Because of the tragedy in New Zealand and the
role, social media played in spreading the video of the event. Many of us are
upset. In her post of
March 15, Caree, over at "A Retirement Blog" talks about her
concerns about the use of social media and makes some very good points. I agree
with her statement:
"Fanatical and populist ideology posted by dubious sources and shared across newsfeeds worldwide has become so mainstream that people I might previously have considered to be critical thinkers now seem to repeat and repost without any obvious moral compass. They fail to hear or seek to comprehend that there is a valid argument against the stance that they promulgate. Where has reasoned and reasonable debate gone? I can offer an answer for that one: it has been buried in the adoption of subconscious Orwellian mantras like "the will of the people," "strong and stable," "no deal is better than a bad deal," or "make America great again."
She goes on to say, "I know protesting seemed simpler when you could turn up at Greenham Common with a tent and wire-clippers but how many of us have actually chained ourselves to railings recently? Planet Retirement is the perfect battleground to take the fight to the doors of commercial interests and large corporations. Boycotting remains a powerful tool as does complaining, giving bad (but honest) publicity and lobbying your MP.
Today I have absented myself from my Facebook
account whilst contemplating its deletion. With over two billion active users
monthly, imagine if only half its users did likewise. Ten percent of its
current subscribers are apparently over 65; the deletion of two hundred million
accounts isn't going to happen, but it would be some protest if it did!
Boomers were not the first
generation to protest, but we did work hard at it in our youth. Over time I
think got complacent and lazy. We believed we had won the battles that
were important to us. We believed we stopped the war in Vietnam, we believed we
had created a more open and forgiving society. We believed we had reduced, and
some of us in our naively believed, we had overcome prejudice about race,
sex, gender. Of course, none of that is true, but we believed it to be true.
There may have been some movement in all of these areas, but not enough.
Through social media sites, today
those who hate, find each other and thrive in their own little worlds, and the
rest of us ignore them or tolerate them and their views. Our parents
fought against the rise of the right-wing hate that is with us today, we
lived in a time when we thought we knew the difference between the good guys
and the bad guys. We were wrong, the bad guys were always there but they were
underground and hidden in their own tiny frightened world.
In the day of the 24-hour news
cycle, the agencies we used to trust to give us the facts, give us innuendo and
rumour disguised as facts. In the "mainstream media" reporters,
editors fearing for their jobs, latch on to the latest outrageous event,
embellish it and attempt to grab our ever-shortening
attention span.
Over a period of time, the
outrageous becomes the norm, the fringe becomes acceptable and the bad guys
crawl out of their hidden worlds and creep into the mainstream through
social media. We ignore them and we go on with our lives. I agree with Caree,
we need to take a break from social media to gain back a sense of our
understanding of humanity. By taking a break we can, I think, begin to move
back to a time when we would not accept the fringe as the norm.
So I ask you to do what Caree and I
are doing which is taking a break from Facebook. Boycotting remains a
powerful tool as does complaining, giving bad (but honest) publicity and
lobbying your elected representative.
Thank you for joining me. It’s good to know I am not alone in feeling the necessity to act and, like you, do believe I have become apathetic in failing to recognise and call out existential threats to civilised society.
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