The Hippie Web is Dead (2005 – 2015)

I hereby declare the Hippie Web dead.

In 2008, I described the social web as the “Hippie Web.” I thought it was funny, and some­how it stuck.

We were social media evan­gel­ists, and some of us, myself included, were per­haps a little too… enthusiastic. 

But what can I say?
We were hip­pies. Social media hippies.

We even had our ver­sion of Woodstock in Sweden in 2009—Sweden Social Media Web Camp.

But what began for us in Jaiku must come to an end:

The Social Media Hippie Club

Getting to exper­i­ence the advent of social media has been a priv­ilege. I’ve met so many new friends — and many won­der­ful weirdos. It has been a ride.

But you know things are destined to end when you start hear­ing people talk along these lines:

“I accept all friend requests, and you should, too. All you need is love!”

“You just got retweeted. It’s the uni­verse pay­ing it for­ward. Savour it. Then pay it back.”

“Don’t say IRL because which real­ity is more real? You must say AFK instead.” ¹ “Away From Keyboard,” obvi­ously.

“I have thou­sands of fol­low­ers. I wouldn’t call myself Jesus, but I guess he had twelve, right?”

“Yes, we have uncon­fer­ence, and every­one is wel­come. Word to wise — don’t use your AFK name around here.”

“Where’s your scarf? No dis­respect, but you look cor­por­ate.”

“I met a tra­di­tion­al com­pany yes­ter­day. My gosh. They have no idea what’s going on.”

Maybe there’s a time for everything.
And maybe the time for the Hippie Web is over.

Declaring the Hippie Web Dead

(Almost) every­one I know who star­ted a blog has giv­en up long ago. Only a few sol­diers — for whatever mys­ter­i­ous reas­on.

In the wake of the Hippie Web, no one cares about how many fol­low­ers you have on Twitter or what your Klout score is sup­posed to be. 

The Cluetrain Manifesto is about to be for­got­ten, also.

No one will miss this psy­che­del­ic won­der­land brim­ming with naïveté and social media optim­ism — except for us hippies. 

The social media influ­en­cers, the glossy fash­ionis­tas with their daily out­fits and their parties and VIP invit­a­tions, are already nego­ti­at­ing with their agents regard­ing their next brand col­lab­or­a­tion. Ad rev­en­ues, giveaways, cor­por­ate free­bies, brand deals, and col­lab­or­a­tions. Fair game.

Businesses will likely ease their way out and divert their focus onto e‑commerce, online mar­ket­ing, and digit­al trans­form­a­tion. In social media, they’ll prob­ably leave a lonely com­mu­nic­at­or behind to fend for them­selves as best they can.

And who amongst us in the gen­er­al pub­lic will have the unyield­ing energy to keep excess­ively post­ing, dis­cuss­ing, and shar­ing on social media? Not the finest of people, would be my guess.

Read also: Social Media Fakers — Oh, They Seem So Perfect Online

Love, Sharing, and Jaiku

The irony is that I feel no bit­ter­ness, no resent­ment. It had to end even­tu­ally. I will miss some aspects of the Hippie Web deeply. Other aspects? Not so much. Frankly, it was time.

As we, the self-pro­claimed social media nat­ur­als, move on from singing Kumbaya on our uncon­fer­ences to per­haps more com­mer­cial endeav­ours, just let me say this in hon­our of this bygone era:

Let’s nev­er for­get that the bot­tom line of social media is all about one thing — con­nect­ing human beings.

And Jaiku, of course.

Peace out!

Read also: Enter the Money Web (2016-Present)