Mowing the lawn this morning, thinking about social media in these days, thinking about some of the things that have been said in the past day and a half. I don't have any answers, really - I have taken to protesting about these things that I am 'a bear of very little brain' (as a family friend says about herself, and yes, it's a reference to Winnie-the-Pooh)
Watching some talking head talking about how apparently there are calls out on various online places to start what I would describe as a guerilla civil war (that is: lots of civilians get hurt). And I said aloud, "I wonder what the over/under is on someone calling for either shutting down all social media, banning ordinary citizens from using it, or shutting down the internet altogether?" (That last is impossible; commerce depends on it too much now. But I could see something like a strongman government of the future forcing the various social media platforms to pull the plug, or have some kind of "czar" in place who had unlimited power to delete things. It will be through certain people behaving in irresponsible ways ("I was JOKING about a bomb," the idiot at the airport says as he's being handcuffed and everyone else has been evacuated) that will take away our freedom of speech.
And lots of people are talking about what a cesspit various places is - I've even seen a call for "people of goodwill" to leave Twitter, I suppose so it will collapse under the weight of the hate spewed by hateful people.
But the thing is, and the thing that frustrates me: none of these things are evil of their own accord. They are *tools*. Tools like hammers. You can pick up a hammer and you can use it to hang a picture in your own house. Or you can loan it to the kid down the street so he can build his Pinewood Derby racer. Or you can go and help build a house for Habitat for Humanity....or you can use it to threaten or harm someone. But it's the same hammer.
My frustration with this is I have seen very little of the online ugliness (particularly the ugliness directed at women) that some people see - it IS possible to find the "nice"places. And even on Twitter - I have a lock on my account so I know who-all is asking to follow me, and so I can choose who does without having to actively block accounts I would find troublesome. (Some of my follower requests of late have clearly been porno-bots, which is distressing).
But I think by doing this it has allowed me to avoid most of the problems. And even enjoy some benefits. I was never into instant-messaging platforms, so I use Twitter as an instant-messager of sorts.
An example: back in January, the Friday night I could not locate my parents, while I was calling around and on hold, I also had Twitter open and I asked anyone there who followed me and was so inclined if they'd offer prayers or at least good thoughts. In a matter of moments, several people who followed me - the ones who were online at that moment - did, and wished me well. Still later other people who had come on checked in to be sure everything was okay. And I'd hate to lose that opportunity in a Twitter shutdown. It meant a lot to me, right then, to know there were people who were with me in spirit, and I don't exactly have that in real life.
I also caught myself thinking of this song.
I guess that's what's called a "parlor song"? I remember it from an old album my parents had, of British Music Hall music. (At least, I think that was the album it was on). And yeah, it was probably somewhat inappropriate for me to be listening to music hall music (known for its innuendoes) at 7 and 8, but any of the racy gags sailed right over my head...even as a teen I was pretty innocent and often came a bit to grief at the hands of my classmates because they knew that.
But yeah: "I don't want to play in your yard, I don't love you any more!" seems to sum up some of the drama you see on some social media platforms. (The phrase "epic flounce" comes to mind).
And yes, the "little maids" of the song do eventually make up - though it is implied they will fight again. And yeah, I've seen people "flounce" on various platforms and then come back and expect everyone to love them again, and I admit for people like me - who, if they decided they were done with a platform, would just leave without saying anything and not come back - it gets tiresome.
And, I don't know. The fact that there was a joke song about that kind of behavior in the late 1800s (ostensibly of little girls, but the song is sung by adult women - or, in one or two cases I've heard, adult men) tells me that people have always been kind of like that. And again, like re-reading Paul's letters and seeing that some of the problems people caused in the early Church are problems we still see today, I don't know whether to be heartened ("we've not got that much worse, after all!") or depressed ("Have we learned nothing?")
I don't know. Again, I think this *tends* to be one of those "you get out what you put in" things - except for specific situations (someone who decides to 'grief' a person online for their own evil reasons), I think maybe my being generally supportive and kind, and also keeping a low profile pretty much, keeps me from dealing with most of the bad trouble.
But yeah. One of the drawbacks of Twitter is it is very much bumper-sticker philosophy, and most of the problems of the modern world, I think, cannot be summarized or explained in 140 characters. ("For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"). And there are weird things that happen, misunderstandings and things. And sometimes people retweet stuff I don't like. But you can, with no drama at all, mute someone. I've muted a few people for the nonce - oh, I don't think anyone who reads me here, they are mostly people too famous to bother with me but who have gone all pointy instead of talking about their work. Or, the other day, one of the cute-animal-feeds I follow started retweeting stuff from an account that had what I regard as a racial slur in its title, and I didn't like that. I considered reporting them, wondering if they'd been hacked (a few people I used to follow, whose accounts went inactive, got hacked and the zombie-account started tweeting all kinds of bad stuff). Instead, I just blocked retweets from that source.
But I don't know. Maybe social media DOES make everything worse. But then again: yesterday I did not actually SPEAK to a single person. I tweeted a few, posted some things on Ravelry, and e-mailed a colleague. But I didn't speak to anyone and without the internet there would be days - especially in the summer - where I would have zero human contact unless I went out looking for it, and I wouldn't even know how to look in my town....so I'd really be totally alone.
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