The Impact Of Social Media, Especially Facebook

Some of us underestimated the power of social media, especially Facebook. Some of us thought that there was nothing revolutionary about Facebook. We were of the belief that the Internet was the Internet and there was nothing to be said about Facebook that could not be said about the Internet. Yes but...

Facebook accelerated the spread of simplism. That was not always the case with the Internet. Because of boundless storage space, should we decide to do so, we could peruse the source notes of a given book. A big fat non-fiction book might contain dozens of pages of footnotes. Reading the source notes would require hoofing it to a high quality university and a lot of legwork thereafter. A post-Internet sources derived from say, a medical journal, could probably be read in one's living room. That was the Information Superhighway.

Facebook might be The Misinformation Superhighway. The selected audience called followers or friends generally does not contest the veracity of anything. Whereas we were dealing with information overload, social media especially Facebook, solves the problem. Facebook is a goldmine of slogans, cliches, half-truths, selective truth, quotes out of context and outright silliness.

A quick illustration of how misinformation is spread via Facebook. Robert Reich, in conjunction with MoveOn.org produced “The Truth About The Economy.” The video lasts two minutes and thirty seven seconds and at this writing it has 1,652,790 views.

It is considered impolite to call a public figure a “liar.” I get annoyed at the Occupy Amazon/Occupy YouTube crowd who reflexively call their rivals “liars” because they are either too lazy or too stupid to refute anything. That is the Alinsky influence and if you don't believe Saul Alinsky has damaged our country, think again. We should respect other people's views. They might be reading from a different cannon. They might be misinformed. Respect should be a given.

Having said that, Robert Reich has once more crossed a line. For some wacky reason we hold public figures to a lower standard of honesty. In a less than perfect world, we would expect truth from a Secretary of Labor or a college professor. Truth.

Robert Reich is at the very least, guilty of intellectual dishonesty. Of course he is also caught promoting “material discrepancies.” Falsehood seems to inflict those who believe strongest in their moral superiority.

The Reich video for all its flaws teaches a priceless lesson: Sadly, it takes more verbiage, more time and more energy to refute a falsehood than to promote a falsehood. At Post Obotomy Syndrome I posted two videos that dismantle the Reich video. One is Robert Murphy's which does a masterful job of not just refuting Reich but also exposing his falsity. It took Murphy ten minutes and two seconds to present his case. As of this writing this video has 72,097 views, less than 4% of Reich's audience.

Lee Doren also does an admirable job of crushing Reich's fairy tales. It took him five minutes and to date his video has been viewed by 60,320 people.

The Reich video was made popular by Facebook users. Two minutes. Just two minutes. Who cares about all that truthy stuff? Just two minutes. Mark Twain said “A lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is putting its shoes on.” Twain was correct but in the Facebook era the lie can fly around the world two thousand times while truth is still lacing them up.

Another perspective on Facebook. To this day I do not understand Facebook's appeal. A former co-worker insisted I get on Facebook. I did. It was fun for a while. Kind of like everyone now has a blog. Got it. Of course, not everyone has much to say and the minutia of their daily lives soon grew tiring.

After the 2012 election I jumped ship. Most of my FB friends guzzled the Obama Kool-Aid. They did not care that we were a bankrupt nation. The presidency was just one more season of “American Idol” and they like Barack. Bye bye zombies.

Then a relative developed a serious illness and decided to post status updates on FB. I reactivated my membership and I was back in the pool in all of its myriad contents. Despite constantly reminding myself to keep a low profile, I would ultimately get baited by a ridiculous comment.

“I think a man with a helmet defending his country should make more money than a man with a helmet defending a football.”

That is a pointless and inane statement but it attracted “Likes” and several supportive comments. “Don't flame. Don't flame. Don't flame,” the voice within roared. I posted a polite comment stating the obvious. We can pay football players $2 million/year because there are only about two thousand players in the NFL. If we paid all 1.3 million members of the Armed Forces in a likewise manner, it would cost us approximately $2.5 trillion, roughly our entire federal revenue. That figure does not include reserve forces or the National Guard.

It was a left-brained, dispassionate comment. I did take a gentle jab at the poster, K, a good guy who is not stupid but who is prone to saying stupid things. I called the comment politically correct (which it is) because K does not fancy himself even a little bit PC. I kicketh the hornet's nest.

Heartless. Tom Brady gets free medical care, our vets get zero. What does a football player contribute to society? Valid points one and all but let's get back to the numbers. More disapproval including a guy who pasted an oversized thumb pointing downward in reference to my commentary.

A microcosm emerged and I was reminded of why one of the worst presidents in US History was re-elected. The social medium is the social message and Facebook's message is rampant stupidity. Facebook was loaded with bumper sticker wisdom of the income as a function of respective helmets variety. There would be praise for Obama and even more scorn—and falsehood and smears and character assassination—for all who challenged him. David Axelrod Alinsky would have mounted a determined effort to spread lies about Mitt Romney's taxes, his felonious white collar crime, his misogyny, his murdering of an innocent woman using conventional methods. Facebook simply made his job easier.

You have to wonder if Jim Jones regrets that fatal glass of Kool-Aid. He was born in 1931 so he would been seventy seven when America officially became Jonestown. He would watch from the sidelines but I suspect he would watch with an approving eye. The man who wrote the book an the care and feeding of zombie followers would see his playbook put into action on a scale once thought impossible. If Jim Jones had Facebook, he might have been Barack Obama.