Geolocation versus a Sunday afternoon.
So, sitting in a Panera on a Sunday afternoon has given me a bit of a thought that I want to run with for a few minutes here. I’m going to leave much of this thought beyond the break, but I think I’ve found the thesis—if you excuse the formal term—is that… with popular places like this, why do we need geolocation games or services like FourSquare?
Hear me out.
This particular Panera I frequent is pretty close to where I live, so odds are, I will see people that I know sampling the bakery whenever I show up here, right? We probably have something in common to talk about.
For instance, I see my high school senior year English teacher reading and grading essays with the trademark red Bic pen. I could—if I really wanted to—re-introduce myself to her and ask her how things are going at the high school and she could ask me what I have done with myself since high school… but I shouldn’t. She’s grading her students’ essays and if I remember anything from her course in high school, her notes on reports were pure gold (even if I nearly failed the class my senior year).
On many Sunday afternoons, I’m not the only one plugging away at some sort of report or writing on my laptop, but there are usually others with the same mind to get some sort of hobby or work done too. I could really go up to them and act like a douche leading off conversation with ‘I have over one thousand followers on Twitter, are you one of them?’—something I would never EVER IN OVER 9000 YEARS subject someone to in any serious manner—but we would have something in common with each other. That conversation could happen… but it probably won’t.
Why won’t these conversations happen? Could having some sort of service that everyone could check into have prompted a conversation when they see my name and picture in the list of current occupants?
Of course not. That would be an insane presumption to make.
If that’s the case, do I only check into FourSquare and/or EightBit for social media cred? Do I even need this sort of cred? (Whoa, hold on there. That’s another story altogether.)
As of late, I’m not particularly a social person. I really only go to events that might line up with work or some manner of interest. I play DnD. I play video games. I like to walk around the neighborhood where I live. I like to think I’m a pretty simple guy. There’s a few things that I enjoy and otherwise, I stay out of others’ way.
Does FourSquare try to change this? It seems lately that most social media services just want me to spend more money. That’s not a situation I’m particularly comfortable with. It’s beginning to rub me the wrong way.
I’ve never been a fan of services like Groupon or LivingSocial because they’re turning social media into a super self-promotion machine—especially Groupon with its affiliate program that anyone can sign up for. Giving people things that they want for less money, I’m all for, but is it really worth it when users of the service just think that they are riding the cool train into coolness when they tweet that they just picked up their LivingSocial deal for a restaurant that they visit once in a blue moon that gives them half price meals?
With that thought, what is the endgame for FourSqaure and like services? To get the end user to spend as much money as possible to attain numerous mayorships? To eventually pay to be able to access their friends’ locations without restriction? To be the user out of all their friends or within the entire city to have the most points through checkins every month?
People speak of the often downplayed syndrome labeled ‘checkin fatigue’ not because it’s the metaphorical wall that social media consumers hit eventually, but because they end up being one of the few remaining in their circle of friends still using a geolocation service with any sort of consistency after the service falls into the hands of the greedy and the over-self-promoters of the Internet.
Yeah, I might’ve seen a few people I’ve known earlier in life within the high school ring and more during my afternoon at Panera, but I don’t think that spontaneous-networking apps like Color or geolocation services like FourSquare would have connected me with any of them. I’m completely expecting to walk past the couple of classmates and former instructor without so much as a word.
Perhaps it’s because the situation combines two of the most jaded things that I can think of: social media stalking and memories of high school. Perhaps.
Then again, I was having a completely braindead afternoon until I had this thought.
