Some relationships too reliant on touch of a button

Almost exactly two years ago, I penned a whine about taking a social media break — back when people were still negotiating their newfound freedoms by airing grievances and gutwrenching confessions for all to see.

Things have only become worse out there, but primarily on the celebrity front, given that paid content — or social influencing, or some such marketing spiel — brings big money.

Generally, ordinary folk have calmed down somewhat — unless they’re drawn onto the beckoning stage of current affairs opinion.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, and with the current global pandemic in full swing (I genuinely assumed that I’d be writing about something else by now), I’ve never seen the world as polarised.

What prompted me to shut off in April 2018 was the brouhaha about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent inability to protect the privacy of its users.

This is an annual pilgrimage for me — the sober shutting down of online networks in my life for a short period of time, during which I recharge, walk barefoot and smirk at my strength in the face of 21st-century technology.

Seven years ago, I went as far as threatening to delete my Facebook account.

This wasn’t the done thing back then, not like it is today, when users publicly announce that they ’ re going, or “done with this ”— but end up hanging about anyway, lured back by comments on their farewell post, begging them to stay.

These days, I’m so stickily connected to a virtual reality by Facebook that deleting the account isn’t a remote possibility.

For work purposes, it’s genius; for family reunions, it’s priceless.

Facebook and other platforms have not only made their founders outrageously rich; they’ve brought out the very worst in the very best of people. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to every social media user on the virtual planet — but I’ve seen some good men and women fall from grace because we’ve made relationships too reliant on the touch of a button.

That makes it tough to give up, which is why most people take a hiatus, be it for a week, or a month.

I tried it once, too. It was a tough-love approach for a social media addict and it was difficult.

Last weekend, I felt again the urge to quit.

This after quietly leaving a “virtual mommy group ”— one that is gaining an alarmingly fast following among the middle-classes and wine-and-heels type (I think that’s the user profile — that’s just how they seem to me).

The nastiness and holierthan-though comments directed at anyone who had a negative opinion on the global pandemic novel (the usual chapters — lockdown; school; apparent dangers of all this isolation; politics; what’s with the beaches; food parcels) showed me that we haven ’ t come as far as we should have when sharing our current affairs opinions.

And if you scratch away at the division and polarisation, you may find what’s really going on — fear.

The people who “Karen” others are afraid because they don’t want bad things to boomerang back on them.

Those who have high-andmighty opinions of far-left or far-right supporters are terrified that by questioning the middle ground — where you’re a good citizen always, until you die (and pay death tax) — we will lose control of what little we have left of in the chaos.