I hate social media…

 I know the headline to this blog entry is ironic considering that the only way people will read this is by accessing it through social media, but bear with me.

Since the dawn of the social media age, first through.com, message boards and progressing onto MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, everybody now has a free message in order to comment on the events of the day good or bad.

We can debate whether these are “free-speech platforms” on another blog entry. That is topical especially when it comes to Twitter but that’s another entry for another time.

I write this because peoples interpretations of big events are often skewed on platforms like this. In fact, I have said more than once that I am very glad that the big events of my young life, such as the Reagan assassination attempt, the explosion of the space shuttle challenger, and to a lesser extent, 9/11 did not have a social media message board upon which people could express their thoughts and opinions…or at least one that was not easily and as readily accessible as Facebook and Twitter and others.

The big event that everybody’s talking about now (on 31 January 2023), is the brutal beating of Tyre Nichol earlier in January by five police officers that resulted in Mr. Nichols death.  The comments on social media about this horrific act are nothing short of disgraceful.

On the one hand, people are wondering…DEMANDING…that people who support law-enforcement say something about the incident. They see things like “where are all the back the blue people“ or “funny how I don’t see people who bootlick law-enforcement, saying anything about this tragedy“.

Conversely, the other side of the coin are posting leading comments of their own like “where are the riots“ or “I don’t see any burning buildings when people are protesting Nichols death“.

Having moderated message boards in my time, albeit sports type message boards, one of the things that the person who “hired“ me for that moderator position told me is that an argument… Particularly a good one… Generates clicks, and it drives traffic to the site

If you have ads on your site from a revenue standpoint, I get it…that makes sense. However, a good moderator steps in and blows the whistle when things get too crazy. Or least they did back whenever I was moderating a page with a message board.

That’s not done now. Not at all.

These days it seems like moderators just step back and let the inmates run the asylum, meaning that they do nothing until something really major happens. If that.

The unintended consequence of all of this arguing is that nothing really gets accomplished. Everyone’s worried about the win or the gotcha instead of actually making some kind of headway and some kind of sense about a particular event.

And it further divides us. Someone said in hushed tones, not long ago that it’s going to take something universally tragic like another 9/11 to bring the country back to Center to where we are all united.

Just don’t expect it to happen through Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok