The hypocrisy of social media

Who doesn’t like social media, with Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and all the other good stuff out there? In fact, most people love spending more time on these websites than they would with their friends or loved ones these days. As a child, I remember spending time reading my books and playing with toys, and now, kids these days put up photos of their first kiss on Instagram and share it with everyone on Facebook    Sadly, the world has come to the point when we communicate more with texts than by actually talking. While I enjoy texting as much as I like talking, it can’t be denied that spelling abilities are getting lost in the process – it’s a real problem. The fact anyone can see personal information, like their friend’s party pictures, on their Facebook newsfeed is not a good thing; the fact that anyone can even download that stuff and post it on their wall is even worse. Oh well.    Where would we be today without Facebook, though? What would its wild delusions of “social revolution” and “social justice” do to those who continue to use it? Where would we be without Linkedin and the scope it gives to young people to flash their professional history to their connections quite literally? Where would we be without Twitter and all the time it consumes out of my daily day when I could easily have been doing something much more interesting? Nowwhere, apparently.  If these are the questions that keep me up at night, then I might be drinking the wrong kind of wine, aren’t I?   When I think about social media, I tend to not only think about the technology, but also the time wasted by people on thinking that technology alone will revolutionise the world. Sometimes, I wonder how stupid is when people tell me they have been busy “helping the world” by browsing Facebook pages dedicated to this war movement or that charity. I wonder how foolish it is when people assume that they can be complacent on issues just because they “shared” this Facebook news item and think their work is done. Just because someone took the time to click on the like button on an anti-war page, does that mean people living in war thousands of miles away will be free of it?    More importantly, what makes me even more stupefied is the lack of modesty of those who claim to be part of the social media “campaign.” In other words, why on earth should they take the energy and time out of their lives to go and spend it somewhere to actually make a change?    That is, indeed, the point. For those of us who think it is people in power suits and huge cars who are part of the power dynamic, and so our “enemies” – that is not true. Those of us who think deeper realise that it is the compliant who like to keep the things as they are, not only because many of us are perfectly fine with stagnancy, but because many of us are perfectly fine with not putting ourselves in danger to make somebody else’s world right. Why? Because, at its very primal point, we are mortally scared for our lives. We’re scared that the powerful might come after us, might come and find us as we try to help others. Will we ever be free of this fear? I wonder.