This age of requiring tolerance for everyone's beliefs is confusing to me. If I'm supposed to tolerate someone else's beliefs, aren't you also supposed to tolerate mine? You know, that part where we say “agree to disagree” and go on our merry way?
But clearly that is not what is happening online nowadays. I say that because as soon as somebody shares their beliefs, if those beliefs happen to be in conflict with what the internet mob believes, then it won't be long before that somebody gets cancelled.
It doesn't really matter whether you are on the left, or right or even in the middle. You say something the folks on the internet don't agree with, you're done. It's an ugly phase to be in, this modern society of ours. Like we cannot even have a difference of opinion.
Everyone is expected to exhibit tolerance for everyone else's beliefs, but hold on, that only applies if those beliefs are acceptable to a group of people who wield the power online.
I have noticed that when I share about Digital Minimalism or avoiding social media for a bit, I hardly get any likes or comments. But when I post photos of my kids, or devices, or products, or even hobbies, or just status updates, I get a noticeable amount of likes and comments. It's like people would rather be distracted than focused. That is the kind of content that they want to see popping up on their feeds; content that distracts them.
The next question to ask then, is why do they want to be distracted all the time?
Might be an unpopular take, but I think cancel culture is a threat to democracy. If a lot of people are afraid of speaking out what's on their mind, because they're worried about getting cancelled, what kind of society do we live in then?
The irony here is that cancel culture came out of internet culture through the use of social media. And wasn't social media supposed to give everyone a voice? With cancel culture being waged online, the only people who have a voice are those on the far right and far left of the political spectrum. What about everyone else in the middle? We have no voice because we're too worried about getting cancelled.
YouTube keeps suggesting certain types of videos to me. They are mostly titled similarly, like “What happens when you do 30 push-ups every day?” Or “I did 100 push-ups a day for 30 days, here's what happened”, etc...
It makes me wonder, what if I do that too?
Well, I'll tell you what will happen.
If you're a regular Joe like me, maybe living a bit of a sedentary lifestyle, you know what I'm talking about, people with a desk job, people who spend time binging on Netflix or YouTube, or people who play too much video games, or people who lose track of time doom scrolling on their phones, people who aren't exactly great examples of what fit and healthy looks like, I'll tell you what will happen... you'll end up with repetitive strain injury.
Stay away from videos like that.
If you're not a healthy person now, but you want to be, start out slow. Pick an exercise that you are interested in, do it for 5 reps, then see how you feel after. If you feel like you could do more next time, then do a little more later in the day, or the next day. The point is, you need to build up your body to be able to handle multiple reps of a certain exercise. You cannot just go all in and force yourself to do 30 push-ups a day just to see what will happen. I'm telling you from experience, you'll get repetitive strain injury. Take it slow and build up from there.
We live in a world where the focus is on “me, me, me”. How is this affecting me? How am I going to benefit from this? But because of that mentality, we start looking down on other people. Especially if what they want is different from what we want. I'm wondering if we should be focusing less on ourselves and more on what we can do to help others?
It doesn't matter if that network is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Reddit, online forums, etc... If the people who are important to you are not in it, then you'll find that it is not as good as you expect it to be.
This is easy to test too. Just join a social network/platform that is supposedly really good, but make sure it is a network where your important people are not in it. Use it for some time and you'll come to see, it's missing something. That something are your friends and family members who are not part of the network.
So to me, it doesn't matter if people can come up with a better version of Facebook or Twitter or whatever. What matters is if you can convince the important people in my life to to join your new social network/platform. Because at the end of the day, a social network is only as good as the people in it.
You know what's annoying? You share good content to help people out and no one bats an eye. You share junk content, cat videos, memes, click-bait articles and everyone is all over it. It's messed up.
Is it because the algorithm is purposely drowning out your post full of good content, to instead prioritize on trash content? I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.
But it's not just the algorithm either. If people didn't keep giving their attention away to junk content, cat videos, memes, click-bait articles, etc... the algorithm wouldn't even know to prioritize those.
So next time you come upon an enticing click-bait article in your news feed, take a step back to think about whether you are feeding the algorithm or making the algorithm work for you.
Oh and I know what some people will say. Just get off social media, problem solved. No the problem won't be solved just like that. We've been at this “get off social media” campaign for awhile now and yet, people are still on social media.
There's this idea in our modern times that Jesus accepts everyone. That Jesus loves everyone.
Yes he does. He loves everyone.
But I think that some may be missing the point as to why Jesus mingled with the sinners, per the stories in the Gospels. He mingled with them to draw them to the divine life. He mingled with them to get them to turn their backs on their sinful life, and to get them to turn towards a life of goodness and repentance. He mingled with them to get them to convert, to have a change of heart, so that they might be saved and gain eternal life.
I think that if you're going to use the idea that Jesus accepts everyone, to justify your current way of life, I think you may be missing the point entirely.
Okay, maybe including the whole internet is a little far fetched. Or maybe not. Did that title get you to click the link to read this post? If so, then that probably proves my point.
I can't believe I didn't see this before in sports news. I've recently just realized that outrage is the primary tactic used by sports news to grab viewer's attention. Sports news anchors and commentators would praise a player because of his great, epic, legendary performance in one game. Then when the player or his team loses the next game, they proceed to do a methodological beat-down of how bad the player and his team was. It's like all of a sudden, they forgot all the good things they said about him in the previous game.
Why do they have to do this? They have to do this to get your attention. They have to do this to make it news worthy. They have to blow up something small, and at times inconsequential, to make it a headline. They have to cause outrage, because otherwise no one would tune in, no one would pay attention.
I now understand what bothers me so much about micro-blogging in general — it's the content... it's all about the very mundane things in life.
What I ate for breakfast. What coffee I'm drinking today. The number of lattes I've had today. My gym workout session. What new book I'm reading. A new selfie. A new photo of my pet. Etc... etc...
They all have the potential to be a great read. But almost all stop short of depth.
“Today I ate tacos for breakfast...” — Okay, there must be a story there. Why did you eat tacos instead of say a bagel? Oh wait, that's all there is in the post?
“Today I finished reading this book...” — And??? Was it good? Was it entertaining? Did you learn something from it? Why did you read the book in the first place?
“This app/tool is the best one I've used...” — Why is it the best? What makes it the best? What others have you compared it with?
Obviously what I have above are generic examples of micro-blogging. Not everyone blogs that way. But they are representative of what I've seen online, when I find myself checking out some feeds.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But they feel like a waste of time. They're like conversation starters shouted into the void, hoping someone will put in the effort to start a conversation.
Maybe that's how I need to look at it — they are conversation starters. But if the people behind those posts put in just a little more effort, I feel like they could come up with something more substantial. Something more respectful of people's time.