THE
BETTER LESSON OF SOCIAL MEDIA
When I was a young collegian I was
blessed with one of the most remarkable critics. I was in my first year of
architectural studio and he was a seasoned, gifted architect and communicator
who transformed the tedium of my freshman curriculum into a pleasurable and by
virtue of this reminiscence, fondly-memorable experience. His secret was that
he used vignettes of his marital trysts and trials as a metaphorical structure
for comparative analysis softening the learning process with humor everyone
could relate to. I wonder now how the banalities of married life and sex could
have been compatible with building design and answering myself realize that life
like architecture is all about solving problems. Whether his stories were real
mattered less than their effectiveness as a teaching-tool… the moral being that
people pay more attention to sex than anything else. Hence, we live in a
culture that uses sex to convey most of its messages and as sexual entities we
are none the worse for wear…
I am
certain that were my old professor alive today he would not have the freedom to
teach the way he did then. The intrusions and unjustified implications of a
world driven by social media would crush the colorful personality of such a
magnificent man… sign of the times I guess…
I was a late-comer
to dating and ironically to the world of social media. Like my contemporaries I
learned about the human dimension of socialization the old-fashioned way, by meeting
face to face. In many ways my delayed romance with virtual reality equipped me
with the ability to filter and thereby manage its innately intrusive and
cryptic nature. For what it is worth I prefer the old way and like many others
have discovered that both virtual and real socialization have similar dynamics.
Social media has the ability to expand the ocean of possibilities and for
captains of sound vessels this is wonderful news. I do not have to say that a
word of caution is in order as in every situation for there are decidedly
treacherous waters within the deeps and shallows of social media. It is my
purpose to navigate the good waters and I believe that is the better part of
social media… Like it or not men will set sail and enter this watery realm of strange
and unexpected virtuality. Let us pray they will land on hospitable shores with
their objectivity intact… and if prayer alone will not suffice let us employ
elixirs and libations to celebrate all mankind redivivus.
Oftentimes
a mans privacy is his virginity. Most men prefer keeping their private life
private. Whether an instrument of control or a sanctimonious mirage it nonetheless
speaks to an aspiration for virtuosity… Men are more secretive about their
emotions more hesitant to explore anything intimate beyond pure and noncommittal
pleasure. That being said I shall revise my statement to declare that social
media has more metaphorical verisimilitude to a virtual acquaintance rather
than a date and it most definitely does not approach the status of a virtual romance
whatever that might be. I feel as-if a footnote should follow to explicate the suggestion
poised by the last breath of the last sentence. To repeat the phase, “a virtual
romance whatever that might be". My opinion of virtual dating definitely
leans toward a cool subjectivity, biased in aura and decidedly suspicious. Of
course, a virtual romance is precisely what it is... and there is no moral weight
tipping it toward either the sacred or profane… nor any particularly neutral force
balancing it in the middle. Wisely I have always imagined that I have maintained
a safe-distance from the hypnotic virtuality of social media attributing my philosophical
hermitage to the singular fact that fundamentally I am a realist.
Realists
like me do not appreciate too much speculative uncertainty. We like to know and
examine what we are dealing with the goal being to better understand our
prospects for compatibility with our understanding of expected outcomes.
I might
risk defining virtuality as a quality nearer to fantasy but only because virtuality
possesses some of the magic of the unseen. Electricity was the great magic of
the 19th and 20th century but today it is little more
than a mis-understood service. How many that use it know how it works? I
believe that the spirit upon which the internet phenomenon of the twentieth
century owes itself was the brainchild of Tesla who first envisaged a virtual community
(both local and cosmological) of energetic interconnectivity but in very in
practical, tangible terms. Input, output, synthesis and all the glorious array
of happily intermingling and attractive electrons, protons and neutrons sing
his praises as an awakening force on the advent of human freedom. Cheers to
Tesla who certainly would have marveled at social media for its fluid electro-magnificence!
But we must also ask ourselves if he would have lugubriously sighed… well chaps
there is only one fix for that so Bottums-UP!
It would
be a short argument to debate the difference between virtual and real
especially when it comes down to sex. Sex again? I guess it is unavoidable
after all when discussing social media, so I shall chalk it up as a necessary
and integral force of attraction mirroring life. How else should I hold my
readers captive save with thinly-veiled, carefully placed allusions to sex? I wonder that mundane documents such as legal papers,
technical manuals and physics texts are not liberally inundated with nude, lude
and lascivious pin-ups of all sexes and sexual persuasions to keep those heavy eyelids
lifted.
Virtual
sex can only really exist in the mind. It is a raw, conceptual bundle of
possibility whilst real sex is both mental and physical. It is the bridge that
separates physicality from imagination that cultivates the virtual landscape of
social media preventing it from ever becoming real even though it may be
experienced in real-time… the fantasy-value of social media lay in this
technological anomaly. Social media in real time is truly the last human
barrier to the time-space problem that caused Einstein to envisage his theory
of relativity. Only when time and space can bend so that they can connect over
vastitudes of existence will the fantasy of social media become reality. Now
that is certainly a lid-lifter of a thought.
For the
sake of intellectualism I will digress upon an Einsteinian towpath delving into
the mystique of quantum physics whilst maintaining a firm grip on my glass of
whiskey… (another version of the quintessential lid-lifter). In my minds-eye I
have this opportunity to bedazzle my readers with a metaphysical presentation
that is both sexy and heavy… if you would refresh your libation I feel as if
this journey might be significantly more entertaining. So, lets immerse
ourselves into the wet-world of quasi-reality contemplating a hypothetical phenomenon
originally based only in the dry...
Two lovers
who have been separated for seven month's kiss one another while video-chatting. By this I mean that they begin to actually
kiss the screens of their laptops so great is their longing for tactile
gratification. The lovers live on different continents in real time but not in same-pace.
If space, the physical element separating them could bend itself upon itself
bringing them to the same place, in the same time by fusing their coordinates in
time through time and space so they would be in the same physical place then they
could taste each others lips and feel the heat, texture and pressure of each
others embrace. The virtual-displacement of their experience of their
existence, their location would be superseded bringing them together in a
real-time event. It would be like throwing a crushed-paper ball from
Washington, D.C. to Lagos, Nigeria in nanoseconds… Such a phenomena when it
becomes possible will revolutionize the way people live and communicate on
every level. For now it is just an intellectual vignette intended to titillate
the imagination… much the same as sex… For the intellectual imaginative
creativity is the virtual surrogate of sex.
Which is ultimately
more gratifying, real or virtual sex? To answer that switch tracks to the
mundane. Which is most gratifying real or virtual chocolate cake?
Is it
necessary to delve into the myriad of pattern-similarities between phenomena
originating in a virtual context expanding into the real by virtue of a
fundamental human tendency to graduate from fantasizing virtual chocolate cake
and setting out to experience a real slice?
While this
theory would seem to explain the implosion of human civilisation in the
twentieth century it merely matches identical scenarios sampled from every
century, every era of human existence… it is one of those seemingly brilliant things
which once uttered becomes vanquished by, (get a load of this image), a glamorous
and husky-voiced socialite poised to slay the banter of o'er-cocktailed dilettantes.
She, the femme fatale-virtual speaks in a richly calculated lilt as if talking
through a mouthful of foire-gras whilst holding her billowing gold cigarette
holder in the air saying in a heavy French accent,” Surely you don’t believe
that nonsense dolling!” rolling her bejeweled head and neck back like a swan as
she motions to the barman to fill her champagne glass held expectantly in the
other hand…. as if it should have been refilled hours ago though she just
swallowed the last drop…
Let us
drink with her and toast to her brilliant and beguiling vituality.
At its
best social media is a helpful tool possessing the innate ability to empower
people on a global scale. At its worst social media mimics the most corrosive
and puerile characteristics of its inventors… mankind…
In layman’s
terms this means that social media can be a good date or a bad date… and from a
realist's perspective the comparison pivots between a fond or unfortunate
acquaintance...it’s only redeeming quality is also a haunting one rendering the
phenomenon known as social media a mysteriously intangible phenomenon poised to
follow and contradict human nature. It
is but really isn’t there, can you touch it or see it? It can appear or
disappear in an instant, it is a totally blank canvas allowing us and everyone
we think we know to become a masquerade.
This is
precisely why I choose to remain grounded in the real world. The extent to
which virtuality is pure fantasy is relative to context. At every turn each
virtual party is forced to verify themselves against uncertain faiths. Now if
you add faith and religiosity to our comparative analysis of social media and to
the concept of a virtual landscape, acquaintance, date, lover, husband, wife,
savior, etc. we find the possible suggestion of a virtual marriage. But a
marriage to what? I suggest that social media forces a shotgun marriage to the
unknown the un-verifiable. For many men this would trigger our desire for
privacy and anonymity it would repel and attract us. The nonentity of social
media would allow us to flirt, court, entice and consummate even to marry
without any real ties, investments or consequences. The fantasy of social media
appears to be a complete virtual package like a bag of chips but containing
only air.
Another
analogy might compare the virtual nature of social media to a popular video program
where people, families and communities may be virtually manufactured only to be
discarded at the end of the game. It is a uniquely modern mindset. The
creativity and fragility of such a world view must demand that we carefully map
our progress into the future of human social evolution…
Prior to
the virtual age the nuclear age aroused mankind’s awareness of his proximity to
disaster based on his misunderstanding of the nature of a divine cosmological creation.
It is the idea that matters most. Evil is an unstoppable idea. The arrogance of
men who play at virtual creation and decimation is way over my pay-grade… one
hopes that with time mankind’s awareness of the power of the virtual will arm
him with ability to replace ego with compassion. True to form, he will
certainly rely on sex in order to sell the new brand of virtual
humanitarianism.
Sex, marriage,
consumerism and their antithesis anti-culture and anarchy all haunt the virtual
landscape of social media and they are the cumulative mind-fucks of a world
that is no longer grounded in reality. Social media is not evil, it is actually
a marvelous invention. The iceberg of human culture we have built over the past
100,000 years far surpasses the novelty of mankind’s newest toy, social media.
As such social media should be a mirror of healthy human culture inspiring men
to aspire to new heights. Though I openly laugh at such optimism I also rejoice
at its prospect. Life afer 56 years has taught me to shoot for the moon in
order to reach the stars!
If social
media were a citadel everyone would have a key or only some would have keys
that worked. Who would have the working keys and how they would get them is
purely a matter of consequence.
The first
key to the proper use of social media is understanding and demonstrating respect
for privacy and the second is demonstrating respect for human life and dignity.
At the end of the day the better lesson of social media is that no matter how a
man defines what is real or fantasy he can find a place where men can escape
the harsh and banal circumstances of life to explore positive and fulfilling
experiences from which they may bring back with them greater hopefulness for
and confidence in tomorrow. This confidence is optimized by their ability to
connect with other people in places meant to celebrate beauty of the human
experience…
FIN
CHEERS!
Written By: BIGDADDY BLUES
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