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I never thought there’d come a time I’d be writing these four words, but here goes: Thank God I’m old.
What makes me so grateful for being long in the tooth and gray in the mane?
Well, having just passed a milestone birthday – I’m now entitled to free bus and rail travel in Ireland (you can look it up) – I’m perfectly OK operating in a state of near total ignorance where social media is concerned. Unlike many of my kinfolk, who are decades younger and more in thrall to their mobile devices than most practicing Catholics are to their faith.
As I see it, despite having raised the popularity of the hashtag to an all-time high, social media is a mug’s game, one I seldom play.
If you care to look me up, I’m one of those people on Facebook whose profile picture changes once every few years and whose occasional posts you can very easily live without. In my world, Instagram is a super quick weighing device, X is a mark you make on a voting ballot, and Blue Sky is my favorite Allman Brothers song. (As for President Trump’s impulsive use of social media: #BringBackMillardFillmore.)
When I do have an opinion or viewpoint I want to share, I voice it quietly to friends (my actual friends) or I write a know-it-all column like this one that requires an editor’s approval.
For my troubles I get little or no reaction.
This used to bother me. No author wants his work to go gentle into that good night. But the way technology is evolving these days, with virtual assassins lurking in the shadows to cut down anyone they deem unworthy, enraging readers isn’t the most desirable outcome either.
So maybe being an old geezer – in my day I’ve seen rotary dial phones, black and white TVs, and the miraculous arrival of the VCR – is a good thing. Even if social media had existed when I was coming of age, there wouldn’t be much to dig up. Compared to the youthful shenanigans of even your run-of-the-mill reprobate, my past is a pristine spring meadow of restrained desire, as likely to trigger a hashtag protest as a Mister Rogers tribute weekend.
The way I like to tell it, I didn’t have a misspent youth, growing up in pre-Internet 1970s Medford, so much as an unspent one. I was an energetic and mostly well-behaved kid, a perpetual motion machine at home, but a model of polite inquisitiveness in school and fair-mindedness while at play.
That trend continued into early adulthood. For which I now breathe a sigh of relief – especially after reading Jon Ronson’s disturbing study, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” which chronicles the devastating personal fallout when a number of individuals, for varying reasons, incur the wrath of social media’s puritanical inquisitors. (Unfortunately, Ronson’s 2009 book is even more relevant today, with social media now playing host to vile misogynists such as Andrew Tate.)
Sometimes being anonymous – as well as an old geezer – has its advantages. You’re invisible in both the physical and online worlds.
So all in all, maybe not a bad arrangement when you consider the Faustian bargain celebrities – and their hybrid offspring, social influencers – agree to in our 24/7, tell-all sensationalist culture. No matter how often we hear singers or film stars (or online shills) decrying the media’s intrusion into their private lives, it’s a relationship they must continue to cultivate for the sake of their careers.
As we’ve become increasingly aware, however, an unsettling wrinkle has emerged: The “fans” are now in play more than ever, equipped with a worldwide platform from which to launch their asinine and often menacing commentary on a TV appearance, sports performance ... or newspaper column.
I suppose there is some benefit to engaging with social media, especially if you’re a self-published writer trying to draw attention to your books. But to call the ungovernable domain of social media a jungle is to do a disservice to real-world jungles, where the predators are at least operating out of necessity.
So what’s today's takeaway, in light of social media’s undoubted role in facilitating mindless violence and unrest as well as giving a broad platform to people who are just plain unpleasant?
Well, I’m going to show my age again, harking back to a bygone time to sum up my view.
To update a line from the Irish wit and Victorian era celebrity Oscar Wilde: There is only one thing in the online world better than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Medford native Steve Coronella has lived in Ireland since 1992. He is the author of “Designing Dev,” a comic novel about an Irish-American lad from Boston who's recruited to run for the Irish presidency. His latest publication is the column collection “Entering Medford – And Other Destinations.”
