Social Media is For Idiots?!?
Twitter, Instagram and the somewhat dying Facebook hoards a host of the bureaucratic, the absurd and the stupid, but does the small handful of idiots using social media put a cloud over the rest of us?
There is nothing wrong with being openly ‘basic’ and staging a picture for Instagram- my sister had a montage of photos of her proposal outside of The Disney Castle, but that doesn’t take away from how romantic it was and how magical that night was for her- or sharing perhaps too many holiday photos or pictures of family pets on to Facebook, but maybe we should draw the line at videos of people falling off of things on Twitter and not videos that we thought were funny but later learn resulted in a death. Not even a week ago was a video made viral of a topless woman leaning out of a car. In this video she is almost dancing and suddenly hit her head, at which point the video ends. After it being shared for a few days and being laughed at, we later learnt that she had died and that that video recorded her last few moments. The problem with a lot of us is that we forget the people in these videos and pictures are real people, ones that can get hurt, embarrassed or worse.
Although this is not where the sole problem lies.
The main issue with social media, is not that people can watch offence videos- they can do that without the help of these famed apps, the issue is that we let these idiots have a platform to reach others; both further idiots and us, the lay people. President Trump being a key example of this. Not only does the balding, round stomached, scrotum of a man get to tweet almost anything that he wants, he receives countless amounts of attention from his nonsensical tweets which makes him a talking point, which other than building a giant wall and grabbing girls by the pussy, is his ultimate goal. However, this is hypocritical of me, as I too am giving POTUS the attention he thrives on by writing this.
This is why ignoring the stupid is much, much harder than it seems; in part because their stupidity is so dumbfounding (because who else would really take credit for making up the word ‘fake’) but also because you can’t help but want to educate them. And this is where I believe we may have a solution, albeit a small one, to these morons let loose on the internet. If we decide to tell these people where they're wrong, through wit or fact or perhaps ignoring them, they aren’t getting the attention they want and therefore can't be famed, even for being stupid. They instead have to lock their phones, push back their keyboards and leave their desks and actually have to try and survive in the real world, without being ‘favourited’, liked or replied to and none of us have to waste our characters on these keyboard warriors.
However, social media is not just a place for the dumb to gain an audience. In the recent week twitter, Instagram and Facebook has become a podium for the women effected by sexual abuse, violence and probing by the hands of Hollywood, after the light shed on to the Harvey Weinstein victims. More and more women are coming forward to share their story, whether it be a tweeted ‘Me Too’ or Instagram post explaining what they had to go through, and what Hollywood continues to do to it’s women. But this movement has given other women a voice and the power to share their story to a platform that provides them with an audience that need educating on abuse and need help to finally say enough is enough.
So yes, social media does allow some of the most bigoted, vile, stupid men and women to share things that no one wants to know, leaving us all so astonished that we can't help but want to react. But social media is also becoming one of the few things that people actually listen and pay attention to. Facebook and Twitter are especially good at helping user to know what is happening in their area and around the world in just a few simple clicks. And Instagram enables users to share images they’re proud of, to create a business and to just show off where they went and who with, because everyone likes being a little nosey every so often.
With thanks to Leah Hockley.
