Every so often, when I read what passes as news on the internet, I find myself triggered. Whether it is the choice of what to write about, or the news itself, I am gobsmacked by the sheer stupidity that envelopes us.
To be fair, stupidity and poor news judgment have always been with us. In the past, that steamy pile of nonsense stayed confined to tabloids and rags sold at the grocery counters. Social media sadly pushes it all right up our noses. And since gods of engagment reward publications with gifts of attention, even respectable publications don’t hesitate to promote and push the vapid and the hollow.
Such material triggers me. And I often find myself wanting to scream out loud. There is a platform for that — Twitter. And all too often, I draft a tweet and then discard it. It is an old habit carried over to this new world: write a blog post, wait for a few minutes, take a little walk, and think before hitting publish.
Lately, the number of tweets drafted and discarded has been going up. It reflects that I am spending too much time online, and the amount of stupidity in the world has increased. The reality is that this act of self-censoring is a realization that the most challenging part of our post-social reality is to shut up. By not saying anything, perhaps we are thumbing the nose to the gods of engagement!
PS: If you were wondering, that writer and that publication are no longer on my daily must-reads, and they lost the trust that rewarded them with my attention.