes. But we also feel good about being asked for help, or at least for our good advice. This is why those questions about “why is my car making this noise?” get so many responses. They appeal to our desire to be helpful, not to mention that innate yearning to share our own personal experiences.
Now, a question like “Who will help tow my car out of a ditch?” is not at all the same thing. That’s the sort of heavy-duty request that you’d ask your immediate family or close friends. “Who should I call to tow my car out of a ditch?” Will get you a list of local recommendations plus the pros and cons of each one.
It may also get you a private message from a friend offering to come pull you out. But this is not to be expected. It’s a bonus.
I suppose there is a sort of unspoken etiquette to these things. At least, I know there are certain topics I wouldn’t pose to my Facebook or Twitter feed: too personal, too sad, too enormous, too controversial. Your own assessments might be different. It depends on your boundaries and your own circle of online friends. It’s safe to say that a question like “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” is just as bad an idea on social media as it was in 1170.
What about you? Have you ever used social media to gather information or advice in order to get help or make a decision? Did you learn anything useful? Or would you rather ask personal friends directly rather than putting it out there for the world to see?
Let me know.
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