A while ago (almost a year and a half ago, actually. I’m weeping at the passage of time as I write this), I wrote a post about social media and how it largely irks me, though I have yet to find a way to escape these shackles with which I am bound.
I’m happy to admit that my sentiments haven’t changed and I’m still a bitter old lady waving her cane around. I guess the youth I complain about also includes my own generation to an extent (though my smile lines and diminishing metabolism would like to disagree) because we pretty much still also shape what the future will be like.
Social media is a little different, though.
I think it’s always influenced by the youngest. I’m slowly withering away and there’s a reason I have no idea how to do Tik Tok dances; I still mourn the loss of “buffting” and I like thin eyebrows. The problem with the youngest ducklings, those spring chickens, is that they’re a group of conflicted people who don’t really know what they stand for – through no real fault of their own. Growing up in the age of social media means you’re constantly ingesting new information at rapid speed every day; you never had time to form your own opinions before thousands of others were thrust upon you (in Freudian terms, you kissed goodbye to the id at birth). Even before you made a Twitter account, the opinions you heard from others were shaped by recycled opinions they read online; there’s little authenticity in anything and validation is the goal. You melt at the touch of any sort of offence (see: snowflake), and simultaneously like to compensate for this fragility by going a thousand steps too far and making disgusting jokes under the guise of ‘I just have a dark sense of humour’. No, you don’t. You’re confused.
I’ve revisited my old post in celebration of Social Media day, and I’ve decided to give my two penneth again now that I’m a little older, not much wiser, and a bit less angry – but lockdowns forced me to spend an obscene amount of time online so I’m now obviously an expert in the field.
Let’s discuss.
Just because you agree with it, doesn’t mean it’s fact. Do not be afraid to question it.
I spoke about how great it is to learn about global issues so quickly; I’d often pipe up at the dinner table with ‘did you hear-’ but, alas, my mother had not heard. She doesn’t use social media, and yes, she has a wallet phone case – I’m sure there’s a correlation somewhere. I once praised the use of Twitter/Instagram for spreading news that mainstream outlets refused to share because it didn’t fit their agenda. I retract that praise because I’ve since learnt that not everybody has a brain that makes them question the authenticity of something before they believe and share it. No matter how believable something looks, it should be standard practice to verify that it’s accurate before commenting on it or sharing it. I refuse to be part of the reason an innocent person catches smoke or a guilty person is painted as an angel. Twitter’s woke demographic don’t really care as long as it fits their agenda, thereby coming full circle and becoming the exact people they hate.
I see countless videos being circulated with false information in order to incite hatred against a group of people for whatever reason. This will be in the form of recirculating old videos and pretending they’re recent, taking videos from one incident and pretending it’s another, or posting a video without the backstory and making one up to skew the opinion. I see tweets with absolutely zero sources garner thousands of comments and retweets. When people are so vehemently ‘woke’, they eat it up.
Spreading lies undermines everything you stand for. Person A shouldn’t have been racist, but you cut out the part of the video where person B was being racist first. Person X may have punched person Y in the throat too hard, but you forgot to tell everyone that person Y dropkicked person X’s mum. Show a sheep a post and they will take it at face value until there’s a flock of idiots holding pitchforks and fighting against something that doesn’t exist just because they’ve made up a story in their head.
It’s so important to question everything you read, but according to social media, if you question whether someone really did assault another or if someone really was being racist, you’re ‘bad vibes’ or a sympathiser. If you ask ‘but did this really happen?’ you’re cancelled because how dare you question it and not believe it straight away! How dare you be a rational human being with a working brain! Believe everything you see and question nothing! Support what we support and hate what we tell you to hate!
The commodification of… absolutely everything
A regular, so I’m gonna keep it short and sweet. There was a time when I’d scroll the timeline and see a big ‘fuck you’ post from someone who bought a brand new house and a Mercedes with her OnlyFans money. I get it; sex sells, and the only reason it does is because there’s a huge demand for it. Capitalising on that is cool, if that’s your thing. What’s not cool is convincing people that getting naked for the internet will reap these same rewards for everyone; the percentage of women who do make big bucks from this is too small to even consider money a benefit. What’s also not cool is telling people everything will be okay and that life will return to normal after they’ve made an OnlyFans – because it will not. I’m sure countless women have been left disappointed after failing in their ventures. Not only are you still struggling to pay the bills, now your hoo-ha is all over the internet because you let people convince you that McDonald’s wasn’t a respectable career path. Now you’re angry because people are sexualising you based on the standard you set for yourself.
The same goes for men. You know, the ones who have a Rolex and a shiny car as their photo, the ones who always talk about how much money they have whilst also saying ‘women are gold diggers’ every other week. You use your money to attract women and then complain that women want your money? You use your body to attract men and then complain that men want sex? Get a grip. Float back down to reality and find some substance so you don’t have to pretend to be someone else online; if not, be happy with your shallow life and everything that comes with it.
One last thing. If you were waiting for an underage girl to make an OnlyFans, you are a nonce. I don’t care if she’s now 18 and legal – you are a nonce. Same as the women who thirst over freshly-turned-18 boys. You’re all disgusting, go to jail.
Social justice warriors
I’m not sure why everybody wants to act virtuous on social media. I didn’t know there was someone scouting Twitter profiles and handing out gold stars for efforts towards achieving world peace; had I known, I would have sent out a few more tweets saying ‘men’s mental health matters too!’. Maybe a cheeky ‘check on your friends’ every week.
Every other tweet I see is ‘why is nobody talking about xyz’. And I can’t help but think… talk about it then. A lot of people think that by talking about raising awareness, they’ve done their job. Guess what pal – you’ve done absolutely nothing. You haven’t done anything to change the situation, to help the issue, you’ve just climbed atop your high horse and shouted ‘I’m better than you because I’m shouting words!’. These are the people who forget there’s a life outside social media; if a tree falls in the forest but you didn’t tweet about it, did the tree really fall?
I remember when social media was full of posts about Palestine (which, what do you know, has died down into nothingness). I kept seeing virtue signallers criticising people for not talking about the issue, pressuring celebrities to talk just for the sake of it – just for that, Rihanna, no you can’t stand under my umbrella. You sit right there on your fence. I saw variants of ‘if you’re silent, it’s obvious where you stand.’ Well, look who’s silent now because I haven’t heard a peep out of you since the ‘trend’ died down. I want to know why you weren’t talking about this months ago, years ago, I want to know why you’re not talking about it anymore. I want to know why, if you’re so concerned with human rights, you’ve failed to raise awareness for the countless other humans rights issues occurring in the world – and this goes for anybody guilting others for not talking about any world issue ever. Don’t let woke twitter pressure you into anything or make you feel bad about anything when they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about themselves. Their agenda is to make themselves feel like good people and that is all.
People care about what affects them personally; if everybody spent time focusing on every injustice in the world they’d die before any of them reached a solution. People are simply competing to have everybody else talk about the issues that are close to them, and that’s also why we have the oppression olympics. Social justice warriors are never as smart as they try to make you believe and the only injustices they really care about are the ones that matter to them.
The online persona
Nothing online is real and you’re comparing yourself to things that don’t exist. That woman who had a BBL still edits her photos because the expensive procedure didn’t make her look like that other woman in that Instagram post who also edits her photos. That man who tweets like a scumbag is lying about the money and the girls, but he has to keep doing it because he’s addicted to the attention he receives.
Some like to watch from the sidelines. Some like to play devils advocate. Some like talking into the void and voicing their opinions on everything, and some simply tweet whatever will get them engagement. I’ve noticed that since my life has been adorned with things that make it worthwhile, I’ve spent less time online – almost as if my real life is more important to me. I do notice that every time I open up Twitter I see narcissism. The most liked tweets include things like ‘anything after me is a downgrade’ and ‘one thing about me is, you’ll never forget about me’. First of all, I’m gonna be sick, get over yourself. Second of all, it’s very telling that you need to convince people you’re better than you actually are; if you were really that great, you would just be. But alas. To lure in potential love interests, friends, and validation from strangers (all the same, I guess?) you must curate an online persona that makes you look good.
So many people have main character syndrome and think they have the most important voice in any situation ever; I’m built different because I do have the most important voice in every situation ever (see: joke). When you argue with someone online, you’re not just arguing with their online persona – you’re arguing with their persona that you’ve made up in your head. You’ve created this persona for them to help you get all your points out into the big online world, you’ve created someone to shout at, which is why it’s so easy to write paragraphs in response to a single tweet. To put it simply: you’re arguing with nobody or, at a stretch, yourself. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing – it’s no different to writing an essay on what you’ve inferred from a paragraph; but the fact remains that this paragraph is the opinion of another person whose character you’ve exaggerated wildly in your head.
I could probably have gone on for years about social media because I don’t think it’s possible to run out of things to say about it. Whilst I leave this here to let you decide whether you agree with what I’m saying or you think I’m a miserable old bat, I do want to stress that social media does have it’s benefits. Those benefits haven’t changed from the last post however; it seems only the negatives keep piling up.
Anyway, I’m off to see who can antagonise me on Twitter this evening. Toodles.