Donald Trump says the news media is the enemy of the
American people.
A statement, which on the surface is complete trash and,
even after deep introspection, is deep trash.
Neil Mackay says social media is “detestable” and represents
“everything that is wrong with the world . . . I think it de-intellectualized
us I think it has robs us of introspection, which is the most important thing a
human being can have.”
Mackay is editor of the 18-year-old Glasgow, Scotland-based
Sunday Herald, which, in an unrelated twist, is celebrating its 18th
anniversary with plugs tied in with writer David Sharman’s reportage on
Mackay’s comments.
I guess it might be fair to say Sharman or his editors saw
an opportunity to smash the dull reportage of the paper’s 18th
anniversary together with Mackay’s click-ready comments – but you’ve already
seen the irony.
(Something else odd: Holdthefrontpage.co.uk says Mackay
himself penned the missive at Glasgowist.com, but I’m finding it in an article
by Paul Trainer at that website.)
So why, you’re aksing, did I bring Donald Trump and his
asshattery on news media into this?
Because just as the news media isn’t the enemy of the
American people, social media isn’t the enemy of introspection, or
intellectualism. Oh, I suppose it can be. It does get pretty echoey. But for
the most part I use social media to connect with other writers, to gather
research and information for books I’m working on, and, at times, for
introspection. I don’t even need German music to introspect, much to the horror
of Sherlock Holmes.
Social media is a tool, and depending on how you use it, it
can be both good and bad. But those who want to introspect can do so with or
without social media, while those who don’t gaze at their own navels from time
to time can ignore their bellybuttons to their heart’s content whether there’s
social media around or not.
Says Delta1212 at Fark.com, commenting on the story (summing
up pretty well my thoughts on the subject):
It didn’t rob us of introspection. It just made
introspective people aware of how many people around them aren’t.
The problem with social media is not that it changed
anyone. It’s that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we tend to
assume that the people around us are more or [less] like us. Social media opens
a window into the thoughts of every person who uses it, which means that we
have all suddenly discovered that we are surrounded by crazy people.
That the world didn’t seem to be like this before is a
function of our former ignorance, not a result of the medium of our
enlightenment changing our natures in any fundamental way.
Thus, Mackay can still be introspective in a world where
social media exists, and those who weren’t introspective to begin with can go
on being self-oblivious with a new platform to do it on.
The pity here, of course, is that we could all have a
conversation on the detestibility and absence of social media introspection
along with Mackay – but to do it, we’d have to get on some kind of social media
platform. Oh, I guess we could all travel to Glasgow and try to meet up with
the man and gaze out the train windows together, but that’s fiscally impossible
and rendered grossly inefficient by the social media ties that could bind us
all together if we could get beyond the roadblocks that exist in our own heads
and are only mirrored on social media.
All of this, of course, was explained centuries ago – in an
era devoid of today’s social media – by Plato as he described his Allegory of
the Cave.
We are all of us watching the theater, the shadow of the
spectacle, going on inside our own heads. Occasionally, we may rid ourselves of
our ties and walk to the daylight, and thus see the spectacle in reality, not
as shadows on the cave wall. Social media users aren’t all captives, and those
prone to introspection aren’t all those who’ve escaped and are walking toward
the natural light.
Still doesn’t explain Trump, however.
No comments:
Post a Comment