The universe is digitalising.
If it weren't for social media, I probably wouldn't be a feminist. If I weren't a feminist, I probably wouldn't be a writer either. If I weren't a writer, I certainly wouldn't be a trainee journalist, and I definitely wouldn't be writing this for The Huffington Post right now! I guess what I'm trying to say, here, is that I owe a lot to the media platforms that allow me to process my thoughts, ideas and emotions into an easily-digestible, bite-size format, and dish them up to as many as 50 million people to read.
That last part, is exactly the part that scares me. We are never more than one Google search, and two clicks away from reading another person's opinion on another volatile subject matter. You don't need to be qualified to espouse your inner-most thoughts to an entire population of internet-users, and no one is going to stop you, even if you try.
Rather dangerously, it is reported that almost one in three people suffer at the hands of Opinionatism, a terrible, degenerative disease that dissolves all of the minds filters, causing the sufferer to eject their every opinion on every matter of every type. Scientists are working around the clock to discover a cure, that excels beyond the use of several layers of duc-tape slapped across the mouths of their patients.
As much as I owe social media platforms such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook for the future of my career, it would not be over-stating to suggest that social media also has the unbridled talent of bringing all of the world's worst people together in one place. Social media has become a monotone spectrum of people's generic, bottom-feeding opinions on matters that they were never fucking asked about to begin with. When abused, social media transforms from being an open, intelligence exchange of ideas, to a digital tar-and-feathering, conducted by all of history's village idiots as they congregate in one place.
As we are all probably aware of at this point, stupidity is contagious. Idiocy is fucking air born. So all we need, really, is for one infected person to spill their festering piss into the proverbial water hole, and BAMN! We've got ourselves an epidemic. And what does this mean for the rest of the world's bloggers, tweeters, and social communicators? Are the voices of the truly informative elite being muffled by the sounds of deafening ignorance? The problem with social media is it gives any old fog-horn with a Twitter account the means to spread their toxic opinions, on an unregulated platform that is strategically designed to take the weight of all the nations dunces. And the only thing louder than someone who has the Stupidious strain of Opinionatism, is the unrelenting biter that chews on their stupidity, instead of muffling it with their own counter reaction. And inbetween the idiots being idiots, and the other idiots complaining about those idiots, there really isn't a lot of space left for us non-idiots. My head hurts.
My fear is that the truly passionate, thoughtful voices are soon going to be far too muffled by the arse-cheeks of society's bottom-feeders, that soon they won't be able to be heard for fart nor fiction. Soon, the most engaging of us will devolve into nothing more than a mere vibration, a distant buzzing that resembles our Smartphones; when we could have sworn we heard them go off, but it turns out it was all in our imaginations.
In conclusion, therein, I say this: vow to speak up - but, before you do, ask yourself if your voice is kind, thoughtful, honest, and if it improves upon silence. Because if it doesn't, it's probably worthy of its own muffling.