Tag Archives: social media

Non-fiction

Another Social Media Rant

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I sat in the ER from two in the afternoon to eight at night and scrolled through social media, bored. My phone’s battery level went from 100% to 30% from the scrolling. I came across a video someone had shot of a young woman, about twenty-four, who melted down after she’d hit a woman’s car. The older woman caught the young woman on video having a meltdown because the young woman didn’t have the money to pay for her insurance and pleaded to let her go. She bawled petulantly and called the older woman heartless for the want to exchange insurance and yelled “F— you” to her. It was so dramatic that it felt like an act. The older woman shot the video on her phone and posted it on social media for the world to see. I went directly to the comments to read what abuse these people had written. They humiliated the young woman and ruined her image.

Let’s do away with camera phones, shall we? Let’s return to the early 2000s and flip phones. Too many people abuse camera phones.

Furthermore, one person after the next turned this into a rant about modern therapists and how young people go to therapy and are taught that everyone except them is the problem. Many people who’d posted gave the old pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps comments and how young people these days are soft. These people must lack empathy. Of course, they don’t have these problems, not that they don’t take the unhealthy route and bully others on social media all day. Nah, that’s not a mental problem, right? They know better, and yada yada yada.

And what wouldn’t be a social media post without people in the comments who turn this viral video into politics? Now, all of a sudden, the young woman who bawled in the video was a woke snowflake.

No matter where I turn, whether it be sports or a video of a Redwood Forest grizzly bear eating honey, people have to bring up WOKE or MAGA and this side versus that side, us versus them. I’m a peace frog. I want everyone to have a restful night. Why do so many people have to be warmongers? Why are people so obsessed with politics? It exhausts me, yet I’m addicted as if I’ll miss the next offensive comment if I stop scrolling.

Let me remind you of something I wrote about these social media sites. I believe they were geared towards teenagers to meet and hook up when they were first introduced. Adults and businesses took over to market themselves. Now, unstable people log in and attack others all day with no consequences. If I had it my way, I would force each user to have to provide a personal photo and their government name to see who would dare post such hateful comments. I’ll bet the problem would clear up like a zit.

But these platforms continue to thrive and allow users to post under aliases. The users don’t have to present any photos of their faces and can remain anonymous like rooftop snipers, so they can get away with racial slurs, among other forms of the slippery slope of hate speech. To me, it’s no longer freedom of speech.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to the young woman who was exposed on video after she’d hit the woman’s car. My gut tells me she didn’t have a peaceful day when the video was leaked. But that’s the world I live in. It has always been a savage land. Only now, we’ve abused power with camera phones. These cameras are privileges that must be taken away if used against others. We’re not animals. So why do we shoot others on video as if they are?

Anyway, enough about that. I left with my parents around 8:30 last night and went to Yardhouse, hungry as hell. I should’ve ordered the grilled cheese with tomato bisque which I’ve always eaten there. But instead I ordered the cheesesteak sandwich because of my mood, and because the picture tantalized me. As it turned out, I left Yardhouse full of regret. Let this be a lesson to us all. If you go to your favorite restaurant, always go with your favorite, no matter what your taste buds tell you. Sometimes they deceive you, and the picture tastes better than the actual food. You know, after you eat the cheesesteak sandwich, the grilled cheese would’ve tasted better. Now you feel you wasted dinner on something that didn’t taste as good as your go-to item.

Non-fiction

The Internet is Undefeated.

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I read somewhere on social media that the internet was undefeated. It came from a post where someone exposed a football fan who roamed the streets of Baltimore and beat up random fans of the other team. His buddy recorded him doing such a heinous act. The one who assaulted them was obviously drunk and possibly hopped up on other drugs as well, maybe cocaine, maybe bath salts, only if he was biting necks or something, so I doubted it. He was wearing a football jersey and stood well over six feet in the video, a big man, and started attacking people wearing jerseys for the other team on a sidewalk.

It was a short video, under a minute, and at the end, he looked into the camera, flexed his biceps, and said, “I don’t lose.”

What a monster, I thought. I read the comments, which was why I went on there. It was entertaining to read from the dregs of society, most of which were illiterate. All of them attacked the perpetrator in the video as if they were on a moral high ground. They went as far as finding the perpetrator’s name and where he worked. Some of them contacted his employer and showed the video. The employer ended up firing him and posting a message of their own, saying he no longer worked for the company and that they didn’t stand for such behavior.

The police used the video as evidence for his arrest. Thousands of people called him all sorts of names in the comment section and wrote things such as what was going to happen to him in jail and how his life was ruined, and that they would beat his ass if they ever saw him.

But I had to wonder, how many of those people were hypocrites? How many of them committed battery themselves? A good percentage I believed. Only they weren’t caught on camera. Only a fool who was intoxicated in public would do such a thing. When the video was rolling, I bet his friend was drunk too. A lot of those people thought the man who shot the video should be punished. I guessed they were right. Actually, this sort of behavior, drunk people wandering around and assaulting others at sporting events, went on long before this incident and long before camera phones were invented. But these people treated it like it was a new occurrence.

Anyway, the perpetrator’s life was ruined. He got what he deserved, and so on. But I didn’t saint those who attacked him online. A lot of them were probably just as despicable.

Non-fiction

Writing Groups

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I’ve belonged to a writing website for over four years but don’t go there anymore. The website has a forum where members post questions. The same individuals who answer them back each other up against any outsider who makes a comment.

I’d posted comments on there and received no responses like I was in a cave. It offended me, but I wasn’t surprised. These groups work this way. Those same members post in all the threads like the only thing they do is sit online every day and answer questions. I’d gotten snide answers before from those herd members and chosen not to join them. I just posted my work on that website for feedback, most of which was bitter and meant to be discouraging. There are resentful people who just want to destroy others because they themselves have been destroyed.

I joined a Facebook writing group for laughs and read their roasting when another member posted a chapter of their work. There are usually over a hundred comments from other members. Ninety percent of them trash the work and call it amateur. They say they hate it without giving any constructive criticism. If they do, it’s in a condescending tone. I don’t know why writers choose to post their work on Facebook. That should be the last place to share anything online. The aforementioned website would be a better option for those trying to get feedback from anonymous people. Not that the website is anything supportive for writers. I wanted to change my name on the website. My goal was to hide my identity, but the administrator wouldn’t let me because of bullshit reputation points. I didn’t understand the reason for them other than I hadn’t participated enough to earn the points. My real name is still on the website. I wish they would allow me to change it.

There’s a member on the Facebook page who posts a few sentences a day of what the other members call word salad. His posts never make sense, such as, “The advocacy of my benevolence is maladroit obfuscation.” Those sentences ramble on like that, and members roast the writer for posting them, calling him an idiot in their own words. I would feel sorry for the writer if I didn’t feel like he was trolling everyone. Wouldn’t he get the point by now? I think he’s brilliant if that’s his motivation. It would be fun just to post examples of word salad to these assholes and make them believe I was serious. I’m going to do it. I’m going to start posting such passages to them for feedback just to fuck with everyone. What do I have to lose by trolling these bitter Facebook writers who cut people down when looking for publishing advice?

Most of the time, all I read are responses from writers trying to discourage other writers from looking for agents or publishers because they’ve failed and they want others to fail to feel their misery. I implore all aspiring writers not to join those Facebook groups. They’re nothing but toxic. I also implore them to stay away from actual writing groups outside of the internet. They’re going to run into people in real life who want to discourage others as well. The only difference is it’s a lot easier to be an asshole online, so they’ll hold back like someone who wouldn’t hit someone in person but act vitriolic toward them behind a keyboard. In other words, they’re cowards. I don’t associate with such online behavior.

I scrolled through X yesterday and found a post where an older woman shared a photo of herself at an NBA game. She was proud to be there, so she innocently showed it to the public, and a bunch of people responded with how ugly she was. I knew it was coming before I even read the comments. A lot of hurt people are out there who just want to spread hatred because it’s too deep inside them like a splinter. I remember long ago, my therapist at the time called it aggression. That sounded too vague to me. Of course it was aggression, but what was the root cause?

The only solution is to remove these social media sites. That’s it. There’s no other way. If we eliminate them, the world will be a better place. After all, weren’t these sites geared towards teenagers to begin with? Now adults use them to market themselves. If they’re not doing that, they’re just hurting others, these people who’ve never grown up.

Now the presidents are participating in the same immaturity: Democrats cutting down Republicans and vice versa. Imagine if our first president, George Washington, had X. Would he have stooped so low?

There’s also the shocking display of illiteracy. I can’t speak for past generations, but these new generations appear as if they were never taught how to write in school. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read posts and comments from those who use such ignorant grammar as “should of” instead of “should have”. What are teachers doing at school these days? Just letting their students run amok in classrooms and never disciplining them to sit and read something for God’s sake? It’s only going to get worse. I’m astounded by the degree. The movie Idiocracy should be assigned viewing at all schools.

As for these online writing groups, those people are well-educated more often than not. But like I said, too many are out to hurt other people rather than help them. With that being said, I won’t forget the few who’ve guided me in the right direction.

Non-fiction

Thumbs

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I type on this WordPress page and the letters are like insects. I squint my eyes to see them. It differs from Microsoft Word, where they soar on the page. Where’s the naturalness of writing here? Sometimes I ask the AI assistant what it thinks of my post, and it tells me to write advice on how to cope with a malady such as stress or anxiety or depression, as if I’m a self-help columnist, which I’m not. And I love it when it says the work needs cohesion and focus. Whatever. Who has time? I can bet after I finish this, the same will happen. AI lacks the brains to realize I have ADHD and some things I can’t do, even on Adderall. It also tells me to write a conclusion to these posts, but I suck at that. I never have a conclusion. I just write until the shit ends.

There’s no time. I missed the debate between Trump and Harris, but I thought I heard there wouldn’t be a moderator. I saw a picture of them going to shake hands, which surprised me. I didn’t think they would dare touch each other because of how much hatred there is. Maybe not as much. I also heard they would mute their mics when the other person debated. I can’t believe in a matter of months one of them will become president. And then what? What does either of them stand for? Just as long as they don’t screw this country up, and both of them could do that.

What happened to presidents? They’ve all had their flaws, although I wasn’t living to experience Roosevelt. He was the first president to appear on television at the World’s Fair, but his “Fireside Chats” were on radio. How did the American public perceive him when he was on just that medium? Imagine if these nominees didn’t have a television or social media to communicate through. Would people hate them as much? Or have those mediums made people dislike them even more than if they were just on the radio?

My father told me he used to listen to the Dodgers on the radio when he was a boy in the 1950s, and it was like listening to a bedtime story versus their appearance on television. You may liken it to Roosevelt’s voice as opposed to the sight of him, or it couldn’t have made much of a difference at all. Television does influence people in its own way, and not for the better. Don’t get me started with social media, which should die, period. It looks like it’s here to stay. I can’t think of another medium that’ll take over. Then again, I never foresaw the birth of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. It worries me what will come next

Non-fiction

Sober Life

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I watched the football game last night, the first one of the season between the Chiefs and the Ravens. In between plays, I was reading comments on social media. Some of them were disturbingly humorous. Others were downright shocking. Some of the posts were actual stories–objective news if one can believe.

One of them was about a Ugandan woman who ran in the Olympics whose boyfriend set her on fire. She eventually died. I don’t know how soon but what an awful way to die. Not that I wonder as much as what kind of sick individual would murder another human being in the manner he did? It makes me want to crawl into bed and not go outside. And some of the comments were about as disgusting as the act itself.

I read other threads, mostly about the game when it was on. I switched between the football game and the women’s semifinal of the US Open, where sixth seed Jessica Pegula played the unseeded Karolina Muchova. It enthralled me more than the football game. I’ve heard other people say football players are the most athletic people in professional sports, but I don’t know. I’ve watched enough tennis for the past two weeks to convince myself these players might be better conditioned. Maybe it’s my eyes. Anyway, Jessica Pegula won the match in three sets to advance to the finals after being down 6-1 in the first set. Quite a comeback!

Then I switched to the football game. The Chiefs were leading 27-17 at one point, and the Ravens closed the gap to 27-20 with under two minutes left. Lamar Jackson is nimble on his feet but still can’t chuck the ball accurately. I won’t rank him as one of the elite quarterbacks. He ended up losing the game for the Ravens after overthrowing his tight end in the back of the endzone. The tight end couldn’t keep his feet in bounds.

I read a post about sobriety. The person who wrote it said he’d been sober for a year, and in that time, no changes in health, no lost weight, and less joy in life. As discouraging as it sounded, he was honest. I’ve been sober for six years, and I can’t say my health has dramatically improved, nor have I lost much weight if any weight at all. As for joy, yes, drinking once brought me the luxury of meeting people and having fun with them at bars or at parties. But now those times have left, and they’re missed. Nothing has really changed for the better except the absence of hangovers. Of course those I don’t miss. But that’s the one benefit. It’s depressing to admit.

Oh, and I’ve saved money, a lot. I used to live paycheck to paycheck, but I still would live paycheck to paycheck if not for my benefactor. My job pays me below the level of poverty. It’s criminal given the inundation of work they’ve dumped onto me. Besides the point, I can’t say my life has improved at all. The only difference is I’ve lost one of my joys and a life of being somewhat social. Other people in the thread agreed: life is boring without alcohol. Others counterpointed with the subject of spirituality. I’ve felt nothing spiritual during my departure. Everyone is different. No one can force their higher power onto me. It begins inside.

So what shall I do? Go back to drinking? Maybe in moderation if I can control myself–the kicker. My doctor would get upset, so would my family. They’re the police. I have to take a mountain of medication each day, and alcohol doesn’t mix with the pills. I’m stuck with useless prescriptions. Who the hell said Adderall even works? I still can’t focus on even the lightest task. Maybe someday my brain will finally heal, maybe in four years when a decade has passed.

I do applaud the ones who’ve found a more joyful life in sobriety. They know the secret, the rest of us don’t. I do also encourage alcoholics and addicts to attend AA meetings. Even if twelve-step doesn’t work for them, at least they’re going out and meeting people.