The (un) sociability of social media

The (un) sociality of social media

From the longest to the shortest. I’m not a social media person. I thought of the titular line in relation to the forceful power of opposites which we have migrated with from our lives outside the ground which has been termed social media. By ‘opposites’ I mean the extreme opposites we find in us as human beings, for instance: love versus hurt; kindness versus cruelty, good versus evil etc. So my thinking is there nothing new on social media. A huge claim I know

Socializing itself is in two; presumably good and believably toxic relations. My definition of socialization is that act by human beings of associating either friends, enemies, loved ones, acquaintances, colleagues just to mention a few.

I will share with you this. At one point in time I had a WhatsApp chat with one of the greatest authors from Zimbabwe. I typed ‘kkkkkkk’ in response to a humorous response he had pulled. Then on that very same day I had an opportunity to meet him face to face. Another humorous jibe was thrown and I laughed, whilst we were conversing about the sweetness of real face to face life talk without the aid of technology. He said to me, look earlier this morning you said kikiki but now I’m seeing and hearing you laugh.

Social media has showed me that it is double edged sword. Look now it is helping me with people from all over the world (Let me that Nigeria and Uganda for leading the pack in viewing my blogs). It has this power of bringing the world close to me. At one point in time I worked as a rpresentative of an emerging company. I saw less of our clients. Social media connected us and our conversations and business usually began and ended on the virtual world. It was convenient!

However, I’m worried as the process of being connected to the world is happening, I run the risk of running away from or neglecting my immediate physical world.

Like the world of face to face, the virtual world carried with it the pretense and exacerbated it to unimaginable levels. Look on your various accounts the type of pictures posted. The interpretation is all yours to do!

It has carried with it the viciousness and the goodness of the world before it. I’m from Zimbabwean, I witness the extreme political polarization of the actual world on the virtual one on tweeter and Facebook. Three or so times I was traumatized by this to the extent that I contemplated withdrawing from Tweeter. So many times I was on the verge of exploding on social media myself