Coming Around To Social

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not putting the taboo on progress.  My sense of historical perspective and ego are both in check.  Both are closely tied up in slip knots with my hands behind my back, so my fingers can’t touch the keyboard until I come around to feeling social again.

 

As a driver and as a social media maven, I don’t feel any need to be recognized for my talents for fixing scrambled eggs or my amazing insights on the perplexing state of the world.  I don’t crave attention.  I generally don’t feel that people need to be made aware on Facebook when I have gone to a Sean Colvin concert or gone to the bathroom at intermission in that show.   I don’t take selfies, not because I’m above it, but rather because I can’t believe that the “social” world at large wants my likeness inflicted upon them.  Inflicting my images through words is another matter entirely - words, well chosen, give the reader an escape hatch through their own ego and out back doors of their own imagination.  

 

I’ve used the same black and white picture of me taken forty years ago across all social networks and Web presences.  It’s not the kind of photo one would expect of someone who hopes to be world famous raconteur - which I discarded from my list of life goals, shortly after I abandoned my hopes of being an NBA All-Star power forward.    

 

In the picture, I’m sporting a soft smile and a sports coat and I like that because it makes me appear normal.  I also like that picture because it makes me feel more semi-important than I would feel with a picture of me birdwatching.  

 

I use my middle initial in my name, for two reasons.   First it makes me feel marginally more semi-important than I would feel without it.  Second, I use it to distinguish myself from another John Ince - an Internet celebrity of sorts.  He’s the leader of the Sex Party in Canada and the author of several books including the Politics of Lust.  There’s lusty potential confusion there.  It became and issue of sorts when I was writing for some ‘important” business publications and would often reach out to CEOs, investors and other “important” people for interviews.  Your online identity needs to be clean for people like that to clear time on their calendar.  When you’re “important” like them or semi-important like me it’s absolutely essential that you be “appropriate” in all public regards.  That’s why it’s especially important that nobody know I’m doing this rideshare thing.  Please don’t tell a soul.