So, if the first trend is a Garden of Eden blooming with engagement and self-expression, the second trend is the snake in the garden. For all the powerful tools at our disposal to bear witness and bring about change, there is also the temptation to fetishize the social and viral for their own sake. On a daily basis, I'm invited to media conferences filled with panels devoted to how we can use social tools to amplify our messages. But very few of those panels seem to care what is the message. As Thoreau said in 1854, "We are in great haste, to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.