Social media invasions
Mark Barnes reports from the trenches on the battle for the soul of the global online discourse
Ispend too much time on my phone. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this — I give myself a little pat on the back when my usage report shows a decline on last week’s — but it’s still too much. Thankfully, I’m not on any of the mainstream social media platforms, but I do tweet, and (if only to keep up) follow some publications — and even that’s a handful.
I spend the first 10-15 minutes of every day blocking unwanted tweeters and emails — I block everyone I haven’t initiated. In the main, this is little more than an irritation, but I’m still not sure why I have to block them, instead of them having to get my permission to make contact? Unwanted marketing calls are no different.
I accept that if I initiate a social media inquiry I may be bombarded with advertisements, but it’s my choice to either stay or go away. It should always be my choice.
Beyond this “interference” there are far more serious issues of social media abuse. There can be no doubt that social media also has virtue — as an enabler, an aggregator, a voice of the people, a distributor and collector of economic and political power, but, as always, there are those who seek to take advantage.
Social media has become the medium of exchange for bullying, rumour-mongering and the manipulation of innocent participants. The problem is that the damage doers, those with malice of forethought, are getting away lightly with the enduring reputation damage, privacy violation, and even threats to personal security they foist on others.
An apology doesn’t undo the damage, in the same way that returning the money doesn’t undo the theft. The crime needs to be punished, not just reversed. How do you ever reinstate the stain left on a person’s character by an accusation subsequently proven to be false, without any foundation, and often malicious? Being found innocent of a crime isn’t the same as never being accused of it. Being shamed or embarrassed doesn’t get cured by a retraction — pictures can’t be unseen, texts are stored, somewhere, forever. At a personal level, those shown to have harboured malice in revealing other people’s private lives, should be the one’s punished, not the consensual participants in such private intercourses.
Of course it’s a two-way street. What you put out there does influence your profile and open you up to criticism, opposition, and even abuse. So, be careful. Ask yourself why you’re doing it, what your true motivation is. If you’re trying to be funny, make sure they get it! (and beware of the wokes out there, just waiting to poke holes in even the most well-intentioned humour. When we stop laughing at each other, at life, there’s little purpose to social engagement — but the sorry souls out there on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, without a life, will find something offensive in the most innocent of giggles. Flip them, I say.) Also, don’t lie, don’t insult, don’t fabricate, don’t embellish. Whatever we put out there creates an online CV that some search engine will find one day when it matters.
More complicated, less obvious and less provable is the agenda of your attackers. For the most part, I think it’s just people wanting to be noticed — number of followers has become a measure of social standing, so much so that some people actively seek followers (and actually follow just to be followed back). That’s OK, we all like to be liked, WTF! (Welcome To Facebook.)
We want it to be known that we’re “in the know”, that we have the inside story, that we’re in one or another inner circle. Sometimes we just want to show off, because we think we’ve got something to say that’s clever. So what, that’s OK too, surely?
The line gets crossed when we either initiate or perpetuate fake news. To be fair, it’s difficult to tell truth from lies nowadays, and you’ve no idea how far down the chain you are from the source, which if you knew it, you might not trust.
All of this has become bad enough for a whole industry to have developed — the business of “digital profile management”, can you believe? Far from being virtuous, this is just a symptom of a sick society. They’re actually in the business of façades — “purifying” your image, rather than changing who you are.
Yes, there are exceptions, and some filters make sense. But, once again, it is the baddies who are allowed to thrive, and the good guys who require protection. I suppose that’s life, but I don’t support it and I wish it were not so. We have learnt the power of populism from our leaders around the world, it seems, as social media has become their weapon of choice.
We need to stand up for the innocent, the naïve, the funny, and even the careless stupid things we sometimes all do — lest the evil predators in social media prevail, and the good people retreat, in defeat.