Top 3 Things You Should Stop Doing On Social Media, Immediately.
The internet was an innocent place once.
Back in the glacial world of dial up internet, MSN Messenger group chats were the pinnacle of social networking. Really all you had to share about yourself then was whatever you'd registered as your free email address, because no one ever used an actual name online. It was always shit along the lines of DaffyDuck_96, PikachuNo1Fan or, in my case as a twelve year-old, sam007au@hotmail.com (now long dead). At least I was partially ahead of the curve by having my first name in there to narrow it down for whoever happened to be searching. The reality was, there was never actually any logic to your online persona.
Now we simply can't turn any of it off. At least in the MSN days one of your jerk friends could spam "nudge" in a group chat and forcibly disconnect everybody by crashing it. Today, Facebook is like a Fort Knox of utterly inane information; an impenetrable algorithm fortress that somehow manages to stop anyone from seeing any of the researched and original articles I'm occasionally involved in, yet manages to constantly present me with the opinions of the semi-literate, news stories some college grad thinks I should see, and other utter garbage with almost no value on any quantifiable scale. Today we find ourselves in a world overloaded by irrelevant information.
In the absence of any self-control whatsoever, we are willingly assaulted and assault others on our friends lists with life's minutiae to the point of absurdity in an on-going quest to justify ourselves to each other, for no discernible reason.
It's time to break the cycle. Just ask yourself one simple question before you post a thing: Who cares? We should all take a page from bad Korea's book and start suppressing information about ourselves and the things we do, on a grand scale.
Here are some good places to start:
Top 3 Things You Should Stop Doing on Social Media, Immediately.
1) Sharing NRL Memes
Do you like watching a bunch of neck-less boofheads kicking a ball around in an endless cycle of plays that are constantly referred to a video ref? Do you have a social media account and a low-tier "I constantly tell shit dad jokes" sense of humor? Well come on down because THE PRICE IS RIGHT!
I'm not Larry Emdur and I'm a hardly a comedian, but there's something about social media that can really bring out the shit joke in all of us. Built on a foundation of arbitrary state/city/town pride, your local NRL Meme™ is an attempt to cash in on the brilliantly popular "meme culture" (or 'mem' if you're a part of the demographic that generally produces these memes) by shitting on some other rival team or their players - pretty straightforward stuff.
The problem is in the execution. With entire pages dedicated to shit memes, your shit joke already has a tonne of competition before you mash your fingers on a keyboard and save a low quality JPEG of a hot fiery meme - there's actually an art to the thing. Almost always lacking in oversized Impact font, NRL Memes™ are what happen when you combine an inherently bad joke with a captive audience, and someone's delusions of comedic grandeur. It's nice to have goals in life, but some things are just unattainable no matter how hard you try.
Please, stop feeding the wildlife.
2) Taking pictures of your demon spawn with signs, talking about things they did but can't yet comprehend
How awesome are kids?
They don't really know what's going on yet, but they look typically youthful and exuberant while wallowing in their ignorance. Once upon a time in a land far far away, kids could grow up without their every waking moment being documented for social media; photographs used to just sit in family albums collecting dust until one of your parents decided someone needed a dose of embarrassment to sort them out. But now that taking pictures is a free and labour-less process, poor Epiphany gets to feature as a shining star in hundreds of unsolicited portraits before a substantial audience of people who simply don't care as much as you do.
I get it - you've had a child and your world has changed forever. The miracle of life is wonderful and blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind seeing my friends kids achieve things... OCCASIONALLY. When your updates get to the point where you pose your infant child alongside signs inscribed with milestones like "I slept through for the first time last night", in the midst of weekly updates on their age, things are getting a bit out of control.
I just want you to cherry-pick their awesome social-media-worthy moments - like their first stack on stage while receiving an award, or vomiting all over an unsuspecting bystander. That's new. That's interesting. And shaming people with no right of reply in a live environment is what social media should be all about, not the constant celebration of minor milestones that have existed for eons.
3) Being Captain Obvious('), reporting live from the scene of your local weather
Nevermind aching joints as a sign of impending rain; the wondrous human marvel of technology allows us to simply keep looking down to find out what's really happening up top. Why risk a neck ache when our underfunded friends at the Bureau of Meteorology can just spell it all out for me, Joe Social-Media-User Blow.
And nevermind the booming sounds of thunder and flashing lights overhead; I have Facebook in my arsenal to make sure my friends know what's actually happening as well. The thunderous roar of a real summer lightning storm simply pales in comparison to the low resolution radar colour-orgy I can just paint all over my friends News Feeds, you know?
And nevermind that six other people that live within 20km of me have made similar posts; maybe I've got a substantially different friend base, you know? Maybe the show of light and noise hasn't quite instinctively spelled out their impending doom yet. I better just make sure they know!
Please just stop.
