Cognitive Dissonance: Another Facebook group that accomplishes nothing…. This group is dedicated to all the other Facebook groups that we have all joined over the months and years under the delusion that sitting at your computer and clicking on stuff is actually changing the world! It is such a good feeling to delude yourself into believing that you care about stuff (especially if you really do care)! It would be a hard, cold, and cruel world if there wasn’t a way to make you feel like a good person without having to do any of the research, organizing, and activism that actually makes the world a better place. So here’s to cognitive dissonance Facebook! Because real effort is hard! Fuck that!
I have a love-intensely ambivalent relationship with social media. There are some things that are pretty amazing about it. F’rinstance, I was able to reconnect on Facebook with a woman whom I worshipped from a (not so very distant) distance in college. We went to the same high school, and she was a volleyball player and a year behind me in college, but I had a crush on her for…well, I don’t even know how long. She had no idea, which means that, though we were friends, I was obviously a far better actor than I’d given myself credit for. Ah, but I digress….
Yes, Facebook and Twitter, which is what I’ve limited myself to thus far, have some advantages. It is nice to connect and reconnect with people that, in generations past, I never might have known in any sense, and even if I had, would have long ago faded into the background noise of my personal history. We really do live in a much smaller world than we did in the Dark Ages, B.F/B.T. (Before Facebook and before Twitter)…and I think that can be, and often is, a very good thing.
The down side, of course, particularly on Facebook, is the proliferation of groups and causes. As far as I’ve been able to determine, clicking the “join” button means little more than agreeing to allow a group or a cause to clog my message box with messages I’m more likely than not going to delete unread. It might feel good to join a group or support a cause on Facebook, but does that actually change anything? From where I sit, I’d have to say no…unless feeling better about yourself for joining a group or supporting a cause is all you’re really after.
Because Lord knows that doing good work is a lot of damn work….
