Social Media Wars

Once Upon A Time in a living room far far away, someone screamed into a tablet, while jabbing at an i phone and streaming on a laptop. Truly, something had gone wrong...

If you’re anything at all like me, then chances are that you find yourself thoroughly sick and tired of the modern world, or perhaps to place it more accurately; the people of the modern world.

It is my firmly held belief that the culture in which we all now exist is an utterly toxic landscape, laden as it is with a ruthless lack of respect and near terminal capacity for reverence of the self.

 I blame social media I think….

Never before has it been so easily done for any person no matter how deranged they may be to ‘share,’ no �" inflict their opinion or abuse relentlessly upon the rest of us.

 

In fact, opinion almost seems too measured a term to use to describe the usually nonsensical drivel which populates the information super highway.

 A wasteland of misguided indignation, rampaging and indecent quarrel and insult begetting insult; like some sort of nuclear war of absurdity.

 

The advent of social media has given a platform, a ‘soap box’ if you will to every big mouthed idiot. Leaving all as a result with an inflated sense of their own self-worth, an exaggerated distortion as to the importance or validity of their views.

In a climate within which celebrity obsession reigns supreme, everyone would like to think that they themselves also have a renowned standing.

 

Hubris then, a delusionary state of overweighing forcefulness of opinion and lack of mental and ideological flexibility is the issue we face. Not that there’s anything wrong with believing in yourself, not that there’s anything wrong with knowing what you think and expressing it.  What I am describing here however is assuredly not that. It’s something else; a warped, unfiltered fun house mirror distortion of free speech gone awry.

For it is my belief that when expressed via the prism of social media, opinions become almost mutated versions of themselves. Opinions become declarations, fevered ravings lacking in the decorum or decency or respect that verbal social interaction demands.

 

Social media then seems to take what is simply one single point of view and transforms it almost into a battle cry of sorts. It seems to encourage the user to say to themselves and anyone who’ll listen ‘I am right and anyone who disagrees with me is an outright fool!’ That’s not how opinion works; it isn’t how healthy debate or even democracy is supposed to function.  Your result then is a populace with an individual point of view so unmeasured and without perspective as to become impossible to reason with.

 

To offer an alternative or heaven forfend to challenge the view being expressed by the modern person is taken as an act of the utmost provocation. They react as if you may have just kicked their dog or something equally heinous!

 

The psychological implications of this are most fascinating and present in a manner found nowhere I think other than in motorists in their little metal boxes. I refer of course to the rage, the sheer unbridled anger and fury of it all.

 

The steaming vigour with which people attack those who would even dare to challenge their take on things is something I find both hilarious and frightening in equal measure.  The mechanics of the entire scenario seem to both perpetuate and encourage hatred in the most venomous and all-consuming degree.

 

I put it to you; how can this be good for a person? How can it do anything but distort them mentally? Leaving them again, with an absurdly inflated assessment of ‘what they think’ and encouraging them, whether by design or by accident to be actively opposed to and even condemning of opinions which do not correspond with their own.

It is for this reason that I take the belief that social media is in fact a very real enemy of democracy.  A poison flowing through the veins of ‘civilised society’ and in so doing eradicating the awareness and god forbid perhaps even the existence of something we used to call the greater good.

 

Indeed you’d be forgiven for thinking would you not, that an innovation like social media would serve to bring people together, serving as a means of unity rather than division or hatred?  Sadly, this most definitely has not happened.  It unites people alright, upon that we can agree, but only against others. Be they minorities, other groups of friends, a particular public figure or celebrity etc…  Even then all it takes is one disagreement amongst the mob and they start eating one another!

 

The point is absolute; social media perpetuates and encourages hatred en masse.

 

It’s almost Orwellian really… Anyone who has read the book Nineteen Eighty Four will know what I mean when I refer to the daily two minutes hate. Everyone else will just google it… It is a daily period of time in the story during which citizens are sat in front of a cinema screen and are invited to shout, scream, sneer, hurling obscenities at an image of a hated figure. Sound familiar? Certainly should; that’s the comments section on one of a billion facebook posts or tweets on twitter.  Only it’s more than just two minutes hate in our world, its constant, interrupted only by the ever decreasing putting down of a smart phone or the odd break from a tablet.

 

What a waste.

What a waste that a tool like this, for that is what it should be considered; a tool, is so utterly misused.  Something that could be used to convey a positive message is instead utilized only as a means of broadcasting maximum paranoia or terminal waffle.

 

Perhaps we don’t understand it yet. Maybe those who follow us many generations from now will talk retrospectively about the ‘social media wars’ and how primitive their ancestors where with it, almost bringing the human race to the very brink of tasteless oblivion. Per chance they’ll regard us as we do those who once dwelled in caves and lived in their bare feet. Perhaps this is the merely the infancy of something we just haven’t learned how to use properly yet. Let us hope so, if there’s one potential silver lining to all of this then that surely is it.

 

One thing is for sure; I’ve had enough of it, I really have. How about you?

Author's Note

Thank you for reading, any feedback always welcome. Take care!