Shouting In A Crowd II

Yesterday there was a post "Please Shut Up" by Delilah S. Dawson on The Passive Voice.

There was this rebuttal from S. J. Pajonas Stop Being A Robot and Start Being You she makes good points. She stresses that using time-saving short-cuts turns out white noise and 'buy my book' tweets and posts. Her solution is 'be yourself' which means interacting with friends and tweet-followers.

But how many hours are there in a day? Hundreds of tweets cross my twitter feed every day. Someone with thousands of followers...reply to them all? Be 'yourself' to them all? Seriously?

Face Book -- imagine trying to read and reply to every post that crosses your feed. All the time spent 'connecting' to hundreds or thousands of followers.

The only way to do that is to be glued to your phone, one of those dazed and disconnected souls who never look up from their phones to see the world. I've seen them at author fairs...glued to their phones or tablets, never looking up from the device to connect to the living humans around them.

They never sell any books. They never speak to readers. They spent good money and time to be at a fair, but stay online selling books to people selling books. They missed the opportunity to connect with real readers.

Isn't connecting with readers the whole point?

I spend enough time at my laptop already. Blogging and reading...I'm already getting frustrated with Real Life left un-lived. I've done this since 2009, during that time, my mother passed and my step-father broke his hip and his leg. Each time I turned from my laptop to 'Real Life' I felt guilty because I was neglecting my 'marketing on social media.'

Then the question arises: If I'm not living life on life's terms, how will I write about other people living life? Won't I be stuck in my office, typing away and leaving my own life un-lived, except through the glowing screen in front of me?

Haven't I done enough of that, working in Tech Support for the last 30 years?

I'm not buying the Kool-Aid. I'm getting more frustrated every day because Real Life is calling and I've put my life on hold to "market my books on social media."