The other day, I was discussing that what is now called "social media" used to be known primarily as "social networking."

In 2010, when I shared news/opinions to a social "network", I did so with the hopes of engaging and distilling a smaller, like-minded group of people with whom I could further develop intellectual bonds. While on one hand, I wanted to share information that I felt was under-reported and challenged the popular narrative on the matter, I absolutely was looking to connect and engage more. On the other hand, there wasn't even a thought to being "offensive" because of the nature of networking, it was more comfortable communicate with people who wanted to share their perspectives on an issue instead of argue the merits of the post, the opinions therein, or even the news/opinion should have been shared at all.

But on social "media", I tend to post news/opinion without regard to others' interest in it. Even if there was a part of me still seeking engagement, the real motivation to post is to be 'informative and educative.' However, implicit in both of those nouns is the ONE-WAY methodology of "I will inform you, you just sit there and listen." This is why people, myself included, can become so belligerent and purposefully offensive if someone argues or flat out calls out the news/opinion as wrong, bad or "fake" and especially if someone bothers to spend time writing out a Too Long:won't read response when they could have just kept scrolling and not spend the mental time and energy to be offended by something.

I don't know if this is real, but that's one of the problems with #TheResistance...it is very difficult to distinguish their sincerity from straight-up satirical parody.

 

My belligerence would often turn into open hostility when confronting the commentator on my Facebook post/comment who felt the need to "school" me on the "real world" blah blah blah. This was almost always the friend or family member of one of my friends who was only able to see my posts because our mutual friend had commented. The narcissism of these people to believe that I, or anyone, should care about their opposing viewpoints simply because they had the ability to read and comment at all still astounds me; but make no mistake, whenever you see people "taking a stand" against something, really take a look and see if they are doing something that will matter or if they are just trying to attract attention to themselves. This has become a cornerstone symptom of so-called, Trump Derangement Syndrome, the condition of formally reasonable, intelligent people to forget the last 50 years of USA's Imperial foreign/domestic policies, economic exploitation, and outright systematic abuse of human rights universally--opting instead to obtusely attribute everything horrible that's ever happened to Trump. There are numerous other symptoms, but that can be saved for another essay. But the point right now is say that while many within #TheResistance wail, moan, and gnash teeth over Trump's narcissism, them wanting you to know about their wailing, moaning, and gnashing belies their own narcissistic need to seen being offending by Trump's narcissism.

A sick culture indeed.
It would seem that after five+ years of 'social media', we are eyeball-deep in a generation of narcissists with their eyes trained on the horizon for anything that 'can be construed' as offensive so they can descend, denounce, and show everyone what good people they are because of their capacity to be offended on behalf of others.

If you consider the nuanced differences between the two concepts, how do you think your approach to what you post would differ?

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://earthbus.org/2018/06/08/1137/

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