Social Networking: Reading this may be bad for your health

It’s 5 am, and I’ve been up all night reading nonsense on the internet; nonsense because nothing I’ve read has helped forwards the advancement of me as person and nonsense because people are stupid.

I am people.

I’m not sure why we put ourselves through the daily shit storm that is Facebook and Twitter but we do. I probably read more social networking sites than I do actual articles or books. I imagine this will only get worse for the next generation. Of course, it’s easy to have a pop as people mainly state the obvious, like the weather or post pictures with a  cool Instagram filter of their latest meal and I am certainly no better, but why do we care?! Why do I care? I don’t, in theory.

I generally read Facebook or Twitter and scroll through the plethora of useless information on offer until I can take no more, there’s so much shit to wade through you’d need a hazmat suit to survive the onslaught for more than a half hour at a time; casual racism, bigotry and decimation of the English language are some of the tamer things you’ll encounter on your average scroll through, especially now Facebook shows everything your ‘friends’ like and comment on.

We have to suffer a lot of this stuff thanks to acquaintances we have to keep on these networks due to connections like work, mutual friends or in some rare cases family (not mine of course…)

So back to the question at hand, why do so many of us care?

I think because it’s a place to be heard, a place to interact, to be in with in crowd, to not miss out. People hate to feel bad or think of themselves as narcissistic or vacuous but any time you post something of no real substance or consequence, you’re pandering to your own vanity, your own sense of purpose and that you believe people should want to hear what you have to say even if it is: “It’s snowing!”

The exceptions are few and far between, your technophobic grandparents are probably on for genuine reasons such as staying in touch, but most (not all) under 30’s are just posting endless ‘talk to me, look at me’ updates that are pointless and oh so poorly written.

It can’t be good for perpetuating our ever shortening attention spans that we can only stomach such small chunks of text (Twitter’s 140 character limit, anyone?) There’s also an unsettling trend on web forums which is shorthand ‘TL;DR’ which stands for ‘too long; didn’t read’, has it really come to this?!

TL;DR? How about GFY (GO FUCK YOURSELF!)

 

I think it [social networking] may be bad for our health because it angers us (me) more than anything, and most people I know resent they spend so much time reading the unrelenting bile they could do without – but then what the fuck is this blog?

Talk to me, look at me I’m probably bad for your health.

I’m probably just bitter… And I am.

 

Editor’s note: This blog will soon be available as 30 Facebook updates or on audiobook, sometime never.