By George Tarabay
As humans and Kryptonians, we are programed to think and assign adjectives in a certain way: Sheep are weak, wolves are bad, men are stronger, and women are more mature (which is partially true, but I digress).
This incisive need we built as a populous to say stuff about things, has really begun to avail its over long due bill and the root of all that is: Free Broadcasting Platforms.
No this is not another article about “The effects of social media on a society” or “how businesses can strive in the digital realm”, rather it is a plea for people to just…relax.
I remember a time when people had to dial seven phone numbers and connect wires together to get a hold of a person, but with today’s platforms and technologies you can reach someone in less than a second. Heck, you can have an AI assistant dial them for you should you find yourself elbows deep in a delicious pizza, and that is why I love technology: It allows me to keep my meal time/connectivity hands free.
What I am not a fan off is “the I must” feeling most people get using these platforms. Someone posted a video I do not like “I must tell them it sucks”. Someone posted a tweet I do not agree with “I must tell them they are wrong”. What is even worse is that people think that this is a birth right to voice themselves at every turn of events because they can and not because they have to. What people miss these days is the fact that words are an arrangement of letters in a certain order that we adapted in a way that makes sense. Want to know why words have no real impact? There is a proven theory that if you give a monkey a keyboard and infinite time, at some point, and at random, that monkey will be able to recreate Shakespeare’s entire library by randomly typing. I am not stripping words of their effect, words do have a beautiful sensation if they are nice, however the fact that we allocate so much emotion to negative words is beyond me. Write a big essay in the comment section on someone’s post, depicting the beauty of what they just posted, then have someone else post two words under it, like “this sucks” or “this is just bad” and see the person ignore your essay, and engage in a full on conversation trying to defend themselves. It’s what we do. Sad, but true.
That’s why I am writing this piece. I have one small piece of advice for both the content creators and the spectators: relax, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter Mr. Content Creator, because it is not well constructed. It’s a derivative of hate aimed towards disrupting you. It doesn’t matter Mr Spectator, because not once did anybody leave an online argument with a different opinion. At the end of the day, we go online with pre-set opinions and we generally leave with the same ideas.
It’s simple. If I like something, I write a nice comment, if not I keep my mouth shut and move on to the next thing. My opinion does not matter, not because I am irrelevant, but because it’s a non-tangible platform with millions of letters inputted to it every second, mostly negative and pure hateful.
But what is real, is the person on the other side of my screen, they have feelings and a story that I am not aware of, and one simple word can send them in a downward negative spiral. Even though people might seem happy, remember, we all use a perfect avatar of our real character online.
It was defined in philosophy that your conscious is what stops you from pressing a button that would kill a random stranger even if it makes you filthy rich. Today, consider the number of buttons that we do press or tap on that could easily kill strangers without even enriching our lives.
Stop it, please…just relax. Oh, and if you don’t like this article just move on to the next one.
George Tarabay is a local radio host, comedian, marketing expert and a self-proclaimed average human being. For his latest updates, follow him on Instagram @GeorgeTarabay.
