Social Media has Turned Us into Small Town Gossipers.
Unpopular opinion: Using social media for anything other than an unlimited dog videos or to keep up with family and friends makes you someone else’s pawn.
I’ve been reading a celebrity memoir and every time someone has inquired as to what I was reading or if I shared how I was enjoying it, I was met with immediate contempt for the author and the book. This is how each conversation went:
“Oh, she is horrible, she cheated on her husband.”
“Did you read the book?”
“No, I just saw it on social media.”
Social media has turned people into small town gossipers who are far from any level of firsthand knowledge of any particular situation or document.
“Suzi is such a bia.”
“You met her?”
“No, I heard it from John and Tara.”
“John and Tara? The town alcoholics who are mean to everyone?”
“Yeah, they do their own research.”
“But…they read at the second grade level…and what research would let them know that about Suzi…?”
People relying on social media for information aren’t even reading the Cliff Notes. Please put down your dopamine machine and read the book if you really feel the need to tell people about it.
It’s wild to be reading this book by a woman, who may have cheated on her husband, or may have been separated at the time, and see people give her a scarlet letter to brand her as having nothing in her story that is possibly insightful or worthy. Not to defend her entirely, but to defend that she has an interesting perspective to share and a journey of which others might learn or relate. Did she hurt her partner? I’m sure. Did the pain go the other way too? Probably. Is this the litmus test for someone to be deemed completely unworthy?
Meanwhile in pop culture, others who are cheaters, abusers, or rapists, and cause serious harm have not evoked such widespread disdain in every day conversations. Ben Affleck likely cheated on his wife with the nanny, but I have not heard of him widely branded with a scarlet letter. And how about Danny Masterson, who was convicted of rape and was known for years to have been grossly abusive? Besides discussing the case with a few girlfriends when it came out, there was no widespread acknowledgement of Danny Masterson’s behavior. I never had someone initiate a conversation with me to condemn him, but I have heard someone passionately speak against the woman who plays a female Marvel comic character. The sentiment turned out to have been based in a major social media movement against the actress. I had to look it up because I don’t follow Marvel comic movies and I’m not on social media enough to know anything about it.
I have two arguments loosely explained here. One being to experience things like books or movies firsthand before forming a strong opinion. The second being that what is important to acknowledge and condemn is not being socialized to the masses on social media.
It all leads me to ask, what is going on with our social media influence? Why is there so much hateful content spread as “insights?” And how do we get people back into reality of actually reviewing things like movies and books for themselves? The people we should condemn are out there behaving badly, and yet we are getting riled up over a decent book in which the author reflects on her own pain and problematic behavior and her path towards love and healing.
It is wild to hold the irony that the author of a book about their path to feeling their own human worth is being personally dragged through the mud and deemed unworthy through the lens of social media.
Celebrity gossip magazines used to be the main source of regularly reducing people to less than human levels, but now, in the hands of many people is a device that regularly skews our concept of human dignity.
It isn’t just clients in salons reading US Weekly and taking digs at others with what’s provided in half of a paragraph of information. There are now people from all walks of life making quick judgements on everyone and everything from Jada Pinkett Smith to Jordan Peterson to the Israel/Hamas conflict/war. Outrage is quick to ignite while calm understanding, curiosity, and compassion for complexities is rare and becoming extinct.