Social Media: End of Civilization?

I don't think too many people would argue with me that things in society, both home and abroad are starting to get out of hand. I'm part of that last generation that grew up before things like Myspace, let alone Facebook and YouTube. Hell I still remember when 56K was considered fast. Things back then were a lot more calm compared to today.

Before I start sounding like some cranky old guy shaking my fist saying "back in my day!" and pointing an M-1 Garand at people and telling them to get off my lawn, I do have an actual point. So why do I pose the question of whether social media is the end of civilization?

Well before the internet was what it as, unhinged crazy people had pretty limited reach, even on the internet. You would have to seek out their pages, and that's if they even had one. Well now with the reach of social media, every two bit crank, psycho, and aspiring cult leader, have a voice. No matter how deranged, off the rails, sexist or racist their message is, now has reach. But wait, don't people have freedom of speech? Isn't that good thing? Slow down a second...

First off, freedom of speech, is freedom of speech without interference from the government. Freedom of speech is not every potential Jim Jones having an audience. Second, the other issue is the the general population doesn't know how to think. Children are raised up these days being taught that their feelings matter and people care about their feelings, but on the same token you generally won't see Critical Thinking or Logic till college, and even then in college, they're elective classes.

So where does that leave us, well now we have everything from religious fundamentalists to SJWs with a silver tongue, and an audience. You can guess what could come out of that. We start to see extremist views resonating with people and being disseminated. We get well meaning, yet naive millennials getting ideas like a racist White, Christian, Patriarchy dominate the Western World, stuffed into their heads. Going back to what I said earlier about people not knowing how to think, you have these same millennials (but it's not just them) unable to deconstruct the barrage of rhetoric shouted at that, actually buying into, what would have just been considered the ridiculous rantings of a nut.

Now why do I single out social media on what is a multifaceted problem? Because social media is what created the environment for this issue to grow exponentially out of hand. All the special snowflake, easily "triggered", safe-space needing SJWs at places like Mizzou and Yale, where did they come from? I mean something had to have made them right? They didn't just come out of the ground. In some sense they came from the internet. The ideas stuffed into their head was more than likely conveyed to them though the internet. The constant exposure to a specific rhetoric to a person who is unable to deconstruct the rhetoric will more than likely lead to the person becoming radicalized, regardless of the rhetoric, be it radical religious doctrine or radical social doctrine. The best example of this radicalism that I can think of is the return of segregation. Yes, segregation is making a come back, only today they're called "safe-spaces".

We wouldn't be at this point, if the deranged elements in society did not have such a loud voice. The other issue with social media, is that when one deranged radical gets their voice out and people listen, those people begin spreading the original message to others, and so forth and so fourth, like dominoes falling or a more appropriately a cancer spreading. But it doesn't stop there. While you have people spreading the toxic message, those same people will also work to silence dissenting and debunking messages.

The one particular result of these kind of radical rhetoric receiving a wide audience is the recent prevalence of the "crybully". The crybully is that little turd that starts shit with people, then cries to the nearest authority figure/anyone who'll listen and claims victimhood, when the actual victim calls them out on their shit. Why has this become a thing? Well hand in hand with an amplified voice in social media, is the emotionally driven mentality of guilty until proven innocent. People don't want to look like a racist/sexist/asshole so they listen to the alleged victim and believe at face value. The end result of that is this professional victim mentality, because social practice has given the words of a victim greater validity. All you need to do is hop on any Youtube video or other social media outlet on a hot button issue (like a rape, or a police beating) and watch the reaction that people who don't rush to judgement and say we need to wait till all the facts are and the matter has worked though they system. They'll get called racists, called rape-apologists or some other socially oriented derogatory term.

So how does this all come together to "end civilization"? All of this comes down together to shut down discourse and replace it with orthodox group-think. To replace intellectual discourse with emotional screaming. More and more it is no longer about who has the strongest argument, but rather who has the loudest voice. Who ever can shout louder is right. We take a look at the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the corner stone characteristic of these eras was the expansion of science, of reason, of discourse. These, as I have pointed out are the very things that are being eroded all for the sake of the egos of a select few.

Are there legitimate gripes? Sure. Has social media been used to positive ends? Absolutely. But for every good that it does, it gives a voice to a random deranged psycho, sexist, and racist. It's giving Jim Jones a world audience.

But in a sense, social media only exasperates and existing problem. The problem being an inability to critically think, and instead the prevalence of an emotionally driven herd mentality. If there was an equal emphasis on critical thinking in education as there was on feelings, then we wouldn't be where we are. We wouldn't be looking at an utterly repugnant human being and a WWE Attitude Era heel caricature as the presidential front runners from two political cartels. We wouldn't be looking at college students whining about every little thing as "micro-aggression" when ever they don't get their way. We wouldn't be looking at everyone trying to claim victim status for attention. Like any piece of technology, social media is neutral, what kind of effect it has is wholly determined by the user.