FACEBOOK: THE ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

Face book, "Social Media" seems to be a straight forward concept. In the beginning it seemed to work as intended. Connections with old forgotten friends and acquaintances were re- established. Families were organizing family reunions and opportunities for employment were discovered. Now today in 2018 it's become a cesspool of hate speech and narcissism. As a result, this blogger hesitates to even log onto what has become 'Anti-Social Media'. More than that a strange phenomena has arisen. The people that I have reconnected with (including family) are mostly opiate addicts. those who do not suffer from addiction to opiates, are addicted to Facebook. It baffles my mind to find so many friends and family on Facebook falling all over themselves to befriend me. After doing so there is no meaningful conversation or there is post after post of the same woe and grief. Lately there have been reports of people deleting Facebook accounts in droves.
The popular online culture site "TheVerge" reports, "The Facebook exodus among young people is real, and disenchantment with the leading social media platform is extending to older users, too. According to new data from Pew Research Center that sampled US Facebook users aged 18 and up, 4 in 10 (42 percent) of those surveyed have taken a break from the social network for “several weeks or more” in the last year; a quarter of respondents said they’ve deleted the mobile app entirely from their smartphones."
I am still, however, noticing that there are some hard core users who are still there posting insipid minute by minute accounts of their day. This blogger does not like to mince words so I'm going to state that the majority of the users clinging to Facebook and other 'anti-social' media are people whom no one wants to talk to in the real world. In the real world where I live, Facebook is a joke and so are the users I spoke of earlier. I am compelled to write this blog post because I actually need to use "Social Media" for that which it was intended. The person on my "friends" list never respond to any of my attempts to reach out and accomplish particular tasks that will benefit the majority. I have been feeling a strong urge to join "Big Brothers" Atlanta Chapter. When it comes to one's "calling" to make a lasting contribution to a minority group in my community (at risk youth) joining Big Brothers is mine. Since I do not own a car and a car is a requirement. As a retired teacher my resources are limited. I initiated a fundraiser on Facebook explaining in detail the purpose. Not one "friend" responded. As a budding comedian, the humor of this phenomena is not lost on me. I do not post pictures of myself taken every minute on social media, others do and not many of them have aged well. For me there is a semi current pic of myself and the rest of the content focuses on social awareness and movements aimed at correcting some of the many wrongs in our society, race relations being #1.
In fine, if I could have my way the people I am connected with on Facebook (or any other platform) would stop with the narcissistic photos and insipid babble. Instead I would rather select a cause to be passionate about making sure that cause is beneficial to the majority.