This media is anything but social

I was told a long time ago by a crusty old editor, back in the days when editors were chainsmoking and old and crusty types, who didn’t particularly care for hurting feelings, that as long as they were reading, it didn’t matter.

When they stopped reading, he said, you’re in trouble. Words to live by.

And it’s a good thing I don’t have feelings because I’ve been called everything under the sun, from moron to negative to dummy to idiot.

And the old reliable — arsehole.

It’s par for the course when you throw an opinion out there every week for all to see. Not everybody will agree.

But the backlash from the Pearson International Airport dispatch penned from yours truly before Christmas, the one in which I took to task the Newfoundlanders who broke out the guitar and accordions and sang “Aunt Martha’s Sheep” and basically made us all look like hillbillies while they waited, impatiently apparently, for a flight home from Toronto, took the cake.

And the reaction from social media was over the top.

I was called scum and slime and filth — and those are the printable words.

Some wanted me dead. Virtually all wanted me fired. I was a traitor to some sort of Newfoundland cause.

It didn’t bother me, to be honest. I’m a big boy, and I learned a long time ago when you put yourself out there, you’d better be prepared for repercussions.

My email blew up — over half, believe it or not, agreed with my opinion, but only admitted as much privately, preferring to keep their heads below the hail of bullets — but it was the Facebook and Twitter posts which were particularly appalling.

What makes people condemn — with, in many cases, a large degree of vulgarity — from behind a keyboard? How is it anonymity helps one grow six or eight inches and 50 pounds? Is there not something cowardly in using fake social media accounts to nastily slag another person?

Social media, whilst a wonderful tool in theory, can also be a deep abyss of septic decay, which was all too evident this week.

With a click of the “Tweet” button, Roseanne Barr saw her revived and wildly successful television sitcom shelved, and a couple hundreds of jobs lost, through a disgustingly racist comment aimed at a former Barack Obama adviser.

And you wonder: would Barr suggest to Valerie Jarrett’s face that she looks like a “cross between the Muslim Brotherhood and a ‘Planet of the Apes’” actor?

What makes people feel the need to spout such demented, ignorant comments on social media?

Then there’s the story this week surrounding Philadelphia 76ers general manager Bryan Colangelo.

A former Toronto Raptors GM, Colangelo — or his wife, according to recent reports — allegedly had a number of Twitter accounts under fake or false names, and he and/or she used those accounts to criticize 76ers players, jeer fellow managers (or more to the point, the Raptors’ GM Masai Ujiri) whilst praising Bryan himself.

If true, it’s a cavalier, reckless and downright stupid, dimwitted use of social media.

And if true, it will almost certainly mean the end of Colangelo in Philly and his association with basketball.

And, again, you ask yourself: why?

How pathetically sad is it to have a general manager of a National Basketball Association team — and a very good squad, at that — feel the need to denigrate others while attempting to prop up his own self-esteem through social media?

How sad is it to have a Hollywood actor — enjoying the highs of a re-invented, toprated television show — tear things apart in 10 seconds or less through social media?

And how deplorable is it to have gutless wonders hiding behind a keyboard wishing to have a columnist fired, or worse, dead, because of a contradiction of beliefs, again through social media?

The answer? It’s overwhelmingly pathetic, troubling and pitiful, and petty and childish, too — and so unbelievably common that I know I’ve just offered myself up for Round 2.