06 Social

When I think of "social," I think of my grandmother, born Marie Gerhard in 1898, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Her "media" consisted of letters, newspapers, the movies, a diary...  What if she had had Facebook?

Marie grew up before the era of radio and television, so it was really only newspapers and the movies that were a social medium everyone shared. Marie's older Aunts would appear every week or so in the society column as they hosted a German Women's organization, but it was a medium Marie would only rarely use. 

So, it was really personal social media that Marie used. She was a prodigious letter writer; she wrote her son Harry weekly when he was at West Point with the family news, and he wrote back weekly as well. I can imagine everyone in the family coming home from work or school, and reading the latest letter from Harry.

Marie was the family photographer, always bringing her camera on a visit, and she was typically the one behind the camera in most of her family photos. I suppose in today's world she would have taken selfies, though modesty may have prevented that; she would certainly have posted photos on Facebook

There were also diaries; Marie wrote in hers daily, from 1914 to 1929. If Facebook had existed, I imagine she would have turned to that instead – most of her daily entries were not that personal, and easily fit the format of a check-in post: "In the afternoon I went autoing with Irene. In the eve. Aunt Ceil & I went to the Bijou to see 'After the Ball'"!

I can imagine a Facebook selfie of Marie and her Aunt Ceil in front of the Bijou!

Today we are faced with a bewildering number of social media possibilities and little common understanding of how to use them. Would Marie have kept her resume in LinkedIn, posted photos on Instagram, Tooted or Tweeted on Mastodon or Twitter, interacted with her bridge group on Facebook? 

For genealogy, social media has helped create a boom, but I wonder what our genealogist descendants are going to do with all those social media traces we will leave behind. I feel lucky to only have to catalog letters, diaries, and news articles!