Social Media (or how I’m pulling back)

Personal note:

Today I closed my Twitter account and I have zero intention of opening it back up again. My only social media contact points from here forth are going to be my Facebook account (locked down enough that I have to invite you, you can’t request.), this blog and a couple other places more off the beaten track under various pseudonyms I use.

I am not going to name names. Zero point. Won’t do me or anyone else any good. You know who you all are.

I got into social media back when the internet was new and exciting. Firefly remember that? Arcadium Refugees .. and eventually Facebook, which I’d resisted joining for a while. I only joined so I could keep in contact with various people I met at Burbank Film Festival. A lot of them have now gone from there.

I’ve been growing dissatisfied with social media of all forms for some time. Whether it was certain experiences with people on a certain online magazine forum all those years ago or the stuff that happened around JNUC 2016 when a certain “ocker” decided it’d be a good idea to have open season on me … and after I responded, cyber stalked his way and started posting my photo on twitter. Lately there’s been Twitter toxicity and a bunch of non tech forum related stuff.

Ever heard of John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory ? Well wonder no more:

Original Penny Arcade comic can be found here.

My favourite logical fallacies abound in such circumstances and in quick succession I’ve been hit with:

Cherry picking – act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. (and believe me, it did.)

Affirming the consequent – the antecedent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be true because the consequent is true; if A, then B; B, therefore A. (arrived at because of Cherry Picking)

Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer. (yeah you all have done some good work, but that doesn’t stop you being wrong)

and finally:

Argument from repetition – signifies that it has been discussed extensively until nobody cares to discuss it anymore, sometimes confused with proof by assertion.

There’s too much taking sides, too much “if you’re not with us then you’re a TERRIBLE PERSON and *crime of your choice here* …” and too little listening and considering. And I’m done with it and the people who do it. It’s as though people never grow up.

I’m fed up of the echo chambers, the in-fighting and general trolling that passes for discussion. I had enough of this kind of crap in school for christ’s sake and I’m still getting this while I’m fast approaching 40!

Organised religions operate that way. So do dangerous cults. And now Social Media groups where the lynch mobs are always out in force and if they’re not going after disbelievers, they’re turning on themselves to weed out the disbelievers.

It’s a damned Kafkatrap and if you haven’t read “The Trial” by Franz Kafka then I do recommend it.

Instead of social media checking on the train to work, it’s going to be eBooks. Oh and any of the emails from the film stuff that’s suddenly appearing in my future outside of the existing stuff I’m lining up too.

I’m tired and frankly it was all making me miserable. I suspect a clean break will help change that.

So good luck all. I be done with the arguments that make most social media look like a bad episode of “Prisoner Cell Block H”, “EastEnders” or even “Dynasty”. Insert your own soap opera reference of your choice. I’ll be sticking for the moment with the “memes” on Faceache.

See you around. Maybe.