IT CANNOT be denied that people today enjoy a much-easier access to information than say, those in the old days before internet. Coming along with fast-paced improvement in digital communications which eventually cut lengthy episodes into real-time, it had even made it easier for everyone not only to merely watch livestreaming programs online, but to share their points of view as well, on social media thereby closing the circle in interactive programming. I guess this must not have been a goal, much less even an unexpected output, of the two young guys when they original thought up and tinkered with the concept of social media anyway, but there it is.
Let’s have fun with this for a while: say, if the internet were provider of the landscape, rife with (information) waterways and fertilizers, wouldn’t that fatten us, the seeds, so that eventually, a thousand flowers will bloom? Roll over Mao.
Not in this field anyway. For one, differences in opinions will always be the reality in any human interaction and second, while we may still cling to the ‘seed’ tag, what we really are, are seeds from different plants. Even a watering of uniformed information will not guarantee equal results. Besides, who’s the guy in charge of this landscape anyway, and in social media, who’s the arbiter?
It must be sometime during our school days when we’ve first watched and learned the fencing ways of argumentation and debate. As proceedings run under parliamentary rules, it was considered foul to be a little off. That might be as stiff as it is but in this social media tiffs, they’re all out the window. Online, as people come with their working opinions on general state of affairs, a discussion may at any moment, fly south into a hopefully livelier but, the merrier exercise. (if this were the case in school, we would already be howling “Diskase!” as breakdown ensues.)
As example, five or more days ago, a known former TV host and influencer on a private YouTube channel interviewed, the son of a former Philippine president on her show. As with all other talk shows, what usually follows after are the usual run of both negative and positive feedbacks. In a few hours however, much to her surprise, the interview went trending, meaning it became talk-of-the-town material.
The heat centered mostly on the program’s host and the former senator-son (on why he was given the interview). Why not, his being son to a deposed dictator who, aside from having amassed billions from the country’s coffers, had human rights violations is not something anyone can just ignore.
The thing is, for a while, it had merely been the sporadic snipes of the usual personalities, mixed with well-wishers that appeared on the feeds. Later, big guns slowly turned up, almost wanting to blow her out of the water. This has been quite common during online frenzies, bigger sharks shooing smaller ones away while they have their go at the kill.
Except that animal kingdom this is not. The funny thing time and about the sizes of all these seeing red, once in the past, they’ve also been a part of the whole dance, and they might (or might not yet) have licked their wounds from all past battles. As for time, it has a unique filtration system. You always come out cleansed.
