The Trollcial (Troll + Social) Media

Hello there, finally I got around towards the end  of this weekend to blog something. Had been wanting to do this forever but kept putting it off, couldn’t think of a good topic to bitch blog about until now. Anyhow moving on to the  subject matter for discussion today. Social media – what a lovely gift to mankind – pun intended. It’s gotten to a point where people have stopped having face to face communications, they don’t even think it’s rude or disrespectful anymore to stare at your device indefinitely when someone’s around you trying to have a conversation. I guess now it’s become a norm or an etiquette to just do it. If you don’t then you are a black sheep that doesn’t have a social media life. Get on the program MOFO.

Social Media came into our lives through more than one ways through the internet. I don’t want to drop some big and successful social media platform names here but you can get an idea. People use them for various reasons, all in all it’s a powerful tool that could destroy you or empower you. It takes perspective and intellect to understand and control it just like anything else.

And just like anything else it is having a tremendous impact on our lives. As I hinted earlier the younger generation or the so called Millennials and maybe the Generation X (that’s the generation that precedes the Millennials) have become slaves to their devices. Imagine what would happen to them if you take their cell phone away from them. It’s equivalent to convincing their sub-conscious mind that there’s no Oxygen left on earth and you might suffocate and die. That’s how out of controls some of my close ones get when I take their phones from them.

I have been wondering what is it that keeps them hooked on for several hours on this trollcial media. It’s human nature to pry and feed on other people’s lives and social media has done a tremendous job exploiting this psychological trait amongst us.

Journalism has always been competitive and when you bring in social media you have introduced another grounds for competitive journalism. Now the rich and powerful have figured a way to reach their audiences and cause them to sway their minds in one way or another. A fantastic example was the presidential elections. The media played a significant role in the outcome of the election results. What would it have been if media wouldn’t have overplayed the internet troll and social media wasn’t around? Well you can never predict – it could have been the same or it wouldn’t. This is not the first time something like this has happened. And it’s not the first time in history this has happened only in the US.

Media houses are banking on it. They got a nice bone to chew up on and people fall a prey to this propaganda. Fear sells and journalism throughout the world keeps getting better and better creating a fearful environment around us.

The pen truly is mightier than the sword and now in this day and age with smart phones empowered with social media we are seeing how mighty that pen can be in the digital world. Smart phones were meant to make us smarter. I hope it doesn’t backfire and make us dumber and make us believe that all the propaganda posted on social media is true.

In this day and age as much as technology has empowered our lives I am not sure if it has made our lives any better. If you are spending countless hours staring at your phone stalking other people without having any human interaction or practicing your hobby or doing anything that doesn’t involve your device then there’s a problem.

Using your phone for reading a book or doing something other than social media stalking is still permissible but anytime your idle mind tends to incline towards social media scavenging then that’s a sign that you might be losing control, early signs of depression or nothing to do so lets stalk over social media syndrome. I wish there’s a shorter name for that syndrome.

I guess some of the readers won’t agree to my strong opinions but who gives a F***ing F**k. But for some who do and they acknowledge this that they got a problem then now is the time to look for a solution. The first step towards being treated is acceptance, if you can do that then you have almost conquered the problem. The tough part is the denial and some people are in constant denial or maybe they think that it’s their social media fever that keeps them going and keeps them happy and there’s nothing wrong with it. I wish goodluck to them and hope they accept it sooner than later.

The most worrisome in this era of social media is the youth. Kids who have started using the smart phones and have a wind of some of these platforms, age group anywhere between 13-20 years. I sometimes feel fortunate to not having certain things when I was growing up as much as I desired owning them now I see there was a reason they were not in our lives back then.

So how do we solve this problem assuming some of my readers came this far and acknowledged that they got a problem here. Well for starters try to stay away from your phone for a couple of hours in a day and maybe read a hard cover book, play an instrument, take a walk, go for a run, lift weights, watch a movie/show, etc.. Anything that can keep you away from your phone for those few hours could be a good start.

If you can succeed with doing that then the next step is to regulate the number of hours you spend on your phone over social media. Disable the notifications on the social media apps so you won’t be as distracted and allot a certain time of the day when you want to access it.

Unplanned and unprecedented access can cause a trend to not think before accessing and you could be wasting precious time staring at nothing.

All this being said social media empowered with the technology can be a brilliant tool to succeed in life too. Social engineering is a science and social media is a great contribution to this science. Understand and learn the laws of this science to use it to your advantage. We all know what happens when you don’t follow the rules.