Lately, Social Media Just Makes Me Feel Like Barfing……My First Angry Post

Lately, whenever I read posts on social media, I just want to barf! Yes! Upchuck. Vomit. Loose My Cookies. Ralph. Whatever you call it, it means that what I am reading makes me sick.

People can be obnoxious! Yes. There, I said it. Obnoxious. And, it might include you!

There is too much blaming, too much self-righteousness, too much in your face, I told you so, mentality. It has come to a point where I just want to remove myself from the pages and be inaccessible. I know it can be done. My husband does not have a “page” nor does he want one.

So, you know a big word or have a large vocabulary.  So do I.  You do not need to be thanked. I know how it feels. I wasn’t.  You are the best of the best.  Is this self-proclaimed or did someone tell you that?  Your child did 17 AP courses in high school!  Somehow, that does not seem impressive, but more like, idiotic.   Yes, it is all enough to make me sick. I might be rapidly coming to the conclusion that my husband is right. We should move to the lake house and escape humanity.

And then, I remember that I have enjoyed camaraderie with friends from my past, students I have enriched, administrators I have known, and easy access to family.  Realizing those things makes the barfing part go away – at least temporarily.

Here’s the thing. ( I’ll use the damn contraction in my post, too! It is not often I succumb to slang in the written word, but it is necessary today and seemingly, tolerated by many!)  We need change. We ALL – from the very young to the very old, from the most intelligent to the cognitively disabled, from the very rich to the poorest of poor – we ALL need to change.  Schools need to change. Licensing practices need to change. Bureaucracy needs to lessen. Scientists need our support. Health care needs to treat the patient not the EMR or the computer. College students need safe exposure to views other than their own. We need a better society – a more giving, tolerant community, more honesty, less capitalism, more respect for authority and authority figures like police officers, less abuse of the system, more sustainability, and more solutions to problems before we have to leave them to our children and grandchildren.  Our earth is dying. There! I said that too. We ALL need to change. I beg of you to honestly think of what you can do to better the planet and/or society AND not expect anything at all in exchange. We know you cannot even expect a thank you.

Basically, I do not think the internet is providing an avenue to make those changes. This belief is reinforced every time I check my social media.  My blog is not being widely read. There are other, more entertaining, more poorly written, more laughable pieces than mine. Let’s face it, I am a serious person, trying to provide serious opportunities and information for enrichment.  Yet, it goes nowhere. It is not what people want to read. It is not sensational or entertaining enough. And, that tells me that people, most people, really do not want to change.

So, I have two choices. I can continue to stay on social media and occasionally feel like barfing. Or, I can remove my attempts at positive influence and opportunities for enrichment and be obliviously ignorant to the idiocy that surrounds us.

Although the latter seems very appealing, I think I will choose the former – for now. For me, the positive always outweighs the negative.  And, I am not sure being ignorant would make me happier.  So, what does this mean? It means you will occasionally be exposed to a rant such as the one I have gone on tonight.

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