My New Interests and 2 Cents on Social Media News Sharing

I do not blog but I felt compelled to write the following personal essay for your perusal if you have the time-

Those that I became close enough friends with in college, as well as many others, know that I developed two deep and equal passions during those years: Balls and Keeping It Down.

Throughout the ten-plus years that have since gone by, numerous concerned friends have pushed and prodded me to expand my interests. But they learned: with frustration and some dismay; followed by acceptance; followed by amusement— that I am a man of persistence and conviction. 

I hereby want to make those college friends, and all other friends, family and acquaintances aware that while I will be retaining these enduring passions from this day until my last, a fruition of three new interests has ripened within me in the past year, one of which I just identified this past week.

Let there be no doubt in you that I feel a sense of concern in embarking on the pursuit of more than twice as many interests as have kept me so occupied and fulfilled in the last decade passed. Uncertain, I am, as to whether I will be able to dedicate the proper time and resources to juggling this much. After all, I’m merely one man. But alas, one should not turn one’s back on one’s interests.

Without further precursors, I’d like to share my three new passions, ordered by ever so slightly increasing zeal: #spicerfacts; #conwaypivots; and #trumpduplicities. I trust these interests can be grasped or investigated without need for my description.

This social circle announcement now disclosed, I confess that like many others of late, excessive time consumption from facebooking has been burdensome, especially as I work to integrate a balance of my new interests into my schedule. And thus, though I will by no means be vanishing from your timelines, I do intend to re-allocate some amount of my election/policy-induced facebook time in order to properly manage the rigors of such an aggressive new array of passions.

I will indeed decidedly continue to distribute facebook posts relating to political discourse and government policy changes that I deem of high importance or comedic value. And not only is humorous or agreeable/neutral commentary welcome, but should you find yourself in disagreement or contention with the nature of any humor, importance, or hypocrisy regarding any such posts, then I enthusiastically encourage, with maximum degree of sincerity, that you demonstrate balls by stating your thoughts or posing a question to me, instead of keeping it down. For one would hope that such actions' results would be an elevation of mutual understanding toward each other- a worthy outcome for such investment.

But that proposition now out there —  please, pretty-please, with real, fresh Godiva chocolate covered cherries on top — be confident in yourself that you are armed with relevant purpose and knowledge or inquisitiveness. For as I stated earlier, I am a man of persistence and conviction; please seek to avoid being on the receiving end of a hashtag pertaining to one of my newest interests. And be forewarned. I’m not a woman. But I am nasty. 

Not nasty for any merit inherent within nastiness itself- for there is none. But nasty should the nature of a comment received be deficient in any of the following: relevance; accuracy; importance; tone; and clarity and degree of implied underlying purpose. Deficient relevance and/or importance of a comment warrants some nastiness as retaliation for the crime(s) of wastefully expending the time and thinking of those reading and contemplating a comment of such nature. Deficiency in implied underlying purpose, tone and/or accuracy warrants some level of greater nastiness as retaliation for the greater crime(s) of lowering human character expectations, inciting anger, and/or falsifying or obscuring reality which proliferates misinformation within society. High relevance and pragmatism with strong purpose and tone is of course laudable and calls for agreement or a rebuttal in kind.

I encourage you to consciously decide on and embrace your own personal policy of some similar nature should you want to share important news stories but confront dread that you'd possibly have to deal with critics and detractors or feel an understandable insecurity in putting "out there" what you deem important. Remember that for someone to make any unreasonable negative assumptions about your core character based on something you decide to share, the shame is on them, especially since they know you on some personal level- and from those whose reactions you should care about most because they are the people in your life you care about most- you deserve to expect that they will always be understanding and a source of constructive feedback if not the wind beneath your wings of conviction.

Your wall is your virtual property; if you believe something is important for others to be aware of, then is making them aware of it what you should not do? Of course not. That makes no sense. Have confidence in your ability to maintain the integrity of your virtual property according to your own personal standards. You have the ability and utmost justification for deleting commentary beneath your standards of relevant topical dialog. And so too do you have the utmost justification for throwing down the nasty in you when warranted.

If knowledge is power, then be a source of empowerment to all you know when you believe it is called for.

Ignorance may be bliss but so too is it weakness— akin to its spouse gullibility- and a sibling to poverty, resources' inaccessibility, and incapacity to influence decisions that affect you.

And while the saying that “knowledge is power” holds truth, it is actually misguiding. Other forms of power clearly exist. Yet all other forms of power do not have an equivalent idiom. While people of course know that wealth is another form of power, you won’t hear them use that statement as an idiom. Likewise, you don’t hear people say “resource accessibility is power” or “capacity to influence decisions is power.” Such truths don’t make for good soundbites. The idiom regarding knowledge that I mentioned before, which we hear thrown out there from time to time, should clearly be amended to “knowledge is one form of power—” if not in our jargon, then at least within our awareness of its more accurate truth.

The last argument I’d like to leave you with is that social media is too powerful a platform for what I will coin as the “spread-amount” of important and accurate information not to be shared in a proportion that represents a multiple of the inevitable “spread-amount” of unimportant or inaccurate information. We cannot afford for misguidance- on  issues that affect so many people's livelihoods- to be so widespread as to pose what a reasonable person would view as a serious threat to so many. 

And while I am advocating for greater social engagement regarding issues of importance, for one to not recognize that over-proliferation regarding such issues will inevitably cause what I will coin “social-media news fatigue,” is to be a fool. In the same way that accurate and important news needs be more widespread than inaccurate and unimportant news, the proportion of shared facebook news people receive should not form too big a shadow over that of humor and happier content. The extent to which your social audience will pay any attention to what you post is dependent primarily on the importance to them of both the content that you post and who you are to them, but secondary factors clearly include their personal time constraints and their tolerance for an overly excessive volume of news relative to other content in their feeds. Be mindful.

The final and most important tidings I’d like to offer is the following truth:

An existing reality of circumstances, whether personal or societal, is best to be aware of so as to guide you in making appropriate decisions, but never ever allow yourself to get perpetually consumed by mulling over such realities. To the greatest extent you are able to control your own mind, your thoughts should be on each existing moment, not the past nor the future. Live within the present moment. And be a force for good within it when such moments present themselves with the opportunity to do so.

"Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret- there's a million other straws underneath it." -Mos Def

If you find yourself agreeing with my arguments but needing further inspiration to take action, I offer you the outlet to one of my favorite songs of all time by my favorite performance artist of all time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ajkPp75PQ