What is the Purpose of Social Media?
All the writers I know struggle to balance time on twitter/facebook/blogging and time spent writing. Possibly, probably, other people have this problem too, but I dare say it's more extreme when you work for yourself. And ultimately, no matter whether a writer is a hobbiest or professional, has a contract with a big pub or is an indie, when it comes to writing, you work for yourself. What purpose does all that social media stuff have anyway? I mean in the BIG picture? I came across an article advancing an interesting theory, and I'd like to share it with you. Why do moose carry such enormous and metabolically expensive horns? Why do some gazelles jump up and down when they see a predator, wasting time and energy instead of running off as fast as they can? Zahavy's insight was that this wastefulness ensures the honesty of their signals of fitness and speed: Only animals with an excess of the signaled resource can afford to waste it on expensive communicative displays. ...