LIFE BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA

As a seasoned blogger I’ve grown immune to social media.

Is someone who discovers boomerpdx on their own any different than someone who lands here based on algorithms and exposure?

With subscription numbers I can present to sponsors as a metric, they are not.

People, people like you, me, them, subscribe to blogs on a whim.

After a few awkward exchanges I’ve stopped bring it up. It’s better for all.

At some point every exchange on social media is awkward.

Show support and solidarity for an idea, an issue, and you get spiked for not showing enough, showing too much, something.

One thing leads to another and something ends before it had a chance to take root.

What could have been? No one will ever know, but there was that passing moment of ‘maybe?’

 

Requests That Go Unheeded

I was busy reading poetry, as one does in these hurly-burly times, and I can’t remember who, but the poem was some confessional work accusing their father for being a Nazi, then attacking the reader for taking part by reading the poem.

Thanks, Sylvia.

What’s more encouraging than remembering a poem from a ‘tortured soul’ writer, but not the writer, then taking a moment to find them on the miracle of the internet.

The internet is one miracle, social media a more defined miracle.

We want to know stuff and things. I grew up with an encyclopedia set resting in a custom bookcase with one of those huge dictionaries on top.

I think that was all because my dad went to college and wanted to remind us we weren’t as smart as we thought.

Turns out he was right about some of us, while the others ignored the whole idea.

On social media it’s difficult to tell who is who, which is which.

Is someone an authentic voice, or some whelp whining for attention?

As a baby boomer blogger with internet tenure, I can say with authority: it doesn’t matter who is who, or which is which.

A spark of interest is all anyone asks for.

Take Sylvia Plath, for instance:

 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.

The Audience

The preening young cockatoos of the past are still present, but instead of their sartorial spender, they show social media skills.

It’s their followers, their subscribers, their blog, their newsletter about their blog, their commerce site to buy stuff mentioned in their newsletter about their blog.

Add a podcast, a book, and a digital badge for most interactions across all of your platforms:

 

Top Global Platforms

• Facebook: ~3.1 billion monthly users; remains the largest traditional social network.

• Instagram: ~3 billion monthly users; visual platform owned by Meta.

• WhatsApp: ~3 billion monthly users; top global messaging app owned by Meta.

• YouTube: ~2.5 billion monthly users; video-sharing giant owned by Alphabet.

• TikTok: ~2 billion monthly users; short-form video platform by ByteDance.

• WeChat: ~1.34 billion monthly users; dominant multi-purpose app in China. 

The Only Thing Missing?

I’m not the writer, and this isn’t the site, to shit-talk anyone into doing anything.

If you need some sales pitch to shift gears, to move forward instead of doing what you’re doing, keep scrolling.

One reader said they liked my review of The Green Book, “ten years after it came out.” (Hey Joey)

They got the joke part, the late review, and the notion that racism is still as prevalent today as it was ten years ago.

My next review will be The Green Light, a story about the signals to racists from people who know better but enjoy the violence, and potential for violence, too much.

Imagine acting on a green light coming from a sack of shit.

It’s a signal to jump in the bag with them. Don’t do that.

But social media is too alluring to keep people from all the anticipated fun included.

What’s not included? How to get out when you’ve had enough.

And that time always comes.

There was a guy in the 1930’s and 40’s who convinced a modern nation of science and education to step off of the civilization train and return to mass murder on a global scale in WWII.

Make that two guys wading in the blood of their own people, one in Germany, one in Russia.

Any time you find yourself cheering for anyone of their ilk, a tough talking whiner, a stab in the back complainer, a puppet with an unknown hand up their . . . back, do a mental health self-check.

If a guy sounds like a jackass, he might be a jackass.

If a guy looks like a jackass, he might be a jackass.

If a guy smells like a jackass? Acts the part? Can’t say the truth in an understandable way?

Gathers loyalists to him like piglets to their momma’s milk?

 

 

Social media says belly up boys, and get it while it’s flowing.

 

PS:

The stain of misguided loyalty may bleach out over time, but the stink is forever.

 

PSS:

I like to believe boomerpdx readers are sweet as a daisy and pure as gold, but as a grown adult I know better.

What I also know is readers here get a shot of insight, a vision to work with, and the wherewithal to use it.

Go out and tell the next person you see, “You’ll have a great day today.”

Them: How would you know?

You: I read it on a blog.

If that seems a little too much, see if you can spot people having a great day instead.

And don’t ruin it for them.

Now, get out there.