social media mania

Six weeks ago I fell victim of what can only be subscribed as a short and, in the grand scheme of things, relatively mild stint of cyber bullying.

In order to maintain a somewhat professional stance on that particular situation and avoid reigniting the flames of heckling hell, I’ll leave that incident where it belongs – in the past. However, what I will say is this:

Social media is a toxic place to be right now.

It’s as though this time away from what we once knew to be reality has all of a sudden woken us up to what’s wrong with the world and filled us with an unstoppable rage. And, as we find ourselves locked in and locked down, social media is the only place where all of our collective anger, hate, anxiety, panic, fear and frustration can come out to play.

Petrol bombs of blame are flying cyber space in all directions and grenades of hatred are landing on our digital doorsteps. We’re flinging slingshots of shame to politicians, businesses, brands and worst of all, each other.

Sometimes I struggle to understand it all. Our brains have evolved so much and we have thousands of years’ worth of lessons to learn from; our history is full of battlefields and bloodshed, yet it seems our savage, ego-driven, triumph-seeking ways havent left us.

All we’re doing now is repeating old mistakes in a new format. Today, our battles are taking place in the cloud and the bloodshed is in our minds. Our mental and emotional wellbeing are what’s being defeated.

As far as I see it, we don’t need to fight to win, we don’t need to inflict pain to be victorious qnd we certainly don’t need to send negativity out into the world to get our message across. We can campaign for positive change with peace and we can right our wrongs with nothing but the power of love.

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned”.

Buddha