A typical online status update is not always as exciting as cliff jumping. People are now actively seeking experiences in a shorter amount of time to feed their online status updates. This is called Experience Cramming. More and more of our identity is wrapped up in our online persona and this requires work to stay on the trending edge. I will fess up, there are some days that I conduct online research to find something I believe is truly interesting and value-added to progress the online conversation.
And, most people have seen, or can recall status updates on Facebook or Twitter about mundane day-to-day tasks, and asked yourself “Why?” If Sally is having tomato soup for lunch I certainly hope she grew the tomatoes or included the recipe that she stole from some little old lady’s recipe box when she looked away. Human beings love a good story and storytelling online has become a national past time. Don’t worry about the future of baseball, people still want to post that they are at the game.
The acceleration of our online lives fuels the hunt for innovative ideas and experiences. In my Facebook news stream,
I don’t see many dull posts and I wonder is this because my friends are cooler than everyone else’s friends? If you are my friend, it’s true. Status updates have evolved and are full of cool pix, conversation starters, and post from other online sources.
People post their best vacations, exciting events and outrageous activities they watch or experience. It has contributed to the vacation envy I now have on a weekly basis. Some people post the most peaceful tropical settings or post-action-packed stuff like kite surfing or hang gliding. If I happen to be in London there is going to be a post with Big Ben or the London Eye in the background. It’s a conversation starter. It’s an interesting status update. It’s not mundane. At least not yet.
When will it be? That is likely just around the corner. This brings up why people are “Experience Cramming”. If you can’t post big new places and events or they are no different than anyone else – what can you do? The answer is: Do more than everyone else. Seek and Destroy. This coupled with people loving newness. Only now it’s faster. It’s the latest and the greatest on speed.
Here are 3 reasons why I LOVE the trend of experience cramming:
1) It requires you to get out there and do it. You have to leave your online world to participate in the real one in order to post your real-life online.
2) It is living life to the fullest. You are in the game. Not on the bleachers.
3) You give other people motivation and ideas about what they could experience next.
If you’re not on the field you are on the sidelines. Now that is boring. I recently had the pleasure of learning from a teenage visitor to the Mindspot Office this: YOLO!
You only live once.
by Lynnette Leathers President of Mindspot Research, a division of Mindspot, Inc.
