Since the rise of social media, it seems as though all of my friends are suddenly experts on a lot of things. Something that is very popular for them to know all about it politics and their opinion is always the correct thing that everyone should believe. Unfortunately for me, I have a wide range of friends on my Facebook feed, which means a wide spectrum of opinions that they post about more than they should. I have friends, mostly people that know my parents and added me as well, that are old timey hippies and on the other end of it I see posts from the feed of down south redneck people. Most of their posts drive me insane.
To solve this, I don't delete them or block them or comment on their posts telling them I'm tired of seeing what they say. I simply scroll onto the next story, usually something funny from Buzzfeed or a football story from ESPN. Just like that, I have avoided reading all about their rants. I noticed that this was especially an issue during the aftermath of the Ferguson decision. Some of my news feed was outraged over the decision, and they cried out that the grand jury made a mistake and that the cop should have faced a sentence. Another part of my news feed consisted of people defending the cop, claiming that he did nothing wrong and the grand jury was right. All the posts about it really started to annoy me, but I resorted to that little trick of scrolling on.
That is an issue with trying to accomplish things via social media. It's so easy to post things and call out for action, and many people do it, and some are successful at it. But if you're like me, I just scroll on and forget about it. I can imagine that a lot of people would rather scroll onto the Buzzfeed post about the 21 cutest animal pictures of 2014 than read about something that needs action. Because of that, I feel like a large audience is missed and it makes social media fairly ineffective in rallying people.
Interesting post! I'm not sure if i completely agree though. One of the best parts of the social media generation is the fact that we CAN express our opinions with the simplicity of clicking a button. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of facts, and lies going around in the media, and people are entitled to their opinion. I don't think people are necessarily posting to prove that they are right, i think that they are posting to express their side and what they think to be right. One of the best parts of living in america is that we are a melting pot of diversity and people are going to disagree with each other, as we are entitled to. I do agree that it can get annoying when there are debates and debates over the issues, but sometimes thats the best way to get the word out. to hear other peoples side of events and learn some new insight.
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