Facebook gets the whistle blown. Facebook and the apps it owns crashes. What a wild day. I was trying to check something for work and wondering why the hell it wasn’t working only to receive an article about said whistleblower and ok wow. This is happening.
Once Facebook came back up, my favorite part was the people posting “OH IT WAS SO NICE WITHOUT FACEBOOK.” What? If it was so nice, how tough was it to wait 8 minutes before making that post?
Either way my practices of using Facebook remain unchanged. Whether it was an attempt at Facebook to potentially cover their ass or not, who knows? I don’t care. I will still use Facebook and Instagram.
I am not getting into the all semantics about the algorithms and what was alleged about the social media giant. The main concern is social media’s ability to shape opinions around the world. To be honest, I think it is a bunch of bullshit. People are responsible for their opinions. If they are too stupid and ignorant to do their own research and not take everything at face value, fuck em. They’re idiots.
I blame consumers for the current state of social media the same way I blame consumers for national and local media coverage. Don’t blame social media and news media in 2021 for adhering to their ignorance of their consumers. As long as people continue to engage in misinformation AND disinformation, it will always be the primary problem. If you are reading this and researching the difference between those terms, thanks for researching. On the other hand, if you are just learning that in 2021, you have a long way to go to get ahead of the curve.
I look at social media as a positive because I get to view the opinions of peers and make a decision on how much I loathe them from afar. It also allows me to drive a wedge between myself and the people I think are mouth breathing troglodytes. People reveal their true colors in comment sections. While divisive, it’s at least honest thought coming to the surface. Honesty isn’t always the best thing for certain pillars of our society.
“What are you proud of? Of a generation whose verbal and mathematical skills have sunk so low, when you have the highest technology at your fingertips? Gutenburg’s generation thirsted for a new book every six months. Your generation gets a new web page every six seconds. And how do you use this technology? To beat King Koopa and save the princess. Shame on you, you deserve what you get.”
This quote was said by George Feeny in a 1997 episode of Boy Meets World, well before the invention of smart phones and even more instantaneous information.
The quote is still so insanely relevant and it’s all generations that can’t distinguish fact from fiction or their ass from a hole in the ground. They can’t distinguish misinformation nor disinformation when presented with such. It’s no longer a generational thing. It is a societal thing.
Furthermore, Facebook and news media entities know this. They target people because of it. It makes them money. So demand more. Demand better. Stop using it or be smarter in how you use it.
Do people go to restaurants where the food sucks and the service sucks day after day? Do they keep returning tomorrow in hopes it will change while feeding that business money? No, they don’t. That business then dies or they listen and evolve.
Social media and news get away with it because people can enter their own echo chambers and just interact with people who think and act just like them. They take the information these echo chambers provide at face value.
People are stupid. Society is stupid. The biggest plague in 2021 is media literacy which by and large is non existent for many of the people you interact with, maybe yourself. Sure as shit, someone is reading this who this directly correlates to and will inevitably text me saying “wHaT a GrEaT CoLuMn” as I think bless your heart.
Too often, I engage in conversations with people and question the claims made only to be met with non responses. They more often than not can’t answer the question to provide data or facts on the claim being made. During the election, someone made a claim about President Joe Biden saying he is a puppet for the radical left. Gee, where have I heard that before? I asked the person to provide policies he has supported or quotes he has said that support the idea painted by the claim. The response, “I’ll research some stuff and send.”
Shouldn’t that have been step 1? I called the person ignorant.
Every political conversation from that point forward, I just kept saying saying “we can have this conversation when you answer my previous question” to the point of dead silence on conversations about most things moving forward.
Don’t be ignorant. Don’t be offended when I call you such and the shoe clearly fits.
Media literacy is an unbelievably easy practice in 2021 thanks to technology. Or it should be. Yet, here we are.
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