Random Thoughts – Randocity!

Social media as a platform can be a good thing, but it can also be dangerous. It all depends on how it is used. Let’s explore the dangers lurking on social media.

Social Media as a Platform

Social Media, as its name suggests, is social in nature. That is, it relies on crowds of people to function. Without crowds of people, social media wouldn’t actually be social in nature. Let’s first talk about a few social platforms and then we’ll move onto the core of this discussion.

Social media platforms include such sites as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Quora, YouNow, YouTube and even the older MySpace. Even such platforms such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, SoundCloud, WordPress and even news sites like DailyMail. Basically, any site that allows you to sign up and comment about what others are doing or saying, that’s considered social media. If you can create your own content on the site and which contains your own opinions that others can comment on, that is considered a form of social media. Some of these comment areas do not allow followers, but some do.

Social Crowds and Controversy

The one thing that has been born out of social media is controversy. Controversy comes in many forms including such topics as gun control, border crossings, politics, political views, LGBTQ, simple stupidity and, yes, racial issues.

Controversy is also what fans the viral fires. If you post something that’s considered a highly controversial topic, it’s very likely to go viral. The more controversial the opinion, the more likely it will go viral. The most controversial topics might even be picked up by news outlets like local TV news or possibly even nationwide news outlets like CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC or Fox News and made to go nationwide or worldwide viral.

Many people mistakenly believe that things go viral because social media subscribers make it go viral. Not exactly. Content goes viral because of its controversial nature, not because people make it go viral. Yes, it does take people to make stuff go viral, but a sufficiently controversial topic doesn’t need much help to spark the viral fire. Simply by posting such a highly controversial topic may be enough for that content to become the newest viral sensation.

Viral Degradation

In the beginning of social media, only the absolute most interesting information went viral. Today, social media has degraded from showing ‘the most interesting’ into ‘the most controversial’. That doesn’t mean that this controversial information is in any way ‘interesting’ or ‘good’. It simply means that it’s viral. By viral, I mean that far too many people share and re-share and re-re-share that content over and over. The more people who share it, the more viral it becomes. Viral doesn’t always equal ‘good’; though an ever diminishing percentage of these viral posts do have worthwhile content.

Viral fires typically die down over a 24 hour period. Sometimes less than that. Something that goes viral might take off and be heavily viral for 3 or 4 hours until ‘the next viral thing’ appears. It’s very much a quick up and down situation.

Because of the recent degradation in the quality of stuff that’s going viral, it shows that people’s tastes are changing from being more sophisticated to being much less sophisticated. This likely can be attributed to cost reduction of smartphone devices (and Internet services) which have allowed access to these apps by more and more people. This means that the ‘less educated masses’ of the world now have access to and can sign up for social media platforms directly on their phone with just a few clicks in an app store.

When phone devices remained at the $500-1000 range and only those devices connected to social media by folks with higher educations, the quality of what came out of social media was much higher. Today, because there are now $50-100 devices using lower cost Internet services (with increased rural coverage) and these devices can run Twitter and Facebook and other social apps, these devices have trickled down to the hands of the less educated of the world.

What does this all mean? It means that more and more folks around the world now have access to making comments on social media sites. As a result, there are now, more than ever, such problems as death threats. Whether those threats can be taken seriously depends on many factors… factors which you should let the police determine.

The Dangers of Social Media

Now we get to the crux of this article. Yes, it took a lot of build up to this section because it took all of the information above to describe why social media danger exists.

When social media began, people were urged to only friend people they actually knew. This suggestion was both prudent and entirely ignored. It’s prudent because friending people you don’t really know can lead to dangerous situations. That’s clear. However, in the resulting years since the birth of Twitter and Facebook, people have ignored that safety tenet. Instead, far too many people have chosen to friend everyone and anyone in hopes of obtaining a massive following.

With sites like YouTube and YouNow, designed to encourage unknown followers from around the world and whom you do not know, these followers typically follow you because they like what you have to say. Because of models like YouTube, people assume the same model applies when joining Facebook or Twitter… basically, just get followers at any cost. And yes, some people even begun to pay money to get people to follow them.

The difficulty with followers isn’t that they follow you. It’s that many of them are psychotic. It is estimated that 1% of the population has Schizophrenia and 3.5% of the population has some form of psychosis. The 2019 U.S. population is right around 329 million people. That means 11.5 million people suffer from some form of psychosis and 3.29 million people, in fact, suffer from schizophrenia. But, it doesn’t stop there. You can get followers from all over the world. The world’s population is estimated to be 7.7 billion. Not all of those people have access to social media, but a large enough percentage of that 7.7 billion do.

Let’s bring that down in size a little to a social media feed. If you have a following of 10,000 people on a social media site, that means that at least 100 people in your feed suffer from schizophrenia and at least 350 people suffer from some form of psychosis. Not all of these people are dangerous, but some are. It only takes one… and it’s guaranteed you have at least one in your following.

Psychosis and Social Media Celebrity

Having psychotic people in your following is something that you will need to consider whenever you post something to your feed. It is these folks who might take your opinion the wrong way and possibly even wish harm on you. Whether these folks are capable of actually performing harm on you is based on many factors out of your control. What is in your control, however, is what you post to your feed.

Posting controversial topics is likely to draw these folks out into the open to either heavily praise or condemn you for your statements. Some might even threaten your life with harm or death. The more controversial the topic, the more likely it is to bring divisive and, potentially, dangerous comments. If you discuss politics with an unpopular opinion, you’re going to get many fanatics who will come at you.

On the flip side, you also have the rest of your following who is likely sane. It’s not the sane people who wish you harm. The sane folks also won’t protect you, but they may help you defend your feed. However, those in your following who are sane are impossible to tell from the potentially insane… that is, until you start receiving extremely disturbing responses to your posts. Controversy does bring in followers, but it also draws out the psychotics. If you post something highly controversial, expect to draw out a number of psychotic people into the open… who may then attack you with words and possibly even threaten you.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s way too late once you’ve already posted the content to withdraw it. Once something has gone viral, your content may even draw in even more psychotic people disproportionately to your following. Controversy seems to draw in psychotic people.

Trolls, Psychosis and Threats

Many social media site owners dismiss harsh, irrelevant, dangerous or threat comments as ‘trolls’. Some of these folks may be trolls, but being a troll doesn’t make the person harmless. You never know who is intent on harming you. If you receive a threat, you should always take that threat seriously. You should never dismiss a disturbing comment as harmless, particularly if the person seems to know who you are and where you live. If you receive a threat of a personal nature that even seems to know you and where you are, you should immediately contact the police with all of your evidence. It doesn’t mean the person is actually going to carry out the threat, but you can’t be certain of that.

Livelihood and Viral Dissing

There are likely many folks, probably even more than those listed as having psychosis as being borderline psychotic. What that means is that it might only take one thing to push a person over the edge… that thing might be your next post on your social media feed.

For example, if someone visits your home to service your dishwasher and knows exactly where you live, you should never, ever insult or in any way badmouth this person on your social media feed. Not ever! If that person is a repair person or a delivery driver or any similar locally operated profession, never ever photograph or video them in hopes of putting it on your social media feed to humiliate them. Don’t do this. You are asking for a world of hurt by doing this.

As soon as you do, you’re going to regret it in more ways than one. The primary way is that when this person finds your post humiliating them on your page (and they probably will), particularly if it’s gone viral, they (or their friends) can come back to your house and take action against you or your property. Be warned! Anyone who knows where you live is never a candidate for social media humiliation or harassment.

If you have problems with a local service, use Yelp to describe why their service was a problem, but only using professional words about the service itself. If a specific staff person did something to offend you personally, again use Yelp. Always keep it professional discussing only business reasons why it didn’t work out (what about their service failed you) and never humiliate or call out an individual person by name or show them on video. Only describe the service and, if you must call out employee behavior, call out the person by gender only (e.g., female cashier, pool guy, male pizza delivery driver, etc).

As another example, if you’ve visit a restaurant and the waitperson is exceedingly rude or bad at their job, you can write about that person in your review, but never name them. You can describe that employee’s actions, but only describe them by their actions. Only name names or describe the person to the management team of the restaurant chain and only in relation to your poor service. Never name names or post photos of such employees on social media! You can name names via direct message, private chat or via email to a management representative of the company, but never do it on open public forums for followers to see. If you so choose to photograph or video the person in action, don’t post that to your personal feed. You can choose to hand the video off anonymously to media outlets like the AP, Reuters, CNN or even random YouTube news outlets, but posting a video to your own personal social media feed allows that video to be traced directly back to you. This is never a good idea.

What does this have to do with livelihood? Everything. If you call out a person by name, their current and future employers can find this information online and take action against them. Current employers can fire them for “inappropriate” actions. Future employers can deny hiring or fire them later if found. You don’t want your content to be the downfall of someone’s career now or any time in the future. Why? Because, as I said, psychosis is a problem… particularly if someone is borderline. If your social media action causes someone to lose their job, they could come take that out on you and your family.

I’ll also point out that if you choose to fill your social media feed with controversial topics about businesses, you may find your own employer may not like these posts. Derogatory posts against businesses may backfire on your own employment. You should be exceedingly cautious when posting these types of posts into your social media feed. You never know when something you’ve put onto social media might have insulted your CEO, HR manager or even your boss’s best friend.

There’s no need to take that risk by…

Throwing Caution to the Wind

Buy vomiting up everything controversial you possibly can (simply to gain followers) about anyone and everyone you meet, you are putting yourself in very real danger. You never know who is reading your words and, even more than this, who might take action on those words.. perhaps even against you personally. Inciting people to do things is never a good idea on social media. At some point, there will be a Charles Manson-like social media personality who will incite enough people and then who will feign innocence that it’s just words on a screen. Yet, this person will have incited many people to do entirely inappropriate actions towards others. The police and the legal system will have to up their game to cover these inappropriate uses of social media. I guarantee you, this is coming.

However, that’s the most extreme example of using followers to do bad things. Most well meaning folks are simply ignorant of how dangerous their words and videos can be. If what you’re posting is considered a danger to national security, I can guarantee you the NSA will be at your doorstep ASAP. If what you’re saying, on the other hand, simply shows disrespect your local repairman in a very public and ugly way, you’re putting yourself and your family in very real danger. There’s no need for that when you can CHOOSE not to post such content.

You shouldn’t intentionally throw caution to the wind when writing social media posts. Sanity, intelligence and professionalism should always prevail. I do realize that controversy ‘sells’, but it also sells danger. If you choose to ignore this advice, then you must take the consequences of your actions even if that means someone puts you into the hospital or the morgue. Yes, it can and does happen.

Here’s another very recent example of a homicide of a young girl by a stalker after her stalker caught up with her after harassing her on Discord (and via iMessage). You’ll want to click to follow this thread through to Twitter and read all about this:

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