Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How influenced are you by social media?

I was prompted to start this thread after watching something on TV earlier, where a chewy green vitamin pill in the shape of a bear is being promoted as an easy way to increase hair growth (bears are hairy & furry, as those of us who've cuddled grizzlies know) by some social media 'celebrities' (who I've never heard of) on Instagram etc. Those pills cost about twenty times that of similar vitamin preparations in plain pill form & plain packaging from a supermarket. And the manufacturer of those gummy vitamin bears is raking in £$€ by the sackful.

My first thought was, in the immortal words of John McE: "You cannot be serious!"

However, I've never been on any social media of any sort (partly because of my job) but though I don't think I'm influenced by any media - or other people -, I probably am to some extent when deciding what and who I want to listen to. Though as most of my listening is to (classical) radio, where I have no control over the music being played, I do end up listening to lots of stuff that I wouldn't have chosen to buy recordings of, nor attend concerts for. Sometimes, I'm intrigued and want to know and listen more; other times, I'm indifferent and switch my mind towards preparing my gourmet meal (or whatever I happened to be doing whilst listening). Very occasionally, I really can't stand the music (or what passes for it) - or, even more rarely, the performer -, and turn the radio off.

But I believe that for many (most?) people, social media is where they get most of their information of the world, including the musical world. Mostly pop, but classical too, especially among the young who grew up with Facebook et al and never known a world without the internet. After all, we regularly get posts here about pianists who are in the social media limelight, much more often than (arguably) better musicians who aren't. I name no names......but it seems those posters are no longer active in PW.

So, do you think you're influenced (easily or uneasily ) by social media - or indeed any media - in your likes & dislikes of performers and composers and music, and in what way?

N.B. No politics please.......

The only social media I follow are pianoworld forum and youtube. And yes they have a big influence on me regarding music and piano. On youtube I watch anything related to piano.

But can you give us more info about those pills ? Do they really increase hair growth ?

I'm OK because it's not me who gets influenced. I do influence them 👹 JK

I'm not influenced at all. The only social media I follow is Twitter and a few political blogs, aside from news aggregates. My current musical tastes are almost exclusively classical, and anything else out there doesn't hold any interest for me. The stuff that might interest me, like Pearl Jam, Zeppelin, Cream, are too old and aren't out there making the rounds anymore. The classical music I listen to I generally find something I like and focus on it exclusively for a fair bit of time until it exhausts my attention.

Since I grew up in a rural town far away from any classical music scene, my piano education came entirely through YouTube. I assume this is true of most people of my generation. My appreciation of Sokolov and Hamelin probably wouldn't have happened without their YouTube followings. I don't think I know anything about what goes on in social media circles with regards to classical music.

Nope.

Perhaps I am the exception here because I visit Facebook daily to share stories, photos and jokes with people I know personally, my actual friends and relatives. I belong to a neighborhood FB group that shares local information and alerts. I have my privacy settings at the maximum. I do not look at the ads. I do not use it as a news source. I do no participate in obvious attempts to gather personal data.

I read 3 newspapers every day: The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. I check ABC news and BBC online at least once a day. To gain perspective, I frequently take sips (online) from right and the left news sources. I always verify news sources.

PianoWorld has influenced me by introducing me to new music. I use YouTube for classical music and I completely ignore the ads.

I have the time to stay informed because I am retired.

I forgot to mention this but since the lock down, I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the radio because my listening was confined to the car and now I rarely go anywhere. I used to listen to the headlines, weather and traffic and then would switch to the local classical station. I agree with the OP regarding the musical selections which would either delight me or cause me to shut off the radio.

Apparently, the biotin and selenium in those green gums can turn you hairy, so the manufacturer claims .

I just looked at the label on my cheap bottle of 'complete vitamins and minerals' (which I take on long mountaineering expeditions, where I have to survive exclusively on freeze-dried packaged foods for weeks or months at a time) and - lo and behold! - it contains the same amount of biotin and selenium (as well as everything else)......but it makes no claims about turning anyone into a hairy monster.

Just as well, as I'm no Harry (and don't want to be).......

Well, musically not so much influenced as tempted to listen to things I wouldn't have considered before. That's usually from PW (after all, I finally listened to the Hammerclavier because of you lot), but occasionally on Facebook (members of family often have different tastes in music - quite a few like jazz :o, for example). But actually it's almost anywhere that will make me go and listen - BBC ran an article on Kylie Minogue, so I listened to some of her songs; nope, not for me really, but one never knows: many years ago somebody mentioned Tina Turner and I have a few CDs that SWMBO is rather fond of (OK, I admit it: I like a few of the songs).

Now, about that hair restorer......

When I listen in the car (I drive about an hour a day to & from work: lockdown made the driving easier, with less traffic), BBC Radio 3 would have its breakfast and evening drive-time programs on (mostly shorter pieces and single movements of longer works, as well as interviews with performers and composers), so I have no idea what music would be played, nor which musicians would feature. News in those programs is confined to a three-minute slot on the hour, which is enough for me - especially as it includes news on classical musicians (who has passed, the return of live concerts etc)

So, I end up listening to a lot of music I've never heard before, as well as hearing many diverse musicians (which often prompt me to investigate further) - mainly classical, but also the occasional folk and jazz musicians. It's usually the jazzers that make me switch off........

Apart from PW (is a forum such as this considered a social medium?) and the occasional specific search on YouTube, I now avoid social media like the proverbial plague.

With no disrespect to others who adhere to FaceBook, I have found it one of the biggest time wasters the Internet has invented. That is, painstakingly having to get rid of "people you may know," all of whom I don't know and wouldn't want to, or reading (or ignoring) forwarded posts in which I have no interest. The idea of linking me to a friend of a friend of a friend makes absolutely no sense. It's just clutter. Moreover, why in the heck do I want to see pictures of the latest sleep position of someone's cat? I guess the answer is that I am just not social! I can live with that; I have for years.

If I want to send something to someone, I do it via email and it goes to only those (I think and hope) might find some interest in it.

Bottom line: I am not influenced by social media. I could have answered the question in ten words or less.

Regards,

By amazing coincidence, I'm presently watching a program on "The Great Plague" (the bubonic plague that hit Britain in 1665) on TV right this moment.

Hmmm, I'm keeping a beady eye out for body lice and fleas.......as well as a spiky virus .

I am not influenced by social media at all. I am not influenced by friends or family either, because I never discuss politics, religion, or abortion with friends or family - that's a rule in our house.

I have a facebook account, but I only use it to post announcements of events I host for my orienteering club. I don't have any "friends" on facebook, so I guess I am using it in an unintended way. I never visit the site for anything else.

I don't do twitter either - from what I have heard, it is awful people trying to score points against other awful people. If you do twitter - I apologize - you must be the exception!

I do watch videos on youtube - woodworking videos - it is just amazing what clever and talented people have shared in videos. I love watching someone build something - and then I go out to my workshop and make my own version. I follow a few musicians/teachers on youtube, like Josh Wright.

For news, there are a few sites that I visit that I trust, and I avoid everything else. Of course, my US State is now the focus of national politics, and will be until January. My vote is secret, and I keep it that way.

And I visit Piano World daily. I manage the online recitals, and that is very rewarding - we just had quarterly recital #60 in the ABF - that's 15 years of online recitals...

Sam

I tried Facebook some years ago with a view to finding people from my youth with whom I had lost touch. I found a few but none was interested in further communication so I deleted my account. In general social media seems to be like television except worse, to quote Robert Hughes, “a cornucopia of dung”. I cannot understand how anyone can possibly have several hundred “friends” and wish to be constantly updated about everything from barber to bowel motion amid a deluge of mindless aphorisms. Messenger and similar applications are handy for free international phone calls, I suppose, but even that is a two-edged sword if it turns into an incessant bombardment of idle gossip in the early hours.

So no, I am only influenced through what I hear about it from others in the household, and I could easily do without that.

I'm 29, so I'm a millennial. I try to keep my social media use to a minimum but certainly I am influenced by it. I view videos on youtube and browse reddit. I used to use facebook but that kind of faded away after a while.

My taste for classical music and all the other fine arts is not at all under the influence of social media, although I follow the mainstream channels. It is seldom the case that one can 'chat' about the quality of a recording of the first piano trio op.18 by Saint-Saëns for instance, or the difference in the use of colour between Signorelli and Giotto: politics and jokes, and the occasional really important message are in those socials, art isn't.

I have a Facebook account I check about every 3 months...i.e., I am not and active Facebook user. I have never signed up for Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, though I get plenty of that content in some of the blogs I read. I use YouTube sometimes to check out live performances, though I prefer to just look up performances on Spotify, which makes it easy to compare different performances of the same piece. Spotify has an amazingly broad selection of classical music.