The Alice in Wonderland digital world

THE new element in our lives called ‘social media’ is a right old palaver, few would argue with that, but the jury is still out as to whether this ability to communicate far, wide and instantly is a good or bad thing.

Regardless of the answer, the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram continue in their unstoppable expansion - and anyone who doubts that need only look at the mechanics behind this week’s continuance of Donald Trump’s ban from Facebook.

It was upheld by Facebook’s socalled Oversight Board - but it’s not so much the ban itself that interests people. An inebriated tramp would have had the clarity of mind to confiscate a megaphone being wielded by such a potentially dangerous person.

It’s the rather flailing attempt by Facebook to employ its own team of referees which appears so inconsequential, even if that team does include ex-prime-and-deputyprime-ministers. Since Wednesday’s news that they were upholding the Trump ban, the media has been filled with commentators asking things like: how can these giant corporations police themselves? What is their remit? And who can possibly draw international lines in the sand over whether something is acceptable or not?

It all sounds very solemn indeed, especially when you are talking about a platform that saved more than ten million people from ennui this week by showing a bored cat lying on its side, lazily knocking a marble around a tray.

Around and around went the marble as the cat occasionally reached out a paw to punch it on its way again. And millions worldwide chuckled over the 30-second video and shared it with friends.

A half-minute video with 10 million views is responsible for more than 83,000 hours of valuable, neverto-be-repeated, existence when people could have been doing something constructive and useful.

No big deal. People need a chuckle in worrying times. If a bored cat can take your mind off pandemics and multiple other forms of doom and gloom for 30 seconds, why not? No one person or business is ever going to miss those 83,000 hours, even if it equates to nearly half a century of lost work time.

But let’s bring social media use to an individual level. I’ll use my own sorry self as an example. My Twitter account tells me that in 10 years I have sent 17,500 tweets. Being a journalist, I type fast – so let’s say each of those took me, say, 30 seconds. That amounts to roughly 8,750 minutes of my time – or 150 hours, amounting to a month’s worth of 37-hour work weeks.

I could have written a novel. Something that would have lasted forever, instead of 17,500 mini-missives which have disappeared into the ether never to be seen again. And those were only the Twitter posts. I haven’t counted stuff I’ve put on Facebook or Instagram. Or the time

I’ve spent looking at other people’s posts.

But before loathers of anything and everything modern start jeering, it is worth considering the upside.

The person penning those tweets is a sad old has-been in his 60s who never managed to fulfil his potential in his main working career and who lives a rather isolated existence halfway up a difficult-to-find Exmoor valley. In other words, like most people, I am a nobody.

Yet Twitter analytics tells me that many of my mini-missives have reached way beyond anything any Exmoor dweller could ever have dreamed of in the past. It is not unusual for one of my tweets to be seen by 120,000 different people, because they are shared by my followers to their followers, who then share them again.

That ‘reach’ is on a level with the daily circulation of the well-known national newspaper I used to write for. And what it means is that these intangible and often unsettling social media platforms can give the “little man” a voice. Which is a good thing. And potentially a very bad thing too. In my case - being the nice, mild-mannered and pleasant chap that I am - it’s the former. I say that tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely because I rarely tweet anything political and never post nasty missives filled with bile. Which is, alas, what all too many people choose to do.

Twitter analytics tell me my most popular recent tweets have been the ones where I’ve posted short videos explaining what I’ll be writing in the Saturday food pages.

However, being seen by 120,000 mildly interested Twitter users who may or may not buy the paper is hardly the same as an ex-president tweeting material which inspires followers to pick up weapons and attack the State Capitol.

My “83,000 wasted hours watching a bored cat” is double-edged, just like social media itself.

As my brother John pointed out when I asked him to check my maths… “That’s 83,000 hours of chuckling around the globe. Surely, that is a good thing?”

A big smiling Cheshire cat. You might say there’s something Alice in Wonderland about the whole thing.

‘In the time I have spent tweeting on social media, I could have written a novel’