Question: What’s the difference between the social web and, say, office politics?
Answer: There isn’t any.
I came across an interesting article on Jonathan Lehrer’s excellent blog, The Frontal Cortex. In it, he expresses concern about how:
“Online social platforms both magnify our hierarchies (by measuring our friends, followers, links, etc.) and erase the ‘disproportions,’ so that we suddenly find ourselves in the same monkey cage with a far larger number of monkeys.”
It should come as no surprise that, as the social web matures, it becomes more and more like the offline world.
Everyone says that social media is about people. Well, this is how people act. They compete. They keep score. They defend what’s theirs. We’re not going to lose these hard-wired behaviors just because the technology changes. Or, for that matter, because the generation changes.
These behaviors have survived from prehistory into the present. They will continue to be passed from generation to generation until some misguided future generation decides to genetically tweeze them out. And that will mark the beginning of the end.
Occasionally, I come across a book or article claiming that these behaviors are outmoded and no longer useful—that they are unfit for the modern world.
I beg to differ. These behaviors make us human. They are the strategies our genes developed long, long ago to ensure our survival. And they’ve worked. They don’t feel comfortable now because they never did.
But, hey, the bonding behaviors that fueled the social web’s growth are also survival strategies.
So is the social web becoming more Darwinian? Or more fully human?
Welcome to Outside-In Banking, a blog for bank marketers and anyone else involved in financial services. I believe that many banks are way too internally focused for their own good, so I try to provide an outside-in perspective. Expect a lot of opinions, raves, rants, and unsolicited advice. I hope to get the same from you. 
