I’ve made the mistake of looking at Facebook again recently. I still don’t post, but it’s back to the times of frustration again. Yeah. Just by looking. Because Facebook hasn’t changed in the two years since I stopped wasting my time on it. It’s seems even worse, but that might be that I don’t interact with it enough for it to know what to recommend, so it fills my feed with all kinds of crap in which I have no interest.
But what is really apparent, especially in these days, is the absolutely brutal shallowness of it all. On this blog, I feel bad that I’m not devoting enough time and thought to 1,500-word posts. Imagine how I’d feel if I turned my life and deepest thoughts over to memes and quotes to express myself. To think that I could use one or two sentences to say anything of any consequence or meaning to an audience of “friends,” but more equally, to friends of friends (in other words, “strangers”) is ludicrous.
And so seeing that that is exactly what so many people try to do is sad. And maddening.
I’ve seen some of the most shallow and stupid things come from the keyboards of people – especially lately. People saying things that can easily be addressed, picked apart, debunked, and rebuked with just the slightest bit of thought. But it’s pointless. Their minds are made up, and if the rebuttal is longer than a line or two and doesn’t have a picture, they probably wouldn’t pay any attention anyway.
I’m enjoying some email conversations I’m having with my older brother right now. Even if I disagree with him on something, I so much appreciate that he’s put so much into what he says, and that he’s willing to share his thoughts in a form longer than a few sentences. It’s not that it’s been easy – even long written conversations can be misunderstood. But we have the patience and intentionality to get through them, and I think we’ve both learned valuable lessons (even if the lesson is that life is too short for some debates). Maybe that’s why we both have such a disdain for the likes of Facebook (hey, that’s a pun).
Far too many people get on social media and think their memes are some kind of mic drop that says it all. They aren’t. They’re not even close. The best they could really do is get someone thinking; but what they usually do is get people geared up and in their camps, ready to go with still more one-line, shallow rebuttals. There can be no doubt that social media has made our society worse. Not only does it allow for people to spew their shallow, thoughtless opinions, it encourages others who in many cases barely know the originator to come back with their own.
Imagine – just a few short decades ago, sitting home on a pleasant afternoon. You would have been safe from the opinions of total strangers. You would never feel the temptation to “respond” because there would be no such drivel to which a response was needed. There would never be long threads on Twitter – no back-and-forth insults and idiocy. No “Ben Shapiro crushes liberal student” videos to suck your time. You’d get your news from Walter Cronkite or the Daily Northwestern, and maybe send off a letter to the editor if you got worked up enough. But you’d much more likely be thoughtful, having to actually put some kind of work into it all.
Imagine that world. It really did exist at one time, and compared to today, it was absolutely amazing. Believe it or not, there are fewer people in the developed world who even know that feeling anymore.
And someday, soon enough, even they will be gone.
[A short disclaimer: I’m not talking about funny memes.]