I’m visiting Facebook less and less – and to be honest, it’s because I can’t stand the bile and hatred pouring out the screen at me. I’m not talking about racists and homophobes and right-wing extremists – I’m talking about the violent rants against Trump, Brexit, the Conservative Government and the like.
When you scream your venom at these targets, who are you converting to your cause? Who suddenly says, “You know what? I think you’re right! There was me thinking it was OK to allow tenants to burn in preventable fires, for all foreigners to be called terrorists, and for the disabled to be punished for not being like me, but your vitriolic outburst has made me understand the error of my ways!”
I get it – I know you’re frustrated with the world – but spewing your righteous outrage all over Facebook doesn’t create a single convert. You’ve already unfriended everyone who disagrees with you. In fact, if you realise for a moment this is aimed at you, then you’ll probably unfriend me.
Stop telling me how shit the world is. I know it already. Your verbal diarrhoea isn’t calling me to action. It isn’t even calling you to action. Puking your frustration on your friends isn’t making the world a better place – it’s just adding to the horror.
It’s getting to the point where I’m opening my Facebook feed with trepidation.
It feels like where people used to be witty and wry, they are now just cynical and grumpy.
Is this who were are becoming? Bitter and twisted old men and women who just want to shout “bastards!” at the world.
I want to use social media to keep in touch with friends, to remind myself there are good people around, to be inspired to do better things and be a better person. But it seems anything from a third to a half of my feed is packed with the apoplectic spasms of the righteously outraged.
It’s making me ill.
Unfortunately I can’t now put this up on Facebook as this rant has just done the very thing I have accused others of doing...
6 comments:
I filter what I read on FB, which is, these days, not much. And I rarely rant.
In the words of Mr. Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
I'm desperately waiting for Facebook to have a word filter option, where you can type a word into it and it filters out any statuses that contain it
brilliant idea, Kim (in your comment there)...... and I wish you Would post this...disturbing how simple it is to reduce previously civilized human beings into a blood-thirsty mob...nothing new under the sun, civil war, the blue-eyed/brown eyed child experiment of the '60's, nazi germany... ..so many sheep, all thinking they're bleeting out their own thoughts...you'd think the big clue would be that they're all regurgitating the same rhetoric..... As Mark Twain said, "When you find yourself agreeing with the majority, it's time to step back and consider." .....
You already know I love the quote by John Adams, "Let us dare to think, read, write, and speak!"....The problem these days being, that everyone want to write and speak without thinking or reading first.....There is likely a reason our forefather cited those two behaviours first.
The best we can do is follow Kipling's advice in his poem "If" and keep our heads while all around us are losing theirs.
Be well my friend, always wishing you well, you do the same for me...
Liz ~*
Liz - unfortunately if I rant against people ranting, then it makes me no better than them. It was that wry thought which led me to post it here :)
But yes, I agree - I wish more people would look for ways to connect rather than disconnect with each other.
I miss reading your thoughts here......any up your sleeve you'd like to share? 🙂
Anything you'd like to ponder in particular, Liz? :)
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