{"id":2140,"date":"2016-11-21T10:24:12","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T16:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/?p=2140"},"modified":"2024-02-12T20:33:19","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T02:33:19","slug":"why-social-media-should-be-renamed-social-masturbation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/2016\/11\/why-social-media-should-be-renamed-social-masturbation\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “Social Media” Should be Renamed “Social Masturbation”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We have hundreds of friends on Facebook. We follow hundreds of people on Twitter. We interact with dozens a people a day, spread across an equal number of timezones or even countries.<\/p>\n

We follow funny blogs, meme-generators, and news sites on both of these services, and they deliver dozens of posts that we like and re-share to all of our friends, so they can see that we like them.<\/p>\n

We feel like we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re making such a difference<\/em> in the world! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so amazing! A collective consciousness if forming, almost\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160who can stop it? Who can fight it?<\/p>\n

Disadvantaged groups are in control of such power! They now have a voice in the world so that everyone can hear of their struggles, thanks to the Internet! Social behavior that would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been illegal 50 years ago, and just an enormous faux pas<\/em> even 25 years ago is now completely normal and accepted\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n

I mean, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what all my friends think. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure yours largely do too, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably reading this.<\/p>\n

The reality in the rest of America, however, as we just learned, is very different.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Stages of\u00c2\u00a0Grief<\/h4>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still not even in the postmortem stage from the Trump election win in 2016, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re close. Right now, people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who to blame, mostly because the final results were such a surprise.<\/em> Nobody saw the coming\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160not even FiveThirtyEight<\/a>, who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t predicted an election wrong before this one.<\/p>\n

And why would they? Why would any of us?<\/p>\n

How many Trump supporters are you close to, on a daily basis? How many do you talk to daily, as a friend? Not bickering with online, but in person\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re more than just text making them angry on a website, but a living, breathing person in front of them, that they can see, and hear.<\/p>\n

If the answer is zero, honestly I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame you. Trump supporters aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t usually\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to have a conversation with someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s starting position is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ban the Muslims\/Mexicans, Build The Wall, Lock Her Up!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not much gray area\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160not much room for common ground.<\/p>\n

Even I only had about half a dozen, and they were all online. Mostly family members who survived earlier Facebook purges and friends from high school who stayed behind in the small town area where I grew up, and never left.<\/p>\n

After this past week, of course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m no longer friends with them. Not because of anything they did or said, of course\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160most of them were fairly well-behaved\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160but because I realized, after the election, that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not really friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk to them in person. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect their lives in any meaningful way. In any discussion, there was never any meeting of the minds\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160no give and take. Every conversation could stop immediately when the aggrieved party wanted it to, by just walking away. There was never any reconciliation attempted, because there was no need to.<\/p>\n

Our interaction was limited to them sharing their funny conservative memes from ridiculous websites and fake news sources<\/a>, while I would groan inwardly and put up with them, because I was being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153open-minded.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

They were certainly never going to change my mind about Hillary Clinton by posting some link about a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153child sex ring in Macedonia run by the Clintons\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (all false, of course), and I was never going to change their mind about voting for ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Agent Orange himself by telling them about his six bankruptcies, piggish attitudes about women, or the ridiculousness of building a \u00e2\u20ac\u015390 foot wall on the border of Mexico.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So, why keep up the charade of pretending like we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re friends?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Fair and\u00c2\u00a0Balanced<\/h4>\n

However, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop there. How many like-minded people are you friends with on Facebook, that you also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see in person? A dozen? Ten dozen? A thousand? How many do you follow on Twitter?<\/p>\n

Do you think these relationships are healthy? Do you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re making a difference in their lives? That by liking their posts, and replying to their comments on yours that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing something nice for them?<\/p>\n

Maybe\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160just maybe these interactions are robbing you of the desire to make actual relationships, with those people around you.<\/p>\n

Now\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160before you get outraged\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a meaningful relationship with someone in a purely online fashion. I met my partner online, so I of all people am not saying that.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just saying you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a dozen simultaneously. Or ten dozen. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not Scarlet Johansson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character from the movie Her<\/em>. And you certainly can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have 1,456 real \u00e2\u20ac\u0153friends\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on Facebook, no matter how much you like seeing the number.<\/p>\n

These interactions you are having on Facebook, or Twitter, with people you rarely ever see in person, are having a negative influence on your life, and you may not even know it.<\/p>\n

They momentarily quench the desire to have real<\/em> connections, out there, in the real world. Friends you can visit in the hospital if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in a car accident. Friends with who you can move a couch. Friends you can go to a party with, or to the park.<\/p>\n

And most importantly, friends who, if they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think exactly the same as you, may come around to your way of thinking when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voting time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Beating Us at Our Own\u00c2\u00a0Game<\/h4>\n

Because you see, like it or not, this is something \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the other side\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has the non-Trump-voter beat in, wholly\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160real life social engagement.<\/p>\n

They have churches, where they see the same people regularly, every week.<\/p>\n

They go to tailgate parties. Constantly.<\/p>\n

They go to real parties, out in the woods, where cell phone connections are spotty and where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re forced to, you know, talk to people.<\/p>\n

And when it comes to voting time, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the ones telling their real-life connections, in person, who to vote for.<\/p>\n

Yes, they have huge social media presence online, mostly\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160the recent trouble with fake conservative news being spread like wildfire across Facebook being an example of that\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not their only, or even their most major form of social engagement.<\/p>\n

Human beings are social creatures\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coded into our DNA. You may think you can survive without a tribe, or a group, but you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just our pleasant, safe, modern world fooling you.<\/p>\n

When we human beings were first coming down from the trees and learning to walk on just two legs, the tribes we formed required people to work together to achieve goals\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160you had <\/em>to know like-minded people (or in this case, hominids), or you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t survive. Human beings weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the fastest, or the strongest; we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have sharp fangs or claws or sticky webs to trap pray in; but what we had was cooperation.<\/p>\n

And those that could work together with others had their genes propagated to the next generation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hi\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/h4>\n

So what can you do? If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to delete your Facebook account in protest of their out-of-control \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sharing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d feature (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still considering it), start by unfriending everybody you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Make a few exceptions for those two or three people who, no matter what the geographic distance, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still soul mates with. It won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt.<\/p>\n

Make an exception for close family that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t racist.<\/p>\n

But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it.<\/p>\n

Stop spending time talking to people who you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make a meaningful difference in their lives. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hurt at first; I know. But soon that desire will turn into actual action that may help those that are close by to you right now, especially if you live in an area that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit more heterogeneous. (You know, like those \u00e2\u20ac\u0153swing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d states that Hillary all lost.)<\/p>\n

And that <\/em>is where the culture war will be won. Not by posting rebuttals or Snopes articles on Facebook and Twitter. But by showing people who look and think slightly differently than you how you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not a caricature.<\/p>\n

And maybe, must maybe, they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t vote next time for a man who thinks that women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bodies are up for grabs, if you have enough money, or that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay to mock the disabled, or that all illegal immigrants are murderers and drug-dealers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Caveat<\/h4>\n

Now, please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t misunderstand me\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not talking about possibly changing the minds of any Trump voters\u00e2\u20ac\u0160\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0160you should know that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not possible by now. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about a kind of person who believes in fake news, without any facts, and when confronted with facts to the contrary, simply chooses not to believe in them<\/em>. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change that kind of person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind, so don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about possibly convincing someone who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/em> vote, or who is undecided, that they might want to try voting. Those are the changes you can make. And they can<\/em> be made.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have hundreds of friends on Facebook. We follow hundreds of people on Twitter. We interact with dozens a people a day, spread across an equal number of timezones or even countries. We follow funny blogs, meme-generators, and news sites on both of these services, and they deliver dozens of posts that we like and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,96,8,58,10,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-computing","category-distraction","category-internet","category-life","category-politic","category-rants-and-raves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZUZG-yw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5960,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/5960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}