Tag: Twitter

Giving Up Social Media?

RJ Walters

No, I am not one of those old people who is against everything invented in the last 20 years. Nor am I a person who spends the typical 2 hours a day clicking through my social media accounts. I am a user but only to a very limited degree. But, maybe even that is going to change.

I certainly understand the importance of having instant communications between a diversity of people across the world. They say Facebook has brought people together. It has billions of users so that must be the case.

My problem with social media is that there is so much bilge clogging up the system to make it extremely difficult to uncover its good side. Too many people ranting about this or that. Too many depressed people because they don’t have high enough “friends” counts.

I also see where many psychologists and such say social media is responsible for much of the epidemic of loneliness, especially among the younger generations. Too many young people spend so much time interacting with social media and rarely actually talk with other people. Let’s face it social Media is probably doing more harm than good in these recent years. It has sadly become an addiction to far too many of us.

I see there are groups now that want to just shut down Facebook, rather than try to break that massive monopoly up. I know every generation has its own problems that the older folks say is ruining it. But, is that more a reality now than it has been in the past?

Getting back to the personal level, I haven’t looked at any of my social media accounts in almost a month. I get a few notification in my mail feeds but they are quickly deleted. I am seriously considering deleting my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. I think my life would be more joyful without them.

Let me know what you think about removing ourselves from the social media world?

Explaining Our Times…

RJ Walters

Ok, I admit that I have been retired from the workforce for almost two decades now, so aside from what I read I am pretty much ignorant of it. When I left the workforce the mantra was “Do more with less”. Many of my coworkers were being laid off and I was told that I had to do their jobs in addition to my own.  I couldn’t imagine a more stressful situation today.

When I came across this article by By Ruth Whippman in the New York Times it helped me to have more empathy for today’s middle-class workers.  Ms. Whippman is the author of “America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real.” I think I will pick up an e-copy of her book to understand it more. Here are the snippets from the article I want to concentrate on:

In this cutthroat human marketplace, we are worth only as much as the sum of our metrics, so checking those metrics can become obsessive. What’s my Amazon ranking? How many likes? How many retweets? How many followers? (The word “followers” is in itself a clear indicator of something psychologically unhealthy going on — the standard term for the people we now spend the bulk of our time with sounds less like a functioning human relationship than the P.R. materials of the Branch Davidians.)…

This is the future, and research suggests that it’s a rat race that is already taking a severe toll on our psyches. A 2017 study suggests that this trend toward increasingly market-driven human interaction is making us paranoid, jittery, self-critical and judgmental.

Source: New York Times Nov 24, 2018

One of the two main points of this article is that more and more companies are outsourcing their work. They no longer employ their own workforce but instead contract it out. 

The second point is that our social media has become critical to our future success. We need to show that we are popular and influential in order to get that “perfect” job. If our “likes” aren’t high enough it will raise suspicion. Being told that finding that perfect job is now totally our responsibility. That alone is tons of pressure for so many young people.  It’s no wonder that the suicide rate among this young group is so high!

I’m going to stop here with this particular post. But I suspect that I will be revisiting this topic in more detail after I have read the author’s book.

“Don’t Confuse Me With The Facts”…

“Don’t Confuse Me With The Facts”…

RJ Walters

I am becoming more and more convinced that the title of this post should be the theme of the Trump base.  Their hero continues to lie, attack and poison everything he touches and they just ignore it.  Don’t confuse me with the facts… yeah that fits.

Fake news is often the topic with the liar in chief so I’m sure he has seen the article below:

canstockphoto45579151.jpgHorner, whose fake news stories often went viral on Facebook and Twitter, told The Intersect, a Washington Post blog, last year that Trump supporters were especially susceptible to being fooled. “My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time,” Horner said. “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. 

“His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.”

Source: Fake news writer in 2016 presidential election found dead | TheHill

This quote was by a self proclaimed fake news writer. He got his kicks out of making up stories and then seeing how “Trumpsters” propagated them across the Internet without ever questioning their validity.

Yes, many of Mr. Trump’s Twitter rants are about fake news. How ironic is that since he would not have his current job if fake news  and some very naive voters hadn’t help put him there.