It all started so innocently. Having heard about Facebook and the wonders of connecting with your friends, I thought to myself - what the heck, I'll join and connect with all of my old high school chums, drinkin' buddies, and former co-workers. So about three years ago, I join and immediately start connecting with friends.
A firehose of information greeted my greedy eyes, as I saw all of the things that had happened, were happening, and would eventually happen in everyone's life. Pictures of kids, dogs, cats, babies, houses, kitchens, toilets, bicycles, motorcycles, and virtually everything that each person came into contact with streamed across my screen. I could comment and chat with each person and see the bright side of their lives. What a great and wondrous thing this Mark Zuckerberg feller had created!
Then it happened. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, indeed. About a year ago I started noticing more noise than signal in the flow. People must have run out of dog pictures and original thoughts. Political bickering, religious zealotry, right wing/left wing bashing, and just plain old animosity between people that had formerly been friends. It seems to me that Facebook had largely become a platform to rail against whatever needed railing against.
Now it may be that the "railers" as we will call them, just have more to say. They appear to have no throttle, because, these folks just blast out stuff to Facebook in a continuous stream and sort of dominate the conversation. It would not be bad if they had something nice to say or were leading an intelligent discussion. Unfortunately that is generally not the case.
The other source of noise that seems to be exponentially on the increase is the posting of other internet content. It's on the internet, so it must be true! Funny you tube videos are all fine, but when you start posting stuff that is hateful towards others and just factually inaccurate, well that just violates my inner sense of right and wrong. I know, I know, I should just skip over it and realize that "Stupid is as stupid does", but sometimes I can't stops myself.
There was an "incident". There was a fellow that I knew in high school that posted some "facts" about our current president. Let us just say that they were less than truthful. So I commented on these facts and pointed this person to the US government statistics web site on said facts. The response? "Your arguments are laughable". I responded and said they are not my arguments, they are the data from a reputable source. The response back was to be removed that person's friend list. This disturbed me as I had thought that this guy was an old high school chum, whom I could have an intelligent discussion with. I understand that people do not like to be proven wrong. Most reasonable people can have their minds changed when presented with the facts.
The final realization that led me to deactivating my Facebook account today, was that I was spending way too much time reading through this stream of crap. I was also getting riled or offended by some of the trolling that would go on in the streams. It is difficult for me to not glance at these posts and at least give them some microsecond of consideration before discarding.
When I finally deactivated the account, a great sense of "release from bondage" came over me. I no longer need to inject my thoughts into a sea of noise, and can instead inject my thoughts into my own private cesspool, this blog.
Thanks for listening. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
All content copyright of Christopher Hammond
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