Well, that didn’t take long. Leave it to the internet to accept any challenge whenever anyone thinks they’ve hit a low point, to somehow continue to find more ways to test peoples’ opinions on humanity further.
By now, I’m pretty sure most people heard about how a shooter converged on YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California and wounded three people before supposedly killing herself afterward. She was apparently really, really pissed off about how she felt like her First Amendment rights were being violated, so she flexed her Second Amendment right to bear arms and take it out on a bunch of people, most of whom probably had nothing to do with content suppression or the censorship of her stupid “channel” that wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as she thought it might’ve been.
Man, to think back in the day (2017), if you had a dispute with a company and they weren’t paying you, you first try to settle it by yourself, and failing that, get a lawyer, contact the Better Business Bureau, etc., etc., and try to settle it legally. But nah, forget all that time-wasting shit, let’s just go out and get some guns and shoot up their offices. That’ll get you paid real quick.
Either way, yet another shooting spree on American soil just occurred, and to nobody’s surprise, society’s gotten so desensitized to this happening that it’s pretty much already secondary news by this point. Probably because there weren’t enough casualties save for the shooter herself, so there’s not enough bleed for this story to lead, for long enough.
But aside from the obvious disturbance of another psychopath with access to firearms firing at innocent people in public for reasons that are way, way too stupid and baseless, is how the internet conducts itself in the midst of actual carnage. Sure, it’s extremely fortunate that the only casualty in the incident was the one who deserved it, but I don’t think it’s ever a light topic when a shooter converges on a public area with intent to fire aimlessly.
Apparently, the world of social media doesn’t seem to agree with it, and in an insufferable circle-jerk trifecta involving BuzzFeed, Twitter and YouTube “stars,” they turned Twitter into a mass minefield of confusion, misdirection, and inappropriately unfunny jokes, that did what social media does best: name drops, circle jerks, and makes everyone think they’re comedians, regardless of what is actually going on.
If there was ever fuel for the voted cheeto to fling around his favorite fake news labeling, it’s no more appropriate than how shitheads on the internet react when actual terrible shit is going on. It’s because people are fucking idiots that shit like this only gets worse and creates confusion to if terrible things are actually occurring or are some farce that actually makes people second guess whether actual suffering is real or not.
I wish Twitter would suspend losers bent on spreading misinformation and bad jokes, YouTube suspend any of their so-called stars to sought a tragedy as an opportunity to promote, and BuzzFeed could wait maybe 24 hours to find a more credible source to plagiarize instead of trying to accomplish something on their own and embarrass themselves. But of course, none of this will ever happen, and the downward spiral will continue to find new lows whenever the opportunities present themselves.
But social media is a cancer on society, that much is clear. I can’t wait for the societal shifts to where unplugging becomes this hip trend that everyone wants to get aboard, and maybe for once, the most technologically advance iteration of the world can actually have some fucking peace and quiet for a change.
