Social free in ‘23
Boycotting internet “firestorms”
Jeffrey Denny
Remember the terrible horrible no good very bad villains who owned, slaughtered, disemboweled and grilled or air-fried the internet in 2022?
You know, like LaBrant Fam, Gabbie Hanna, Kami and Ben Crawford, West End Caleb and Andrew Tate?
Me neither.
Yet they all protagonized the “10 controversies that nobody could stop talking about this year,” as Insider listed for 2022.
Maybe you could explain exactly what people said that James Corden, Matt Damon, Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Kardashian, Lizzo, Matthew Morrison, Sydney Sweeney, Olivia Wilde and other so-called Grinchy greasy bad bananas and seasick crocodiles said or did that was bad enough to cause a “public backlash”?
Can’t even.
What about the apocalyptical scandals involving Shakira & Gerard Piqué, Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson, “The Drama Behind ‘Don’t Worry Darling’,” and “Ezra Miller’s Multiple Controversies?” among watchmojo’s top ten?
Eh? Meh.
Raise your Zoom hand if you even care anymore about the devastating misdeeds of Kayne West, Will Smith, Adam Levine, Amy Robach/TJ Holmes, Johnny Depp/Amber Heard, ad nauseam. Or even the sad Donald Trump.
Not me.
Turning to business news, what about how “7 Stocks Rattled by Corporate Scandals and Shenanigans in 2022,” listed by investorplace? For instance, the Bed Bath & Beyond “pump and dump” allegations? (FYI: Had nothing to do with commode clearing devices.)
How about — just the verified facts, please — what’s so scandalous on Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive, and why does the Republican House need to investigate other than to thrill their puppet MAGAs who puppet them by avenging Trump and distract from having zero agenda to make America greater?
Good luck with hunting Hunter, even if you wallow in a daily junk food diet of right-wing media conspiracy propaganda. (And no Fox-splaining circulus in probando such as, “Nobody knows. The Democrats and their liberal MSM, which are not as truthful as Fox, are hiding the truth. That’s why we need to investigate.”)
The fact is — we all know it — most internet social media “firestorms” are fake temporal tempests in a teapot.
You know, the old sound and fury signifying nothing.
Social media is predominately bored pandas, self-righteous twits, Facebook warriors, knuckle-dragging ninnies and self-appointed language censors and culture Stasi cancelers. Also, polemicists posing as journalists, the proudly ignorant denying education, experience and expertise while declaring “do your research,” whatabouting hypocrites calling out hypocrisy, Jesus-loving haters, PT Barnums suckering fools every minute, Covid and insurrection spreaders, thieves, bots, trolls and every prehistoric species of bottom-feeding invertebrates.
My favorite Facebook comments are by angry MAGA Trump saps and Tucker Carlson ventriloquist dummies whose profiles say, “No education to show.”
If you love humanity, social media will “yuck your yum” with a hell tour of Dante’s Days Inn with nine floors of limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery.
So why does anyone care what the internet Babel-babble says?
Who gives a healthy scheisse when the internet is acting out its generalized anxiety and bipolar disorder, one minute excited about exciting products everyone is talking about, the next suffering from toxic traumatizing triggering events like whatever misinterpreted thing Matt Damon said?
In that vein, please help explain this social media hieroglyphic from starinsider.com:
“A video of an interaction as Styles took a seat next to Pine for the film’s premiere is being analyzed so closely that it’s being compared to the famed 26-second film shot by Abraham Zapruder which captured the assassination of former president Kennedy.”
And what about the latest “Glass Onion” movie “controversy”?
Themarysue.com, whatever internet grubber that is, offered how “Ben Shapiro is furious that a murder mystery tricked him” and that “a lot of people on social media are also branding the movie too ‘polarizing’ thanks to the commentary it’s making.”
Unlike themarysue.com and its internet ilk, I am without enough words to garner enough audience to grub for money.
On the other hand, why do internet targets care so much about what the internet is saying about them?
Why do hard-working, successful entertainers, creatives, political and business leaders and public figures bow and scrape, and drape in sackcloth and ashes, when they’re attacked by unwashed hoards of cowardly anonymous social media jerks with little to show for in life than a keyboard, wifi, media-formed opinions and untreated sociopathology?
As a lifelong communications professional, I also ask why corporations and other major institutions spend so much time and money on social media when the return on investment — if measurable at all — certainly diminishes as they all vie to leave the same people-caring brand-preening impression amid the cacophony.
Let’s face it: Social media isn’t real.
It’s too often antisocial. Not representing our society at large, but the few who post to feel proud and brave when they’re neither, but merely clucking chicken hawks.
We the people are not the internet, and the internet is not we the people.
When social media “reporters” tell us how the internet feels, they’re feeding — and feeding from — the worst shanks of the mobocracy beast.
“Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy,” Pew Research found, “while 64% say it has had a bad impact.” More than anyone in the world, per Pew, Americans see social media as divisive.
It can be. It doesn’t have to be if we ignore or laugh at it. For the sake of our nation and democracy. If not our sanity.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
