Social Media- A Good Idea Gone Horribly Wrong
No good deed goes unpunished
Because of the Internet and social media, anyone, no matter how uneducated, can post his opinions alongside those of people who've dedicated their professional lives to a subject (climate change, for instance), which makes that person an "expert", too. He holds equal space with those who post facts, not opinions, and therefore conflates the two. In his mind, his opinions become facts. He has written them, therefore they must be true. If he's lucky, he finds other supporting opinions, which reinforce his initial statement, cementing its status as a fact.
Now, he's built himself a fortress of bullshit and has barracked himself inside it, ready to kill anyone who attempts to breach its walls. This is Facebook, Twitter, Infowars, the Gateway Pundit. In this way, social media hasn't brought us together (this was Zuckerberg's original vision); it has torn us apart.
In a way, the history of civilization has been one long destruction of idols--of the gods themselves. At first, a man could only communicate with the Almighty through the supplications of a priest. Then, after the Reformation, a man could communicate directly with the Almighty. Man becomes the priest.
In the golden age of Hollywood, we would go to movie theaters and watch people two stories tall become the gods. Now we've shrunk them to the size of our smartphone screens. We watch ourselves on YouTube and become our own idols.
In the absence of idols and of gods, we worship ourselves. We worship those who have money. We worship beauty and celebrity. And we position ourselves behind our own intractable belief in our ability to see the "truth".
Stacey Keith
Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, Americans valued ingenuity, talent, and knowledge. We knew that when those three qualities were combined at the right time and in the right quantities, new and wonderful things often resulted. Smart, capable, and creative people found new, different, and more efficient ways to perform mundane tasks and make life easier.
Automation streamlined tasks that had sometimes taken hours or days and made it possible to complete them in minutes. Because such burdens were taken from the hands of human beings, our time and energies were freed for more prosaic, productive, and enjoyable tasks.
We may not have understood the science or the engineering that went into the streamlining of commerce and the automation of production, but we knew it made our lives easier and less exhausting. Because of it, there was more time for family and friends. People could dream of vacations, avocations, or how to improve their lot in life. It became possible to dream because our work life no longer sucked up every last ounce of energy that every workday required.
I remember the first time I got onto the Internet in the early ‘90s. I was fascinated by the idea that I could get onto a computer and get information on virtually any subject I might think of- and many more I would never consider. I could communicate with anyone in the world who had similar equipment and access to a telephone line.
The first time I had a video conversation over the Internet, I spoke with a woman in Kyrenia, Cyprus. It was as if we were sitting together in her room, and I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world. I was talking to someone ten time zones away, and yet it was as if we were sitting across a table from one another.
My grandmother had a hand-crank telephone on a party line in her house. Yeah, she was old-school, but the simple fact that I was able to participate in that video conversation would’ve blown her mind.
Then some very smart and enterprising folks realized what the Internet was really good for- PORN. Yes, once a few entrepreneurs realized that the Internet was the perfect porn delivery system, America and the world were off on a two-pronged tangent.
One meant that anyone so inclined could get off whenever they wanted, and they could do it in the privacy of their own home. All manner of sexual fantasies were delivered via the Interweb tubes, and before long porn sites developed technologies that would spur the evolution of the Internet as a whole. Yes, if you’re enjoying something on the Internet, there’s a good chance it was developed and first deployed by a porn site.
Don’tcha just LOVE America??
The second tangent was that porn sites demonstrated that the Internet was perfectly positioned for what came to be known as “e-commerce.” No longer did merchants need to have a brick-and-mortar location in order to run a business. Entrepreneurs quickly figured out how to run businesses without carrying on-site inventory and using just-in-time shipping in order to get goods out the door without them ever seeing the light of day at the merchant’s physical location.
Before long, sites like eBay figured out how to network business owners into a community of sorts. This relieved many small businesses of the burden of marketing as they relied on host sites to do the heavy lifting for them.
Then along came social media, which, one could argue, is when the Internet began its slow, steady descent into the cesspool it is today. The original intent of sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter was admirable- create a smaller world by bringing people together online.
For a while, that’s what happened. The novelty of being able to communicate with anyone anywhere for any reason, or no reason at all, kept things flying high. Somewhere along the line, though, someone remembered that free speech can be- and very often is- objectionable, vile, and reprehensible speech.
I suppose we could file this under “No good deed goes unpunished.” Yes, the theory was good…but the execution was flawed. Then again, in a democratic society, could it end up as anything but flawed? What one person used to lift others up another used to tear others down. It was inevitable that this would happen, and it didn’t help that the social media companies themselves discovered ways to monetize conflict and bad behavior. They profited from what was produced by the front and rear end of the horse.
The Internet has now come full circle. What began as a new and novel way to help people connect across time zones and eventually became a porn delivery system is now the reason we can’t have nice things. It’s become a fortress of bullshit from which we worship ourselves and our own self-professed brilliance.
Perhaps this is all part of one not-so-very-long evolutionary cycle. After all, the widespread availability of the Internet only goes back to the early ‘90s. Since then, we’ve seen it used to build up, connect…and then tear apart society.
Who knows? I’ve long predicted that 1996’s “Idiocracy” will eventually become less fiction and more documentary. If the Trump Era hasn’t shown the truth behind that, I don’t know what will. The Internet has in many ways made knowledge more accessible…but it’s also devalued knowledge to levels not before seen in modern times.
It’s revealed society as a whole to be fundamentally anti-intellectual and prone to believing their own press clippings.
How long will it be before we devolve to dragging knuckles and ridiculing those smart enough to want to help right the ship? A quick look around tells me that we may well already be there. The knuckle-dragging may be metaphorical but ridiculing the intelligent and capable has become part of the Trumpian strategy to destroy American democracy.
Greetings from our new idiocracy, eh?
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