Digressing To The Depressing

I felt compelled to write something last night at 2am before I went to sleep but I couldn't really think of anything worth writing about. Today I'm in a similar mindset but now as sleep is out of the way I'm going to make myself write something.

Since waking up this morning I've done a bit of perusing on various social media sites and not much else, so that seems like a good a thing as any to write about. For reasons I shall go into shortly, I generally despair at social media sites, yet I use them daily. I believe this is due to a twisted dichotomy that rages between my subconscious and conscious mind, but that's enough of the pseudo-psychology.

Over the past few years I've recognised that I don't really like social media websites yet I have started using more of them. Which again seems counter intuitive but I'll ignore this. Like many of you out there the original social media site for myself was the iconic 'Myspace' a perfectly adequate arena for advertising yourself online to would be friends and to host lively discussions with current ones. Being around 14 when I used this these discussions were little more than an exchange of derogatory insults between my friends and I. I remember being amazed by how personal you could make your profile. It was very easy to become obsessed with perfecting your profile so it represented all the awesome aspects of yourself (whether fictional or not). I updated my profile song once a week and I'd always be sure to add new/alternative films to my favourites so as to seem cutting edge and cool. I was pretty lame in hindsight, but that was kind of the point. You used it to paint yourself in a good light so as to attract more friends. Essentially it turned people into a bunch of bean counters competing against each other to have the most online 'friends'... Pathetic. It was a fad, everything about it was. Which is the reason why myself and pretty much everyone I knew stopped using it as soon as the next social media site became popular.

Facebook! The now reigning king/queen/dictator of social media. Whether this is true for everyone or just the people within my online circle of 'friends', Facebook was treated in a fairly way similar at first. It was just a stripped back, neatly designed, appealing version of MySpace with the focus on accumulating friends rather than anything else. Of course it developed into the ultimate sociological infiltration experiment but I won't go into that as it's common knowledge. I went through the phases of 'liking' and 'joining' (essentially the same thing) all the mildly interesting pages that came my way, but eventually the whole concept became irritating so I tried to use it only as a means to communicate with my friends in the real world and no one else.

The next social site I began using was Tumblr. I've noticed that it gets a lot of criticism and condemnation by many but it's one of the few I actually like. After first setting it up I didn't really use it. The only reason I joined was because a friend of mine who owns a clothing brand wanted some more followers on his page. Then at university I met two people who used it to share their art work. I quite like looking at their work and stuff that influences them so I just started using it as a little lounge gallery. Which is essentially what I still do except I've started following more artists who I have discovered myself. 

After that, almost a year ago now, another friend of mine showed me Reddit. Now I really struggle with my emotions towards Reddit. Part of me really enjoys it and part of me wishes I never started using it in the first place. It's kind of like a highly addictive drug. Sometimes it's a hindrance due to being the ultimate procrastination tool but sometimes you can actually use it as a source of information for university work. It's so insanely vast that it's intellectually reducing to say you hate the website. It'd be like saying you hated Uganda. Fuck you! What do you know about Uganda? Have you seen and experienced all it has to offer? No!... Which isn't to say I like the website either but I'll come back to this.

And finally the latest social media site I have started using frequently is Twitter. I originally set up my account in 2009 but it confused and bored me so I left it alone until about a week ago when one of my university lecturers told me tutors and universities use it to advertise postgrad opportunities occasionally. I'm yet to see evidence of this but I've not done a proper search yet.

 

I probably use all these sites at least once a day. I rarely post anything to any of them though I prefer to scrutinize and observe what is going on. I prefer to lurk. It is this repeated observation, every single day that has caused me to not only hate social media sites but the majority of people who use them. If I had to pick the worst offenders it would be those who overuse Facebook and Twitter, the sites where you directly attempt to sell yourself. I constantly see the most futile and pointless arguments about mind numbingly infantile things, like why Miley Cyrus or some other shit has had a tantrum about another celebrity having more paparazzi following her, or something equally mundane and fatuous. Except it isn't some young teenagers obsessed with their idols it's two grown men in their late twenties obsessed with being 'hip'. Fuck, I feel like an old man because I have no interest in what the majority of young people today seem to be interested in. It's debilitating for society! So many of my 'friends' on Facebook have bought in to these meaningless trends, uploading ridiculous amounts of 'selfies' in an attempt to look and feel more like the celebrities, and to attain more likes in order to fuel their own pitiful self worth.
Whereas Reddit just seems to upset me. Whilst it's a good source of knowledge about the contemporary world most of it's depressing. Stories about how the rich can literally get away with murder when the poor get jailed for crimes they didn't commit. I think it's the highlighting of the injustice on reddit that makes the people on Facebook and Twitter seem more irritating. These spoilt, rich, morally sterile people are held as idols by the masses and I don't understand why.  Job titles and wealth have long been signification of success but now it seems like having your own online cult is the latest one.
Venerate, Imitate, Simulate, Desecrate all Intrastate.

Peace.