Social media will never be the same again. It is now a battleground. Social media, of which Facebook is the biggest gorilla, may be the playing field for a revolution bigger than the Trump era that is mobilizing it. To oversimplify Facebook’s stages, it started as college project to rate the hotness of girls, then it became your teen’s favorite hangout (since abandoned), then it morphed into the cat pic era, then became your hangout, and then a place for your elderly parents to get with the digital age. Now it’s where we launch rhetorical ballistic assaults, crusades, righteous campaigns for truth, equality, and on and on. Little do we realize that a fair portion of our friends are heading for cover even though they still maintain a FB page. By my observation, a lot of people are just about fed up with it.
Picture your favorite apocalypse flick (Mad Max, The Road, etc.) with roving bands of war lords decimating the weak and stragglers and that’s what you have now on social media. During the Trump pre-election era, we had a carnival atmosphere. Sure it was a dark carnival, but we enjoyed yukking it up while we dealt serious underhand jabs at our opponents. Waking up on November 9, 2017, the ‘shit got real.’ Finger pointing, fake news, which Zuckerberg denies, then accepts, and then starts new news campaigns. Fast-forward to the inauguration: Progressives are now over their initial shock and are mobilizing. The protests began and here we are.
So Facebook used to be a playground and now, as I’ve already asserted, it’s a battleground. At least on a conceptual level, it can’t really be both. Think paper – scissors – rock; battleground always extinguishes playground. It’s becoming harder to come out and play when a political shelling that you can’t escape is occurring. You have to scroll over the invective to get to any fun stuff, and that’s getting tiring or downright dangerous. You dare stop and mention a line of common sense and you’re castigated by the standard bearers of righteous indignation. And yes, while this is occasionally bi-directional, it’s really worse from the left as they feel cornered and are sorely smarting from the loss of their prior political hegemony.
Facebook (and other social media platforms) is and was a paradigm for social engagement probably equivalent to the printing press, telegraph, and telephone. Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004, and today marks its 13th birthday, but it seems the tide of social connection that facilitated billions of virtual-friend networks is being politicized and ideologically armed. I dare say it’ll never be the same again.
Political protests are our right and in some respects, our duty. Traditionally, it was very costly. You had to take a day or many days and usually go stand on some very cold or hot pavement to make your voice heard. Depending on the issue, you might also be ostracized, physically endangered, or even jailed. Now protest is democratized and you can engage it from your easy chair while sipping a latte. There’s no easy answer here, but just look what we’ve wrought. Just a few years ago, you connected to long-lost cousin Myrtle, and now you and Myrtle are lobbing verbal innuendo at one another on a daily basis. This did not usually occur back when protest was about real feet on real pavement. If we want to avoid becoming the sum of our political grievances, something has to give. We’ll have to partition our life better and be willing to call truces in some safe spaces. I would propose that Facebook and any social media made to facilitate ‘friends’ should be designated a safe space. Happy Birthday Facebook.
