When did social media become such a miserable place to dwell on world misery?
The (rough) time line of (popular) social internet use went roughly like this –
1997-2004 – Chatrooms.
Places where people would usually lie in attempt to get random strangers to meet them with a view to bedding them (Pre-picture messaging days so everyone apparently was a model!…..according to their own descriptions)
2004-2005 – Friends Re-united.
Another site where people would exaggerate (lie!) about their lives with a view to impressing someone you once went to school or college with. Someone(s) you never actually liked in the first place.
2005-2007 – MySpace.
A place where (mostly) American women took most of their clothes off and then said “You don’t know me, you can’t judge me!”
We all knew the colour of their underwear that was for sure. Bands also used this place to claim worldwide rock star status, even when they had usually only played in their parents garage!
2007-today – Facebook / Twitter / Instagram etc
New places to show pictures of what you were about to eat and lame forced perspective photos! Yep you have all visited Pisa and pushed the leaning tower back! (Superman III style!). By and large it was all light hearted, often entertaining sometimes mundane but usually inoffensive.
Things seem to have turned pretty dark post 2013. It seems the majority of Facebook users (and quite a few Twitter users) now insist on constantly publishing not just photos but explicit videos of people suffering, animals suffering, war, violence, death and murder etc. Real in your face stuff … daily!!!
Why now?! Does this make the posters feel better about themselves and their own lives?! Surely not. We all know the world is a mess. We know we can do more, love more, act better and so on. Do we really need x rated photos and videos stuck on our timelines every day?
It also seems the last few months people are getting more and more aggressive about it. It used to be “You need to see this”, now it’s more “See it and do something about it … now … or I will give you shit!”
It’s like everyone feels some kind of moral obligation to guilt trip us and make us feel bad about ourselves, every day. Apparently according to some it’s my moral obligation to retweet and share everything put on me via Twitter just on the basis that I have a lot of followers! People trying to make me feel bad if I don’t! That logic really doesn’t work based on just maths!
I have taken a real backseat on Facebook this past year as I’m fed up of the daily misery stories and videos posted EVERY day now. It never used to be like this, even though many of these issues were still around pre 2013! It’s not about denial and wanting to be completely ignorant but sometimes, just sometimes a little bit of ignorance helps us through our own struggles and life.
Just because tomorrow I don’t view a video of suffering families in a war torn country, it doesn’t mean I won’t care any less. For many years I’ve taken part in various charitable events and causes, to help the very situations depicted by the videos that are forced upon me. Many of us do. This year will be no different.
Please people. if you are one of them video/photo sharer types, spare us from the constant images and guilt trips of death and destruction. We know it’s there. We know it goes on. It often crosses a fine line between raising awareness and just plain bullying people … Every so often, for sure … but not every day!
Thank you 🙂
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