Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void, Cartoons, and Social Objects

Thu 05/22/08

Hugh McLeod runs a site called Gaping Void where he posts (occasionally NSFW) cartoons drawn on the back of business cards and discusses social media, the web, and a few other marketing projects.

I’ve become interested in his take on what he refers to as “social objects” (and defines in depth as “sharing devices.”) These are the things social networks are built around.

He posts his cartoons as hi-res downloads that are free to use for personal use, and they make the perfect case study of the social object theory.

As a “Social Object”, a cartoon that one can actually print out and hang on their cube wall, or put on a t-shirt, a business card etc is far more powerful and useful than say, YET ONE MORE IMAGE you can find on the internet and e-mail en masse to your friends.
— Free Cartoons as Social Objects

He goes on to discuss that this sort of open policy makes him money “indirectly” by connecting him with other people/organizations and building relationships around these social objects.

I don’t create the online cartoons as “products” to be sold. I create the cartoons as “Social Objects”, i.e. “Sharing Devices” that help me to build relationships with. As with all things, the REAL value comes from the human relationships that are built AROUND the social object, not the object in itself.

I think we make the mistake of believing our [product, service, message, church, cause, etc.] is intrinsically valuable and will therefor spread because of its internally-perceived awesomeness. “Well, WE think it’s important, therefor anyone smart will too, right?”

But things aren’t valuable. At least not in a sustainable sense. Everything depreciates, everything becomes irrelevant over time. No matter what we do, if we want it to last, to have impact and meaning, we need to admit that the human interaction(s) that organically occur around shared experiences are VASTLY more important than any thing we create.

If it can’t be shared, if socialization can’t happen around it, then why bother?

3 Comments

  1. Daniel

    I feel like this may be a bit over-generalized…but then it touches on some philosophical areas where I’m not quite knowledgeable. That is, whether or not creative output has intrinsic value.

    My tendency, as a Christian, would be to suggest that it does – it’s reflective of us as created beings having value by virtue of having been created by God. Our output, therefore, has value in that it was created in the first place. Its existence reflects that.

    Maybe that’s more abstract than you were going for, but I couldn’t help thinking about it. I’m no philosopher, so forgive me for any gaping logical holes that might exist in my statements :-)

    Thu 05/22/08 at 11:25 am

  2. Joshua

    Sure, I’d say artistic endeavors have some value (at least initially). It would have been more appropriate for me to make clear that I mean people (and thus anything people-centric) are MORE important than the thing itself.

    Thu 05/22/08 at 2:02 pm

  3. Joseph Abrahamson

    This makes an nice tie to two things I’m pretty interested in.

    First, it’s clear how this sort of idea makes a remark on social music sharing (and media in general) where the increased mobility of a song can actually increase it’s value as there’s more room for conversation around it (for instance, sampled songs). In this sense, a song that has whatever intrinsic value that makes something into a social object of worth then the increased discussion it’ll benefit from by sharing is very valuable.

    Secondly, more abstractly, this might act as a basis of an information economy. While the supply of information itself is extremely flexible, the demand for it (or, perhaps, the supply of it’s social action) is very inflexible.

    “Social Objects” a good idea to consider.

    Thu 05/22/08 at 2:56 pm

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