Never-ending wars that are eating social media alive
Iread an hilarious joke on the internet this week. If you will be kind enough to indulge me, I would like to repeat it for you now since any attempt to paraphrase it would likely prove a disaster. It was posted from an account called Mutable Joe and it goes like this: ‘Dearest Martha, the culture war continues, seemingly with no end.
‘We fight and fight but gain no ground, our efforts futile. Please tell Joe Jr. daddy did his best. It has been brought to my attention you liked a problematic tweet so I will not write you again.’
I bring the joke to light because it puts into words the way I’ve been feeling about social media recently – in particular Twitter and Facebook – but have not been able to articulate properly.
It is all so exhausting. Everywhere you turn there seems to be yet another war.
And I’m not just talking about politics, the arguing and raging is everywhere.
If you turn to the sports sections you can find fans stuck in eternal disagreements over players or whether a manager should be sacked or not.
But what about if you have just finished binge-watching that latest show or come to the end of the big new video game? Alas, there is no escape.
Type the name into a search bar, or read the comments under a post, and you’ll quickly find yourself witnessing some form of vicious argument.
It feels like all I see these days when I’m scrolling is people using bad faith talking points to try a bit of one-upmanship on each other, with no room for proper debate and nuance.
Back in the day, alchemists were known to use the symbol of the Ouroboros – a serpent eating its own tail.
However instead of symbolising the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, it feels like it could be used to represent the toxic state of the discourse on social media.
You could easily swap the F or the blue bird logos for the Ouroboros and it would probably fit better.
It is so utterly exhausting, but like a black hole it is almost impossible to escape the pull of scrolling away.
A decade ago social media seemed like an exciting new frontier, now it just feels like an endless nightmare.