Thoughts On Social Media

I have a confession to make. I don't use Twitter. It's nothing per se against the service, it's just that I don't feel a need to document every second of my life to the Internet. I'm really not much of a Facebook user either other than to keep track of family and a few close friends. I rarely post on FB other than to wish people happy birthdays and post the occasional stupid post. I could live with or without them.

Facebook was once a nice service to link people together but now it's nothing more than a big advertisement disguised as social media. The games you play there are nothing more than commercials for whatever product they are pimping or a gateway drug to paid services.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a vast wasteland of celebrity chatter dominated by coked out singers and actresses and people that society says we should listen to because they are celebrities. I'm not saying everyone on Twitter fits that description but for every meaningful tweet I have read, I've probably read 1000 tweets from some vapid "flavor of the week" airhead. I mean really do I care really that Pam Anderson hates chicken (why don't they investigate her implants and what animals they tested the silicone on?) or what Megan Fox's political views are? To me, they are nothing more than talking heads looking for attention and a way to keep their names in the news.

We've always been a culture that puts actors, sport stars, and singers on a different pedestal than us and I admit I'm as guilty as anyone else. However that said, it seems that more and more we are idolizing people that have not earned our adoration. We used to idolize people like John Lennon and Bono because even for their flaws, they strived to make real change in how we think and how we act not only towards ourselves but to the world around us. Now we follow train wrecks like Lindsay Lohan and such. Maybe it reflects a basic change in us in that we used to soar with free thinking and now we just want to see people flame out publicly because that brings them down to our level again. Grim but so be it.

Anyways, back to social media. You can say that I'm a hypocrite for posting my views on this stuff and that's fair. The main difference is I'm not telling people how to think, I'm just posting what I believe and furthermore I'm not pushing any agenda. I'm also not someone who inundates by posting every single minute of everyday. I tend to post about things that are important and matter, not what I had for breakfast.

But hey, I realize that social media is here to stay. Facebook is not going away except to the next big social media company to come along and change everything again. Some will say that Facebook and Twitter are just extensions of our love for gossip and our fascination for the "Glitterazzi" set and that may be true. I just wish there were better people to follow than Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

Of course I could be wrong.....

I'm not a FB or Twit-ter fan, and I don't have those accts either.
I do have a Tumblr acct that I haven't bothered to "decorate" in several months; it doesn't play nice with my 1st gen Kindle Fire. I constantly have to log-in just to get my dose of "digital" Art/Photography feed  fed.  So, I've temporarily lost interest.

I agree with you about the "sell-not-brities"  BooBoo and K Dysfunctional Family ( B.Jenner moved out)  ALWAYS in the news,. . .who cares?!

Have you ever thought the constant news of 'em is a "red" herring?