🤔

The downside of social media though… ugh.

The personal computing revolution has been the main element of my life. I started out with Pong, the simplest of video games in the 70s, moved on to word processing in the 80s, and got online in 1990.

I think 2014 will be studied as the year the internet was finally weaponized, primarily with social media as the weapon.

Social media was fun at first because it was a fandom and sharing culture. Then slowly, it brought out the worst in us by bad actors operating in the following ways: encouraging the removal of the filters that kept social interactions civil, encouraging comparison and its dreary companions envy and jealousy, stoking mob behavior to go after people, and exploiting lonely people through the lie that parasocial relationships can replace IRL ones.

The internet promised connection, and for a time, it did. Then we ended up as a nation of traumatized and isolated people who can’t relate to each other anymore except through negativity.

What’s up for grabs isn’t only people communicating through electronic methods. This is a battle for control of consciousness.

welp

For some people, once they get enough power whether through money or influence (or both!), they turn into abusers (or that level of fame provides cover for the fact that they always were abusers).

Abusers groom victims, yes but they also groom allies. When a victim speaks up, the abuser can call on these cultivated allies who will say he’s nice to me, you’re making things up.
 

Then there are those who know about the abuser’s deeds but turn a blind eye because they’re benefitting from the abuser’s power or connections.
 

And people with their noses in their air saying, “I always knew this person was a bad ‘un,” 1.) no, no you did not, 2.) it will be your favorite person next, 3.) because this shit has been going on for a long, long, time. 
 

We need to re-evaluate our relationship with celebrity. Enjoy someone’s works, but don’t idolize the person. And anyone who wants you to idolize them...is an ass.