Influences can be good or bad it’s a fact everyone knows, but in this blog I want to talk about the internet influence in general. I know there are bad influences and good influences on the internet, but as whole and overall is it good or bad and for what reasons. I’m going to identify general stuff in the internet that influences us and in what way does influence us. This is all my opinion there are no real facts here so you can by all means disagree with my point of view, all I ask is you try to understand where I’m coming from.
I think I will start of with something that’s controversial just to get you thinking. So let’s start of the the #MeToo movement. Now before you jump on my back and call me all kind of names your parents wouldn’t be proud of allow me to explain. The good this has done is by far the best thing to come out of 2018 in what was otherwise a….excuse my language for a second but 2018 was a shit year. Women all over the world have benefited from this in more ways than one, and I now hear that China is having it’s own #MeToo movement, however there is a downfall to all of this. Unfortunately are those that use this movement to jump on the bandwagon so to speak and innocent people have been blamed for things they neither said or done and it’s affected their lives negatively. This is extremely disappointing to see considering what the #MeToo movement originally stood for, and that is sexual harassment. However we now live in a world where if you are famous your words and actions carry more meaning than those who aren’t. This in itself is a problem to which I wish to discuss with you another time. Back to the subject at hand, I’m glad that such an important subject has gained the attention of the world, but let’s be honest this should of happened a long ago and now we seem to have women coming out the woodwork claiming to have been sexually abused in some sort of way or another. The difficult thing for us is to determine who is telling the truth and who is just straight lying. Overall I think the #MeToo movement was a great idea to start off with but now I feel it has spiralled out of control and that’s down to internet.
The second thing on my list is this not so recent trend of giving generously to the homeless. I’m sure if you’ve been on YouTube or even Facebook over the past year or two you would of seen videos of this nature. If you have read through my previous blogs you would know that I whole heartedly welcoming the idea of random acts of kindness and I try my best to make sure I do this. My problem with these videos on giving generously to either those that are less fortunate than most or homeless people, who seem to be the main target for the kind of videos is that I feel it is mostly just done for the views and doesn’t seem to me that the person or persons they give generously to have a say on wether or not they want to be filmed. Why do people feel the need to film themselves doing this anyway? It all seems odd to me. Surely you’re doing it because you want to and therefore it shouldn’t matter who sees you doing it, and not because it’s the next big trend. I recently found out that Rhianna has been over in Africa helping to build schools and yet there is nothing on any of her social media about it, see how easy it is to do something for someone and not shove a camera in their face to let the whole world know? People need to realise that as long as you’re happy with your act of kindness then there is no need for the cameras because the feeling you get from doing it means so much more. What I’m trying to say is this culture of filming yourself doing random acts of kindness seems to be over exaggerated in more ways than one and I think it’s a rather negative influence. For example for all the goods it’s doing, those that are giving don’t seem to enjoying the actual feeling of helping someone out.
The final one I’ll do for today is social media, your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter just to name the obvious and arguably the most popular of the many that are out there. I’m going to try and tackle each of those three main platforms individually as even though they are all social media websites they each bring something different to this discussion. I think it’s fair that I should point out that I have an account with all three of these even though I’ve found myself using them less and less as time goes on.
First let’s start with Facebook. Now out of the three mentioned above Facebook has been around the longest and it’s important that I point out that I’m not necessarily the company itself I’m talking about but rather what people are using it for. Facebook is a rather large platform with millions upon millions of users, and I see it as really a platform that allows you to keep in contact and share things that happen in your life with friends and family. Unfortunately it’s not really what a lot of people are using it for and again this is all in my opinion you may use Facebook a lot and enjoy it, I’m just telling you what I think. I find Facebook a rather toxic place and find more arguments there than either Instagram or Twitter. Most of my “friends” of Facebook seems to have random people on their friends list that they have never met. When I asked one of my actual friends that I see regularly why this is his reply was simply “they sent me a friend request so I just accepted”. Now many of you may do this too for either the same reason or you may have your own reasons, but my problem with this is if you don’t actually know the person but accept the request you’re allowing someone you have never met an inside look into your life. For many us who say we care about our privacy this seems like a hypocritical thing to do. Overall I find Facebook out dated on a lot of aspects and views of the world and I find a lot of negativity whenever I go on there, maybe I’m just not looking in the right places.
Next up is Twitter. When I first joined Twitter I found it exciting to use and very informative, as a matter of fact for many years it became the only social media platform that I actually paid attention to. I liked the idea of talking about almost anything and not getting smart little comments or remarks like I had experienced on Facebook. I used it as my daily news source and found the whole experience quite uplifting. However after a couple years I started to realise more on the more popular people’s accounts rather than mine, an increase in negativity. You see Twitter makes it extremely easy for you to remain anonymous which I think on social media platform isn’t really the right thing. Due to how easy it is to stay anonymous I see that certain people use this as an excuse to say some really hurtful things towards others knowing that there will be practically no backlash from it as no one know who they are. I find this disturbing as what you find on Twitter are some of the most degenerating comments you will ever read, but again maybe I’m just not looking in the right place.
Last but not least we come to Instagram. I find this social media platform the most disturbing of all. What I take away from Instagram is the fact that everyone seems to be living this awesome life and they’re constantly happy when this really isn’t the case for the majority of them. This false pretence that everything is just fine and I’m living my best life is getting out of hand on Instagram and I feels it’s pushing people to do some really worrying things just to get those extra likes. I feel that it can be used for so much good like teaching people to love themselves and to love their body but instead we have terms such as ‘Instagram model’ and ‘Instagram famous’ To me this just sends out the wrong message to those that use this platform. However having said all that one thing has come out of Instagram this year that gave me a little hope that there are people using it in the right way and do truly have kind intentions when using it. What am I talking about? Well it’s that egg. The world breaking egg. The one that currently has the most liked picture on Instagram (a little over 53million at time of writing). Whoever it is that runs that account is a genius. Not just because they achieved this feat with just a picture of an egg, but for using their new found fame to not only stay anonymous but to bring a subject such as mental health to the forefront of a global conversation and is promoting love and kindness in more ways than one. With that said my hat goes off to you, whoever you may be egg.
To you with love, your friend THC x
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