Social Media in the Times of Covid19
It’s always been a pleasure of mine to ridicule, laugh at, belittle and undermine idiots on the Internet and beyond.
The Coronavirus pandemic has quickly derailed into an infodemic. Not just fake news, but the amount of information appearing minute-by-minute has reached new levels. The virus seems to be the only subject on the cart while other publications seem to be strange, inappropriate or out-of-touch to some.
What we post reveals something fundamental about our psyche. The crisis has brought the best or worse in us. In times like these, you can easily tell who’s what.
It is, in some way, the revenge of the introverts – as they seem to be the ones to better deal with a catastrophe. The introspective ones. While overly-social people, as usual, are in a bad company (themselves) and often need others to get energized and refreshed. The parasites. These are the people who will end up showing-off the lastest fashion of straight jackets.
This is why I have always enjoyed Facebook. There’s no better place that so bluntly shows the psychodynamics of human behaviour. Indeed there are hordes of ignorant fools to insult and debase here. Very often their preoccupation with appearing edgy, coupled with their arrogance and pretentiousness makes them easy marks.
There are nonsensical, irrelevant people indeed; then you have the vain ones that comment with a paragraph of big words – yet actually saying nothing at all; there are some that vehemently project their flaws and insecurities upon the poster, believing this to somehow mask how weak and formative they actually are.
Mean and dumb, dumb and mean, they’re all the same to me. The profiles change, yet the ineptness stays the same.
Social media platforms have not created a feeling of community. They have rather isolated users and greedily feed on their individual anxieties, anger, alienation and hopes of love.
Never in history, human indecency has been so public and just a click away.
Facebook, like the internet, in general, is a great psycho-social observatory. Just like a space telescope observing distant planets, galaxies and other astronomical objects – the internet offers a great amount of information, that naively, was premised to make humans infinitely more knowledgeable, thus better.
The good thing about being a misanthropist is that people never disappoint you. On the contrary, they never cease to amaze you – especially so during a global crisis. They’d come up with any sort of faux artistic endeavour, likes-hunt manoeuvres and offer free social-conduct moralism.
And yet I’m here, complaining and creeping around like a cyber peeping tom. But anything, just to have a few easy laughs. I’m a terrible person too.
Hopefully, it will crack a lot of people – it’s how the light gets in.
