Wait! Before you go, this is not another puffed up think piece about how social media makes our outlook worse. How, we’d all feel better if we put down our phones and walked away from the click-bait, so here’s my preachy internet content about how everyone should walk away from social media and internet content. I don’t give a third of a turd about that. No. What I care about, what is bothering me perhaps more than it should, is that social distancing/self quarantine due to COVID-19 is making social media too damned social.
That’s right. All of you extroverted, day-dwelling social butterflies have been cruelly thrust into a world of pandemic where public gatherings are a really bad idea. The introverts’ world. So now, with nowhere else to go, you have flooded social media like the roof collapsed over the cool table and now you have to sit with the nerds in the cafeteria. Yeah, we don’t like it either.
See, we haven’t heard from you in months (because we don’t do meatspace and, with the exception of tagged pictures from your last major life event, your social accounts have been dormant), and now you want to pop in to the comments section with pearls of internet wisdom?! We already know the warnings, proverbs, and mantras because we were here learning them firsthand while you were living lives out in the fresh air. Like, of course you can’t trust everything you see on the internet, Karen. I was out here lookin’ like a fool with my own knee-jerk, reactionary sharing of unvetted memes when you were still trying to figure out how to pronounce the word meme. Yeah, I know the internet is an ugly place, Barb. You think I’m writing this to be a better person? Everyone who’s been here with any frequency at all knows that I’m fishing for the validation that comes from the clicks and the likes that I’ll say anything to get.
What’s worse? You all actually seem to want to connect, to use the internet in the manner it was intended. WTF is that?! That’s not how this works. How it works is:
- Shout your opinions, grievances, and whatever else is on your mind to the world from behind your computer
- Hide, delete, block any responses you don’t like or don’t want to see
- Walk away feeling like you’ve contributed something and really taken a stand
- But ultimately do nothing.
Damn, Gina! Get with the program!
Y’all make me wish I could go outside and walk anonymously through crowded streets.
I suppose, instead, that I could be a leader here, walk you through this new world that caters more to my introverted kind than your extroverted one. As the meme goes, Check on your extrovert friends because they are not okay. But, nah. I don’t owe you that. The only thing a truly misanthropic introvert can do in this situation is leave social media. It’s gotten too people-y in here and I MUST escape.
So, take this as my grand, dramatic declaration that I’m leaving social media in a virtual flurry of skirts and flip of the hair and staying gone for the foreseeable future, which may be two minutes, two hours, two months, or as long as it takes me to compose a really hot tweet.
Oh, you’re not familiar with this trend? You really haven’t been here in a while.
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PSA: We’ve had some fun here today, but misinformation and disinformation on the internet are real problems in situations like the one in which we find ourselves. Ignorance leads to fear and panic (and I’m pretty sure there’s something about hate and the Dark Side, too), so for credible information, see CDC Coronavirus (COVID-19).
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