Taking the Work Out of Networking by Karen Wickre
Author:Karen Wickre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
The Fine Art of Benevolent Lurking
In the overheated online and social media environment we’re living in right now, overflowing as it is with breaking news and all kinds of disputatious political sinkholes, I understand the desire to lurk. The volume of chatter and opinion can seem so great that you don’t want to get drawn in. Or maybe between work, family, and school, your life is packed enough without getting into any online fray.
But if you are strictly a “lurker”—someone who only reads what others say, and rarely or never comments or posts publicly—you’re missing out on two things:
1. The ability to be found by anyone you’d like to connect with, since you have no obvious footprint (and if they can’t find you, what’s their motivation to connect?), and
2. A no-pressure way to express yourself, however quietly you’d like.
I know that online expression is not for everyone, especially when you’re first wading in. Writer and editor Jess Zimmerman has used the wonderful phrase “benevolent lurking” to advise people considering the social plunge that “you will always contribute better, learn more, embarrass yourself less if you lurk for a while, if you watch which arguments play out and how and by whom.” As she correctly notes, the online world can mirror real life: “In the offline world, ‘social life’ has a range of meanings, from constant chatter to quiet companionship. It’s important to remember that media can be social without being relentlessly extroverted. (My emphasis.) Lurk for a while when you can.”
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