I am starting to believe that (anti) social media might be the (anti) Christ as predicted in most religious tracts - just not in the way it was expected.
When you see the problems it can cause, especially for the unfortunates who believe that it is actually important, then its invention really was the work of the devil.
Of course, things are not helped by the businesses / media companies that allow people to post under pseudoynms and use fake names and addresses (says JS-Mijas) - and the tosswits who rant and rave about (eg) insignificant stuff like sports really do need sectioning.
Another aspect which I find very irritating is the way the "legacy media" (ie newspapers and TV news), are so lazy that they just regurgitate c**p that they have found on social media! I am always amazed when I find an original story from a proper reporter - but also notice that they too quickly become a regurgitation of themselves.
Who would ever have thought that "influencer" would be considered a career? Putting ´ photos of celebrities out there used to be the job of the paparazzi - ah, but they were only interested in people who were actually famous - not those "taken by yourself" to try to get commission from who / whatever you are wearing.
Same with Twitter. There was a time when reporters would follow celebrities around just trying to get an original quote. Now you can´t stop drivel being spouted by all and sundry (hmmm), with others "less" significant beings repeating or commenting on it just to get a name-check alongside their heroes (or, more likely, their bêtes noires)
When I (engineered a) move from the far East to the Hague back in the mid-nineties, I did so because I realised what an incredible game-changer (ok, paradigm shift as we said then) the web was going to be. I still think the web is an amazing tool (although I read today that one of the originators of Wikipedia thinks its content is too-biased these days) - but with the web as the starting point, the problem is that when you give everyone a voice, you really can´t hear the words any more. Especially any words of wisdom.
Now I do not regard this private blog as social media, and I regard it as the same as a private´phone call, but with a few people able to listen in. (Actually, very few, but there you go / have gone).
On that ´phone front, last week one of my oldest buddies called me from the UK and we were able to have a few minutes rant at the inanities of the world. In particular we discussed the football european championships - and how neither of us had bothered watching them - also reminiscing about how (despite some prat getting a tv installed in the office dining room) we had succeeded in ignoring the "legendary" world cup of 1966 and actually managed to be out in the garage working on a friend´s car when the final was on.
A bit like the attitude of the members of the team that played in it, it wasn´t that "big a thing" back then, but has somehow become more important with the passing of time.
That, of course, and the impact of the devil´s anti-social media on everything.
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