Thanks for this post.
This phenomenon of lifelong friends or even friendly acquaintances waging war, often with lastworditis (an affliction I too have suffered from in the past), on social media struck a chord with my own experiences. And it hasn’t just been the US election or the EU referendum (Brexit) that triggered these behaviours rather it seems something innate or as a result of the design of the mediums. It’s certainly something that the operators of Facebook and other social media platforms need to consider given that the original idea was, as you point out, to bring us all together. For warfare of words, and possibly IRL actions, I believe that Twitter still holds top place and it will die because of it.
It’s sad that we have this amazing technology that allows us to connect and collaborate across our populations and yet it results in such polarity. It seems that the medium that held so much promise is simply creating an algorithmic culture that lacks nuance, good manners or indeed the truth. Millions of monkeys on keyboards apparently don’t output Shakespeare, rather they create The Daily Mail.
I haven’t yet had the courage to completely sever my umbilical cord to the hive mind as it’s a principle platform for promoting my work and attracting new clients, just look at the referrers on your Medium dashboard, but I have found that social media breaks and taking the apps off my phone help.
I wrote this the last time I took a break from social media when it was mostly Twitter that had got out of hand but Facebook too:
Good luck and use those 15 mins well :)
