The socialness of social media [part 1]

Back in the old days, when everything was slower than a snail-climbing-a-90degree-hill-in-reverse, people who spent more than an hour on the computer was a nerd. A asocial creature, whiter than the moon due to a lack of sunlight, and equipped with glasses for sniper rifle accuracy.  I still wonder if the computer gave nerds those looks or if looks made them to be into computers…Nowadays, people who spend less than an hour on a computer is being labeled as an caveman and the typical computer user is a guy with supermodel looks and rocket science intelligence. I still wonder if this image began after photoshop and online dictionaries…

The first online networkers partied after sending a ‘ping’ to a computer in another room. Now, It is normal to network; to have countless online friends via web applications, text and video messaging applications, multiplayer games, and being part of online communities. We referrer to this phenomenon as ‘Social Media’. The term Social media is something like ‘green cars’; the only thing green on a car could be the color, spit, or mold; even the most ‘greenest’ car is more black then green, except in the eyes of business of course... Social media is as asocial as polluting cars.  Well, this is of course not the case, or is it?

In the next couple of digital papers I will try to display the other side of social media. I will start with a ‘social talk’ to draw a sketch of the scenery and in the later parts, color it with scientific studies on this topic.

Social media has become a psychological deadly weapon, whereas every creative guy can destroy someone’s live with just a few clicks; picture editing, video editing, writing scandals is literally child's play. There are tons of cases where people lose their jobs and relationships because someone found a inappropriate picture. I guess that you are thinking: ‘I don’t do that kind of silliness, that won`t happen to me’,  but someone with photo editing skills can make you change your mind, especially with all those nice picture you have uploaded on the internet...

‘Social media stimulates the ‘knowledge society’ of today’. If knowledge is ‘just enough information to impress people’ then YES, social media is a blessing, but if you have another understanding of the word knowledge then, yes, it’s a curse. Back in the old days, when everything was slower than… dejavu…People where knowledgeable or not. Today, this has changed to: ‘you can act or you can`t’. The most easiest example is politics. One-liners, sound bites, rehearsaled jokes have become the interface between the politics and the voters. People don`t vote for a person, but a image, an ‘supermodel’, which is created by people who know the politics, and especially behavior of voters, better than you and I. I don`t like writing nor reading so I will try to keep this paragraph as short as possible: ‘real knowledge is suffering due to oversimplified popular short messaging’. An advice for those who want to make people believe that they are smart: read only the salient parts of an article. If people question your statement just refer to the research ‘stay out the line of fire’. Like I do by referring to the video of Micha.

End of part 1

[It feels nice to kick the system, every ones in a while. I`m thinking of buying industrial metal headed shoes.]