Warning – The following blog post may contain more words than a headline and a single sentence summary
Absent-mindedly scrolling through my facebook newsfeed I don’t fail to notice that there seem to be 2 main ways to share thoughts and opinions these days:
1. Post an article headline with a compelling picture and a 15-30 words summary of the article’s content; OR
2. Post a string of letters forming a full or half a statement printed in ridiculously large font on a picture or just a jet-scale background.
To give my 428 facebook friends some credit, most seem to have read the actual article related to the snippet version in the newsfeed, adding their considerate opinion to the “what’s-on-your-mind-section” of their post. I doubt though that the 1-1000 people that liked, loved, haha-ed, wow-ed, sad-ed, or angry-ed the post read much more than the headline and summary sentence. Why do I assume so? Because I hardly ever read more than the headline and the summary sentence! Why don’t I read the whole article? Because who has time for that?
Which brings me to type II of today’s popular posts. Let’s shorten our opinions and skim them down to just a few key words, increase the font size, and emphasize the importance by printing it on a meaningful picture or an eye-catching background. Apparently it is not enough that facebook decided to blow up the font size of some selected how-is-life-at-this-instance-moments (I honestly haven’t decoded the pattern of when posts suddenly appear in bigger font size than others); no, today’s virtual statements are in line with PowerPoint 101 – chose font size 16 or larger.
Absent-mindedly scrolling through my facebook newsfeed I don’t fail to notice that there seem to be 2 main ways to share thoughts and opinions these days:
1. Post an article headline with a compelling picture and a 15-30 words summary of the article’s content; OR
2. Post a string of letters forming a full or half a statement printed in ridiculously large font on a picture or just a jet-scale background.
To give my 428 facebook friends some credit, most seem to have read the actual article related to the snippet version in the newsfeed, adding their considerate opinion to the “what’s-on-your-mind-section” of their post. I doubt though that the 1-1000 people that liked, loved, haha-ed, wow-ed, sad-ed, or angry-ed the post read much more than the headline and summary sentence. Why do I assume so? Because I hardly ever read more than the headline and the summary sentence! Why don’t I read the whole article? Because who has time for that?
Which brings me to type II of today’s popular posts. Let’s shorten our opinions and skim them down to just a few key words, increase the font size, and emphasize the importance by printing it on a meaningful picture or an eye-catching background. Apparently it is not enough that facebook decided to blow up the font size of some selected how-is-life-at-this-instance-moments (I honestly haven’t decoded the pattern of when posts suddenly appear in bigger font size than others); no, today’s virtual statements are in line with PowerPoint 101 – chose font size 16 or larger.
Don’t get me wrong. Everyone likes a good meme. Aren’t we all addicted to the 5 second rush of virtual amusement, the pupil constricting chuckle, the conversation opener at breakfast or on our next date? And if the absorbed meme turns out NOT to be funny, no harm done, it’s only a few seconds out of our busy lives.
So it’s not those memes that bother me; it’s not the ones that are supposed to make you laugh and succeed 90% of the time. The world can always use more chuckles and who doesn't like to be humored? But posts of type II trying to be like type I push my buttons. Flashy, attention-seeking snippets, advocating serious issues or societal criticism. The guilty picture that in my eyes saturated the porter potty of virtual garbage is the following:
I really don’t want to criticize the content. It's not the quote that bothers me, not even the quote printed on this picture which - in all fairness - emphasizes the point rather well. I would just like to point out the irony. Should this be posted, shared, liked, loved, etc. on social media? 1984 is a great book and scarily relatable to many issues of our modern society. However, aren't we missing the point of the quote if we are making it into one of the million items flashing through ones short-lived news feed? Shouldn’t it be painted on a wall, printed in a newspaper, or put on a banner in the sky? Shouldn’t we at least have to look up from our phones to grasp this message?
Then again, I am being a huge hypocrite. Here I am typing away, drafting a silent shout about the current state of affairs into the void of the World Wide Web. Wrapping my opinion in a blog post, maybe the mother of digital irrelevance. So while I'm at it let's throw in another Orwell quote:
I doubt that I still have many readers with me at this point. After all, this post contains more than 500 words. In fairness, I did add pictures to captivate the reader’s attention and loosen up the dry material. So if you’re still with me, I would like to acknowledge that I have just stolen 3-7 minutes of your precious life time. I hope I made it worth it.
And by the way
