This is by no means a new term or something I came up with, but since we all are guilty of it, I thought I would write a few lines about it.
As always, I am not above reproach on this topic. Since I have begun the efforts of building a brand around “me”, the temptation to post something and then anxiously wait for my TPV to tally up in the form of likes and comments is hard to resist. I try to have a realistic approach to what I am doing, and what the impact may be. Since I do not have a huge audience, I do not have anyone who responds negatively…yet. Its coming, I know that. There will be people who disagree about things I say, and that is to be expected. The next level down of course is people who go out of their way to spew hate, nastiness and other negative energy.
I try to be very mindful of what I post. Anything you send out into the ether is going to be there forever; even if I delete a Tweet or FB post, there is more than one system such as internet time machine that ensure that everything ever done is out there forever. The cancel culture days we are living in mean that one false more against a certain group of people will get you, your sponsors, or your job cancelled in a huge hurry. I have plenty of opinions that I do not share for this exact reason. Stopping just short of the cancellation line I guess is the new goal. I will know when I have broken through when I have several haters that look for new content from me just to bash what I am doing. Despite the fact that it takes time and effort, and that these people will also be contributing to my YouTube viewer numbers and overall followers, they will continue. I will be interested to see how this develops. These days it seems that you aren’t somebody until someone else wants to cancel you or you have a bunch of people who are mad no matter what you say or do.
So zoom out to the rest of the world and we see the same thing on the macro level that we do in the micro level I described above. During the current times of COIVD19, all of the protesting and rioting, etc., it is much of the same thing. There are people who are angry about a variety of things, and as soon as they get a chance they are yelling their own ideas through social media without realizing the ramifications of those actions. They are anticipating (at least I think they are) Third Party Validation of their ideas. The problem is, it is so easy for people to take things out of context, edit a video to meet your narrative, cutting things out that would change the story, that no one is safe at this point.
If you are living your life based on likes or retweets, you are setting yourself up for a rollercoaster of a ride through life. You cannot live your life based on what others think of you or say on social media.
You have to be responsible for your own life, your own happiness and most of all your own self worth.
Think about all of the “influencers” and other people who make a living simply by posting things that they believe, get paid to believe, etc. and how far off base that is from reality. Many people are on medications that alter their behavior, and many more should be on medications and are not. The average IQ in the United Stated is 98, and throughout the world it follows suit closely. The algorithms that run the back end of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms are geared towards keeping you on there as long and/or as often as possible. The best way to do that??? CONTROVERSY. Get people arguing about things and they will go back and forth at each other for days on end. Mission accomplished, especially when others get into the fray, now the goal of clicks and time spent is really working. Sad but true. When you factor in all of the things in this paragraph, should you really be giving the random stranger’s opinions that much weight?
If you have never read 1984 by George Orwell, I’d HIGHLY recommend it. This prophetic book written in 1948 it (unfortunately) shining a light on the very real possibility of our future. The amount of gaslighting and flat out lying through the mainstream media, social media and more is off the charts these days. If you do decide to read it, be sure to pay attention to things like “Double Speak, Ministry of Defense” and other play-on-words that have complete parallels in today’s world. I am not sure how or when that happens, but I am holding out hope that this is possible. It will save me the trouble of moving to Montana and living off the land, completely independent from society as we know it.
I wish you luck in your endeavors.
by Darrin Schenck
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by Darrin Schenck
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