Racism within social media

[MaxPower]

The media have created alot of conflict the last couple of years and have stirred things up to fit the current narrative, which is that we live in a racist country, filled by racist white gammon types.

Before that it was transphobia, before that islamophobia and it goes on.

I'm in no doubt that racism exists (if you get angry by someone taking the knee you need your head checking), but it doesn't just exist towards black people, which for me is one of the most important things that seems to have been forgotten throughout all this.

 

[Benjsh]

As the famous Mike Tyson quote goes....

Social media has made people forget what saying something awful and getting punched in the face for it feels like.

Social media has seen the downfall of society. It's brought out the nasty side of life that was always lurking in the shadows and is now front and centre on display.

My advice to everyone is delete it all. You'll feel 1000 times better for it.

 

[rob666]

Er...can't delete what you never signed up for.
My personal experience with Facebook was for about a month.
Only went on to give a rude response to my sister's friend request, a month later an ex colleague insisted on showing me her babies lunch.
End of Facebook.

 

[Matt.GC]

As the famous Mike Tyson quote goes....

Social media has made people forget what saying something awful and getting punched in the face for it feels like.

That is quite possibly one of the best quotes I've ever heard. That's incredibly accurate actually.

 

[Benjsh]

That is quite possibly one of the best quotes I've ever heard. That's incredibly accurate actually.

Yeah I agree and I like it too.

Social media was introduced with good intentions I'm sure but it didn't stay that way long sadly. I don't go on any of it anymore. It feels wonderful.

 

[Matt.GC]

Yeah I agree and I like it too.

Social media was introduced with good intentions I'm sure but it didn't stay that way long sadly. I don't go on any of it anymore. It feels wonderful.

I was wondering about that myself. I've been on Facebook since around 2008 I think and Instantly loved it. It soon became a free "Friends Reunited" (for anyone who remembers that) and was a place where you could reconnect with people you hadn't met in years and see what they were up to. You could chat, see pictures of their kids and see how they were. It was also a great source of jokes and an easy way of sharing pictures and information. It seemed remarkable to someone who grew up in a world where you had to know where someone lived or know their landline phone number to find out about them and where pictures were shared via an envelope from Boots round someone's house. It seemed revolutionary.

I never joined any of the other sites because I don't understand them and I still don't. They just seemed like a Tesco Value version of Facebook. I still don't understand why you'd use Twitter when Facebook seems to do the same things with fewer restrictions, Snapper Chat when YouTube and Facebook carry longer videos that don't delete themselves in seconds or this new Tik Tock thing which I don't understand at all of I'm honest.

My experience turned south within a few years when someone who disagreed with an innocent comment I made on a news article started trawling my profile and harassing me with loads of abuse and threats that I wasn't expecting. Shortly after, I started seeing quite openly racist content and even groups set up to spread this stuff. I liked a comment on one of these groups from someone standing up against this and a fake profile almost immediately started bombarding me with truly disgusting abuse, some of them about my children who the person behind it found pictures of and their names.

Of course I wised up to all this and now know how to protect myself. I only use it now only to look back on memories when I get a daily notification, look at the odd interesting thing I come across, winding up idiots on certain groups and keeping in contact with the kind of people who you'd like to stay in touch with but are not close enough with if you know what I mean?

I was wondering whether that's a good enough reason to stay? On balance, it's probably actually had a more net negative influence on my life. I'm also worried by how integrated these networks seem to be, even workplaces seem to fully embrace them now.