Can we find peace online when social media have become toxic?

By David McElroy · January 23, 2018

The only reason I signed up for Facebook 10 years ago was to please a girlfriend. I didn’t see much point in it, but I signed up anyway since she asked me to. At this point, I wonder if that was my first social media mistake.

I was online far earlier than most people. In the early ’90s, I was active on CompuServe message boards. I quickly became a discussion leader and then “SysOp” — which originally meant “system operator” but eventually just came to represent the managers of a forum.

I liked some of the people I met online and I loathed others. At times, I got involved in horrible flame wars that embarrass me now. Years after that, I was quite involved for awhile on a message board for independent filmmakers. Again, it was a mixed bag. A lot of the people were insufferable, but I’m also still friends with some of those people and I ended up meeting some of them in real life.

As social media services have become more and more important in modern life, I find that it’s become a more and more toxic environment. I’m seriously questioning whether I still want to be part of social media.

For several years now, I’ve had a horrible feeling about what the online world has become, so I’ve already slashed my use of social media quite a bit.

• I’ve gone from 5,000 Facebook “friends” to slightly fewer than 750.

• I’ve reduced my level of posting greatly over the last few years. I no longer get involved in online arguments. I frequently don’t even read comments about controversial subjects and I respond to such comments even more rarely.

• My involvement in social media other than Facebook is pretty much token at best. People constantly tell me that I need social media for success in the 21st century, so I’ve maintained a presence, but I fail to see much that’s positive, especially when it comes to Twitter.

By any sane standard, I’ve cut out the worst of social media by trimming my contacts and avoiding arguments when possible. Although I still post a few things which are politically and philosophically charged, I don’t argue with people who disagree. I don’t even post to change anyone’s mind. It’s merely to express frustrations about things which seem obvious to me.

But what’s the point?

Isn’t most of the time I spend on social media wasted time? Doesn’t it suck up my time and offer very little in return?

There are definitely some positives to social media. I’ve met some good people I’d never have met otherwise. If I cut myself off further from Facebook, for instance, there are some people I’d miss. I’d no longer share jokes and comics with certain other people who appreciate the same odd humor that I do. I’d no longer have a way to share my photos — of cats and Lucy and sunsets, for instance — with some people who appreciate those pictures.

But overall, why am I sticking around?

I joined Facebook for a woman and I stayed active for the last few years mostly for another woman. There was someone who I’d lost active contact with and I hoped we could resume a relationship one day. But after I found it necessary to painfully end contact with her, that killed most of my reason for remaining. Facebook seemed pretty empty after that.

Even after reducing my use of Facebook and other social media, I’m still left with the empty feeling that they’re still sucking up too much of my time and giving me little in return. And I can’t decide what to do.

How do we maintain contact with the shrinking number of people online who we truly like when the modern way to do that is to do it on Facebook? How do we use social media to promote our careers when we’re wading through toxic sludge and wondering when the positive promotion starts?

If I give up on social media entirely, will I find “real life” social activity to take its place? It’s odd to think of it that way, but more and more of our social contact really is the digital kind. Is it possible that pushing the digital world out of the way would lead me back to a more of the old-fashioned analog connections that I need?

I feel as though this is a disorganized stream of consciousness, because I have so much to say about this subject, both for good and bad.

I realize that it might seen odd to be using a form of social media to call social media toxic, but I’m not really sure that my writing here qualifies as social media. This is more akin to a modern-day version of someone who writes books or pamphlets and publishes them for the world to read. I still have things to say, but I’m interested in publishing and producing — not in the toxic shouting matches which characterize most of social media.

There’s a short film I’ve been wanting to make for the last year or so, but I haven’t had the time or budget to make it. The short is based on the notion that the social media world is a cacophony of voices which are all screaming to be heard — sometimes with nonsense, sometimes with anger and hate, sometimes with random ideas.

What if nobody is listening? What if we’re all screaming from our rooftops to be heard? What if all of us are shouting or whispering into a void — hoping that someone hears us and understands us and accepts us? What if we’re all so busy hoping to be heard that nobody is heard?

Social media has lost most of its remaining purpose for me — ever since she isn’t there anymore — so I’m struggling with what the point is. When she was still there, I’m not sure I realized the degree to which I was talking to her all the time, even though I was ostensibly talking to everybody.

I want to walk away, but I’m afraid I might be missing something. I’m afraid there might be some way to make it safe that I’m overlooking.

All I know is that I’m closer and closer to walking away, maybe for awhile and maybe for good. Something has to change.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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