Mythical Millennial #3: Social media, the truth destroyer
Social media has grown to be more than just selfies, and it’s getting harder and harder to dethrone the gargantuan Facebook or Snapchat (although from the looks of it, the anomaly Pokemon Go has done just that with zero effort. You just gotta catch ’em all.) Columbia Journalism Review’s Emily Bell sums it up nicely:
“Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything. It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world.”
Scary stuff. In fact, in a 1984-esque way, social media has also totally disrupted the way we perceive truth. In fact, 6 out of 10 people will share links on social media without reading the content. That’s a full 60% of people who read the headline and go “hey, I totally don’t need to get to the bottom of this, it’s on the Internet so it must be true!” Face, meet open palm. I know, we spoke about the EU referendum in the last Mythical Millennial, but this piece about Brexit and fact-checking says it all. A snippet:
“In a world now drastically in need of clarity, journalism needs to evolve dramatically in order to serve our readers. Like it or not, most people get the vast majority of their information about the world from the news. We have a duty not only to report but to be bold enough to clarify confusion, correct errors, and present the true facts unambiguously.”
You tell ’em, Jeremy. You tell ’em. In the meantime guys, take all the flower-crown selfies you want even when people tell you not to, and remember to fact-check everything.
I came across an article by Buzzfeed’s Gayati Jayaraman called ‘The Urban Poor You Haven’t Noticed: Millennials Who’re Broke, Hungry, But On Trend.’ Essentially, it lays out the struggles of the new millennial workforce: Marketing guys who starve all day to buy one coffee at a five-star hotel. A colleague who gets called a miser for not eating out and is subsequently humiliated. A marketing executive who bought a car with her first salary but then has to sleep in it.
Then I saw the vitriolic response. Jayaraman was labelled ‘entitled’, and then chastised for not getting her priorities right. “The people described in the article are entitled, deluded and utterly irresponsible,” one person writes. People tend to crap all over young people for whining about their problems. “When I was your age, I was ____” is a common statement. Granted, we all need to check our privilege once in a while. But this doesn’t discount the very real problems young people face in a pressurised work environment. If anyone has any thoughts about this, I’d love to hear from you!
S/O to my gal @BethHursty who sent in this song as a recommendation.
Youth (Gryffin Remix) by Troye Sivan
#Hiddleswift. Is this an actual thing, or is this performance art? If it’s true, and all of this is just for a music video, this has been the most successful PR stunt like, ever ever ever.
See you in two weeks guys,
B x
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Originally published on Mythical Millennial.
