Firstly I need to say I am a fan of technology and of social media, I Facebook, learn and be entertained with You Tube, Instagram occasionally, am designing my own web pages and have finally grasped the concept of Twitter #Finally!!!
Having been in radio for over a quarter of a century I love the way social media allows my listener to interact with me, there is nothing quite like discussing a topic on air or throwing out a question and having an answer or an opinion back in a flash it's what makes radio in this day and age exciting and has re energised my love of the medium.
However there is one aspect of social media that leaves me scratching my head and despairing for human kind and that is the way comments can turn to out and out hate. Let me explain where I am coming from, a few weeks ago I went searching for a song on Youtube I had not heard in ages to do a little reminiscing, to my musical delight it was there and I pressed play.
Whilst listening I decided to see what other fans of the song were saying about it, to my horror in the space of 33 comments it went from "what a great song, the memories are flooding back" to " You stupid %&*# you wouldn't know good &*^%^$# music you %^*@ head, why don't you do us all a ^&#$!* favour and ^*$# yourself"
Seriously, is this what we are coming to? I would like to say this is a rare occurrence, but sadly it's not. Whether it's You tube, Facebook, web page or news link comments the level of hate is beyond understanding and seems to be getting worse. How do we go from a nice comment about a song to the vitriol laden diatribe that ensued?
What ever happened to if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all? sadly it has gone by the wayside. I am all about robust discussion and the right to disagree with an idea or comment, but I don't have the right to head off on an expletive laden rant. I don't agree with everything I see on the web or social media and I can't do much about 99.99% but I still have control of 2 things, the back button and the off switch, imagine how much better the world would be if we used them more...
That's my take.....
Todd
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