Would read 2,000 words on whoever is flacking the social media marketing strategy behind Influencer Prompt Twitter.

It's like the height of Fake Online Intimacy. "You've never met me but tell me about a time that being in middle school was awkward. I'll start."

It is with a heavy heart that I remind you of 2000s message-board wisdom, as best said by @jacobtwop as a Television Without Pity moderator: *These people are not your friends.* This is about engagement numbers. Share all you want on a public forum as long as you realize that.

True, it is 100% more preferable to have a tweet go viral with cute stories rather than the Trumpian horrors we've been used to, just go into it with eyes wide open. Twitter right now is not a safe space. Keep that in mind when you share.

Can we *make* it a safer space by sharing, by opening up to strangers? It feels good to unburden yourself once in a while but the whole problem with forced/fake intimacy of all kinds is that it is not genuine or reciprocal. It's an emotional manipulation in that sense.

Social media is intrinsically disinhibiting, it is made that way by corporate design elements. It's designed that way. That can be fun - Weird Twitter, shitposting - but it also misleads people into sharing digitally without first establishing trust, as they would in IRL sharing.

Anyway be thoughtful and intentional about mining parts of your own life publicly if the result is only to boost engagement for someone's Personal Brand.

As a financial journalist I've become skilled at spotting profit motive. You can too. A good practice is to ask, in any context in which you may feel compelled to give emotions or money: Is this a genuine two-way conversation or is this a part of someone's business model?

The thing about Fake Online Intimacy is that 1) it builds a feeling of reciprocal trust, which is 100% misleading on a public forum like this one where alliances shift hourly 2) it veils the transactional nature of engagement metrics like followers, likes and RTs

The thirst for engagement metrics is very real. There are entire industries built around it, and publishing especially uses Twitter as a proxy for gauging an author's popularity for book deals. It's bad business math, but it makes numbers a practical reality for influencers.

I literally refuse to care about followers or engagement, ever, here. It's not my thing. I'm not going to pretend I care about things I don't care about. But that's a luxury. There is a lot of pressure for people selling something - books, TV shows - to treat Twitter as a KPI.

Just keep your eyes open to those profit and transactional dynamics here when you engage. It doesn't mean don't share, it just means sharing with intention and awareness. This is an adapted version of the chat I have with execs I work with. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.