Taking Cover

I discussed the evils of social media and technology in the past. I discussed how technology has made us less personable. Remember, the social media was created by social retards (I am one of those geeky engineers who has worked on creating technological products). Social media is an introvert’s dream. They can send emails and texts without having to talk to anyone in person or even over the phone. People hide behind social media and would be much happier spending an evening on Facebook than in a social environment. It is very sad how technology has made us less personable. It has gotten so bad that we send an email to a person who sits in the office next to us. Really? I understand sending an email to document a conversation, but most people are afraid to have that conversation.

This is a huge problem in many regards. First, words can have many interpretations and without conversing in person or over the phone it can lead to a failure to communicate. This leads to unnecessary conflicts, mistakes, and project errors and or failures. Secondly, the internet and social media is the perfect place for identity theft criminals, pedophiles, and bullies to hide and thrive.

Message forums have turned into a place to go for fight. I do not belong to many forums, but the few I do, are populated with narcissists with no people skills. What is so unfortunate is that people on message forums are discussing issues that they have in common. Hence, one would think there would be little arguing and bullying over subjects people fully agree. But this is not the case. For instance, I belong to a few wrestling forums – including one for Penn State fans. Each week people hide behind aliases to criticize, belittle, and harass comments made by others in a very demeaning manner. And what’s worse, participant comments over performances by team members are not only critical, but opinions based on no facts or data. Calling out a bad performance as “he sucks” or creating a rumor that the person is hurt, does not practice hard, or has family issues is just not proper etiquette.

On the same forum, it is common for people to debate the best pound for pound wrestlers. This is a very subjective issue because the national champ at 133 pounds would never wrestle the national champ at 184 pounds. To try to clear up some of the unknown parameters in the heated debate I created a simple mathematical model to compare wrestlers. Well, I was called every name under the sun from an idiot to a genius. People also hypothesized about what I did for living because they could not understand anyone having the time to do this (But yet they have the time to make thousands of comments). This was my first and only post. I simply lost respect for a forum of people who want to start rumors and be critical while hiding not only behind technology, but doing so with an alias.

If you have something critical to say and are not able to do it in person, then you are a coward. And if you have something critical say and are not willing to do so with your real name (hide behind a computer handle or name), then you are beyond cowardice, you are nothing more than a narcissistic carbon emitting oxygen thief. It is time for people to man up and to stop this technological power grab. It is unbecoming, divisive, and unhealthy.