If I could come across a genie-laden lamp, with my first wish, I would take the entire world back to pre-social media times.
“Why is that?” Most of the world just asked in alarm.
Simple: The ground swell of instant hate-tification we see on an hourly basis is incredibly defeating and demoralizing. A baseball player makes an error and thousands of ‘loyal’ fans take to social media to wish harm on him and degrade his culture or his family. A public servant acting on his/her own agenda does something dreadful, causing millions of people to denounce an entire gender or racial class. So yes, I would wish away that instantaneous pipeline of mental pollution. Regrettably I would lose access to all the good stories and cute cat videos that electronic convenience affords, but I think the trade-off is overwhelmingly worth it.
Regularly we now see politicians, local leaders, athletes, comedians, teachers et al immediately blacklisted by society for momentary lapses or repeated offenses, but how about those who are calling for their demise? If you look into the vast majority of the people who are casting stones at these fallen idols, I think you’ll find that many of them are not without sin. No, I’m not getting biblical or religious here. I’m just saying that if you look into the online histories of many of the ‘righteous’ who are calling for the downfall of these social offenders, you will probably find that many of them are perpetrating online bullying behavior that is just as ghastly. Online ‘Trolls’, or whatever you prefer to label these cyber vigilantes, are most times just as bad as those they demand be brought asunder.
If you asked me to stay my hand on the genie wish of striking from existence all social media platforms, I would ask in return that the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world really police their platforms in a responsible fashion, not just ride the popular political agendas. They need to flag users who habitually ‘bully’ other users or platform ‘friends’ by name calling, attacking gender, sexual preference, heritage, etc. True debate in our modern society seems to be dead. Someone with an alternative point of view cannot be tolerated and the offending party must be shamed and degraded as vigorously as possible to drown out any opposition no matter how benign the topic. Having an opinion or view that does not match with the majority is scary business these days. People form beliefs nowadays by reading a snippet of a tweet or the headline of a bias article. Subsequently, they disregard all opposing arguments and shout them down with vile insults. Again this position is based on the formulated words of a favorite actor/actress or financed supporter who may or may not have viewed all sides of an issue before establishing their point of view.
I guess one thing about social media that I find a bit humorous is when a widely supported social media figure gains thousands of followers…until something questionable causes those devoted followers to all of a sudden abandon their support of that social media figure. So I guess I would ask those followers who dropped following those particular figures: What caused you to follow them in the first place? Didn’t you do your homework on the front end to warrant adding your support to them publicly in the first place? Or was it the same flim-flam process that caused you to follow them that allowed yourself to be swept away from supporting them? Hmmm.
Bottom line, can we fix what is wrong with society? Why as a whole must we be emotionally divided by geography, race, religion, politics, education, etc.? Via my blog and social media, people across the globe can read my thoughts. I have met people from coast to coast who I have play softball with and against. We come from all different backgrounds. Some have pets that are cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, mice, snakes, ferrets and many others. OF those people some are doctors, nurses, insurance sales people, marketing people, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, company presidents, chefs, Uber drivers and so on and so forth. None of that matters to me. Instead of focusing on the things we have different from each other, I embrace the things we hold in common. The love of softball, hearing new music, taking pictures, seeing new places, goals not yet accomplished, failures and triumphs. Common threads are universal as breathing.
In quite a few of the technology marketing campaigns, they talk about how technology advancements allows us as people to collaborate with those far away or keep creating when things globally are shut down (pandemic). So why can’t the masses be content to push forward collectively instead of trying to push each other into the pit of doom? Granted, I’m a simple person who is on the downslide of my life. But at this point, all I want to do is play softball, be around good friends, (eventually) have a bunch of cats and support those people who have helped positively impact my life. If more people had this outlook instead of lining up strangers in their cross-hairs on social media to verbally eviscerate, I think then social media would be worth keeping. But seeing as I do not have a genie on retainer, I guess this entire post is nothing but a moo point. It’s like a cow’ opinion, it doesn’t matter.
Thank you to all who have followed my blog, my podcasts (on Soundcloud), my Facebook, my Twitter accounts and my Tumblr account. Hopefully you have been able to find something intriguing or amusing to make it worth your while. I hope you have a great day and if there’s anything I’ve written that you would like to challenge…I welcome any thought provoking responses. Have a spiffy rest of your day!
Peace. #33 – The Freak <<07192021>>
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