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".
