Going Gray: Social Media Edition

This whole "I should watch what I write and say" has me thinking deeply about the whole concept of Going Gray again.  Really overall, but especially in my social media life.

Going Gray, as you may recall, is simply the act of blending in, of being the unremarkable, of not drawing attention to yourself.  Mind you, once upon a time this may have been more difficult but now, in the age of social media and self promotion, it has actually become a great deal easier - do not draw attention to yourself online and  you are 90% of the way there.

How so?  By removing yourself from the social arena - or, in the event that you cannot change it, carefully managing your online profile (for example, many career fields almost require that you do this) - you pull yourself out of the spotlight of a great deal of the simplest method of tracking and trending.

I have not been as good about this as I should have been - even I have felt (far too often) the siren's song of public approval, of being thought well of, of being clever or attractive or unique or novel.  All of that will fade in milliseconds; whatever one posted or wrote stays up for eternity (or at least until the power final runs out).

Let us start with that premise, be as unremarkable in one's online presence as one is with the appearance of one's car or one's home:  not remarkable, not unremarkable, not memorable.  Be the 15th or 20th thing people think about - or even better, be something that no-one thinks about at all.

Again, I understand that this is contrary to everything that we have come to value as a society (on a side note, I wonder how much that really says about us).  It is all about us, all about the attention and glory on me.  I am the product.  I am the brand.

Let others become the product and the brand.  As for me, I will slowly fade into the shadows, where things are recalled, but none too clearly.

A caveat:  What if you are someone that regularly posts things?  Such a complete and total absence will itself create some form of attention.  Agreed.  So maybe completely dropping off of the InterWeb is in and of itself a form of creating memorability.  In this case, I would propose a fall off.  Maybe do not completely stop posting, but starting slowing it down. Try for even less memorable posts.  And over the intervening period of a month or so, slow the flow down until it almost stops entirely.  The algorithms will stop bringing you to the top, and within that period of time you will have merged into the background noise.