Social Media is partly to blame.

I remember when I was in college Studio 54 was in it's heyday. I honestly thought that if I ever went to New York City, I would go. Now I know there is no way they would have let me in. And if they had let me in, I would have been paralyzed witnessing some of the stories they had about the place. I have spent a life with a degree of naivete. 

East German Discotheque circa 1977

It is interesting that suddenly a lot has been banned on Facebook and Twitter. Ya think it could be a financial decision. The 2.9 billion lawsuit by a voting machine company over lost revenue will be an interesting bit of television. I was busy cleaning my brother's house getting it ready for sale and missed much of the impeachment trial. I was not surprised by the verdict. Trump's defense attorneys did not offer much of a defense. They knew going in there were not enough votes to convict for inciting the insurrection.

But---Social Media has some blame. Not the companies, but the lies people casually shared with one another. I shared a few too. One of my posts came back as partially false on Facebook. I deleted the post. I noticed a grammar issue and a misspelled word which I should have noted as a red flag. 

My beef with social media is more personal. I have a sister who has had a stroke. Predators use social media well and they can be someone local. The other nuisance is the well meaning fount of wisdom who gives advice which they do not know is useless and counterproductive.

In following politics on twitter, I know why the gist of twitter eluded me. There is too much flotsam. I enjoy some of the politics. Some of it is just mean spirited opinion. Some of it is news before it is news.  Having learned twitter by anger over the insurrection, I recognize one big fact.

I will never have a valid platform on any social media site. I'm just not an exciting person. I've noticed we all join a subgroup and become an echo chamber of opinions. I will say I avoided politics on Facebooks and still do. But politics is quite fun on twitter. I hate that some have been banned in that I don't think going to little known sites creates a healthy environment. Part of a healthy viewpoint is that chiding we all get that moderates our opinions.

A local professor has been put in the limelight via twitter by a student for a quite nasty comment they made to a student. As a retired teacher, I think about how a bit of well said sarcasm was enjoyed by students including the target of the sarcasm. But it could get you in hot water. So I sympathize with this teacher. I don't know her from Adam's housecat, and her comment was horrible.. 

I loved my summer school students who were really a classroom of boys who did not turn in a paper. You never got a student in there with low marks due to lack of ability. I had one class that I thought was going to best me. But after two weeks, they calmed down and were really quite nice kids. 

One lad would tell me he could not do the assignments. He sat next to me and was really very bright. He would start that petty banter with me. I was reading and marking papers. I turned to him and told him I couldn't fix stupid and winked at him. He loved it. But man, on twitter, I would have had to leave the country for saying something like that. Although those boys could be rascals, I doubt any of them would have ratted me out on twitter.

Meanwhile none of this is very important for those scrambling in Texas and other regions with the powerful winter storms they are experiencing. I pray they get their power going, pipes repaired and water flowing soon. There is a lot of real suffering happening. There is little any of us can do but pray for them. God bless the emergency workers and repair workers who will be going to these hard hit areas.