IS BLOGGING REPLACING SMALL TALK?

As we come to the end of 2016 and look to the brightness and promise of 2017, I came across this nugget about small talk while running on the treadmill this week.  NBC Today's Al Roker and Tamron Hall talked about the death of small talk because we are too preoccupied with our phones to engage in such meaningless chatter. 

But as I listened to their insights on this interpersonal mainstay in our society, I immediately thought about the specific activity that was replacing it: Blogging and Micro-blogging.

(A 2011/2012 version of Bleeding Yankee Blue)

"A growing body of research suggests that small talk has surprising benefits. In a study published in 2014 in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that daily interactions with casual acquaintances, like chatting with your regular barista at the coffee shop, can contribute to day-to-day well-being," stated an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this fall.  But what if blogging and the ability to interact with a larger audience is a worthy replacement?  

Photo: David & Erin Robertson wearing Bleeding Yankee Blue

"As a small company or startup, going straight for the gatekeepers - influencers and bloggers, is a great way to reach your target market. Your consumers turn to them for recommendations about the very products you sell. This is especially true if your products include fashion, lifestyle products or food. And if you’re marketing to millennials, they often look to influencers because they want an authentic, personalized customer experience, and they’re estimated to spend $200 billion annually by 2017," reported Forbes magazine earlier this month. 

Much like the words of Terri Funk Graham, "The more passion people have for the work that they do, the more likely they are to demonstrate positive energy and success in life," we here at BYB blog because we love the Yankees and we engage in small talk, nuggets if you will, about baseball much like you would with a person in line at the supermarket, while you wait for your plane at the airport or with family during the holidays.

Today's small talk is blogging and we do it here with you everyday, 365 days a year.  

In Photo: Then Cleveland Indian Clint Frazier

Whether we feature prospect talk with our minor league teams and those interesting personalities that shape our Yankee system with someone like John Sadak who "has a fun job. He is the voice of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, amongst many other announcing gigs. He has been on hand for an amazing transformation in the Yankees farm system, and has seen some of today’s stars at the big league level develop from question marks to the reigning AL Player of the Week" ; or we capture the possibility of the trades to come with Hot Stove talk with guys like Ken Rosenthal who report the word on the street with words like "every time I hear Brian Cashman utter his cryptic mantra, “We’re open to anything,” the same thought enters my head: “Uh-oh, here come the Yankees," we are blogging what's hot, what's interesting and what's in our heads as we sit at the keyboard.

Photo: Getty Images of Jose Quintana

According to the New Yorker, "American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won’t violate one another’s privacies. This makes it a land of small talk."  And the same would be true here at BYB.  We can comment, we can make fun, we can discuss intelligently, but we can't violate each other's opinions and we have to have something interesting to say.  "How can print newspapers possibly compete with this high-speed analysis, team updates at the blink of an eye, along with all these other online statistical bells and whistles found on so many Websites?" reported Huffington Post.  

It's true.  Blogging has become a part of our culture, particularly in sports and definitely in baseball. It's not that far fetched to say that it is replacing small talk at the water cooler and on the train.

Bleeding Yankee Blue today

And with our writers competing for a bigger baseball audience every season, continue to expect more from us here at BYB.

We expect more of ourselves in 2017 much like we do from the team we cover. 

Is Blogging replacing small talk in our society today? You betcha!


 
--Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof