A House of Divided Followers Cannot Stand

Social media can bring awareness. It can also bring destruction and get us off task.

I turned 28 on June 8th. It is a birthday I share with the infamous (depending on what side you’re on and what day) Kanye West, and a month I share with the President – who is truly a Gemini to the fullest extent. Yes … Kanye, Donald, and I are all Geminis.

Not only are we all social and talkative, intelligent, very intelligent – the best intelligence – we can be impulsive. Social media can take advantage of that impulsivity.

I haven’t had that urge per say, like the President tweeting or what Kanye is spouting on public platforms, but the temptation is certainly there. But as I celebrate another year, in the most tumultuous time arguably since 1968, I feel we all at this time have a little Gemini in us.  And we need to step back, get our thumbs off Twitter, and faces off Instagram, and breathe. If just for a moment.

C’mon Donald. You too. All together now.

Social media can bring awareness and shed light on injustices never seen before. It gets us behind a cause, or provokes thought on a topic one might not have given previous thought to. On it’s best days it can unite us – especially in moments of social and economic unrest – getting justice for George Floyd, or getting strangers to donate to small businesses destroyed by the pandemic.

But on its worst days, it creates nasty feuds and absolutes, and runs counter productive to solutions. It feeds on raw emotions and impulse.

That leads to spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, accusing Joe Scarborough of murder, bloggers and politicians attacking and out trolling each other, propping up defunding of police as a mandatory solution you should march for – the list goes on an on, further creating cracks in our imperfect union and political system.

We are forgetting and increasingly losing interests in talking with each other, let alone wanting to. We are letting social media and raw emotion dictate policy.

We think because we are all on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram that we can attack anyone we want – and that there is not a human behind that Blue Check Mark.

We have to stop doing things for the Gram and do things for each other. We can solve racial inequality and unemployment if we put down our phones and simply have a conversation – six feet apart, of course. Left or Right. Lee Carter or Donald Trump.

On the right we need to set the example again because no one is advocating for common sense, which is what we were founded on. Instead of getting down in the mud with every disagreement and polarizing issue or person, let’s not get in the mud.

Maybe this is my new-found old age talking. But our Nation cannot take anymore of this. It is up to us to self-regulate, to unplug, to think in terms of reason and compassion, not selective blindness and anger.  When twitter trolls go low, we must go high.  Let’s be best.