The Cliffs of Insanity

Five Problems with Social Media

1. Grammar and spelling. It wasn’t, and generally still isn’t, that evident on social media sites like LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, but social media sites that limit the size of posts have the unfortunate side-effect of encouraging people to make spelling and grammatical shortcuts, in order to get the most bang for their posting buck.  Twitter, I’m looking at you, here.  Sadly, it’s beginning to bleed over into “real life” writing habits, breeding a new generation of illiterate morons who will spell wait as w8, even when they have no word or character limits.


2. Keyboard Warriors. Not everything on Earth or in the virtual world is a fucking trigger.  Get over yourselves and stop making everyone who is unfortunate enough to attract your attention miserable.


3. Selfies. We’ve all made them, yes.  But you don’t have to make them every day, much less more frequently.  Instagram has got to be the best thing to happen for narcissists, and the worst thing to happen for everyone else, in the history of Teh Intarwebz.


4. Emojis. This kinda ties in with #1.  On many social media sites, you don’t have to use words to express how you’re feeling anymore.  You need only post an image of a thing with a face that best represents you at that moment.  Even though it comes in handy, when you don’t have the ability to say “I’m feeling a little sniffly right now.  I may be coming down with a cold”, when you are able to write out how you’re feeling, using emojis so much may dull your ability to go beyond adding what is essentially a cave painting to a message board.


5. Lack of Fact-Checking. I’m guilty of this just as much as anyone else, even though I try to be as attentive as possible.  In a world where anyone can claim they are a journalist, and images can so easily be manipulated, you really can’t completely trust anything you see, especially on social media.  The problem is exacerbated by people blindly reposting misinformation, based solely on the headline, often without even reading the article itself, much less double checking what’s being reported.

Also, if you want to buy the album, which I advise you to do, as it may be the best decision you make all year, click the festive Shriek logo to your right to be taken to Shriekback's online store. While you're there, click the music option, 'cos there are songs there to download, some of which are free!

In the liners for the Care CD, Carl Marsh refers to this performance of Despite Dense Weed.

"A track that sounds like it's prowling through a mangrove swamp and unlike anything else around at the time. We played this on TV with everyone huddled on the floor, sticks clattering, like an anxious commitee meeting in the rainforest."

If you haven't ordered the CD, click the pic to take care of that:

While you're on their site, be sure to sign up for their newsletter. Also, you should follow Shriekback through the far-flung social media wilderness, in order to keep up with them. As Things tend to happen, an announcement/post/update/you-name-it may very well pop up at one site, but not another, so it's strongly advised to link to all the places online.  Here are the relevant locales:

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