Sunday, January 22, 2017

The carnage of Social Media

Nowadays, the need to take sick time off from work is specially excruciating because of the absence of the endearing crutches of the social media.

Once upon a time you could swift through the sweet, non-abrasive, non-political updates and pictures posted by your friends, very safely. Remember, the good times when the worst thing about Facebook was friends showing off the cakes, cars, kid's crafts and nausea inducing PDA.

As thinking individuals, we cannot escape forming opinions. As social beings, we can’t stop ourselves from sharing our opinions. But conversations and josh and smart-ass sarcasm have been replaced with a lot of nastiness. You come across a lot of name calling, insulting meme, a lot of aggression and propagation of one’s own ideology with no respect of others.

The age old wisdom of "don't say anything if you have nothing kind to say" have been thrown out of the window. 

A lot of friends seem uncomfortable. Some threaten to leave Facebook while others invite friends with differing opinions to unfriend them; Some maintain a balance trying to showcase their life/updates/check-ins along with their opinions, some others pretend to miss the new-age-social-media-activism while others have anointed their ideology, prepared a game plan and are set to convert all who disagrees with them... though meanness.

It’s not a complain. I am not requesting helpful tips. It’s a documentation of an observation on how disturbing it is to see the people you respect, disrespecting others; propagating a very unnecessary commotion outside the immediate working of democracy; yet the urgency you feel to express yourself in response to some of the appalling information that threaten to rollback the progress we made as free and civil society.

I wonder if the level of nastiness would have been the same if people had to write their opinion/news/fake news/articles/memes in their own words instead of sharing what seems to be coming from “professional bullies”

We adapt to our environment and this may be the new face of it. May be new social media friend/follow requests will accompany have a sequence of ideology questions to guarantee a rather “happy experience”.

Twitter believe me, is much kinder to me. May be I find respite in sharp perspectives, cleaner words, less attachments or just the comfort of reading from and writing to strangers. Instagram is heaven.


Before I end, thank you to all who show constraint and thank you to all others who don’t. The former group inspires and  guides while the later can always be ignored. This is indeed a very "First World Problem".