I’ve been using the internet since 1991. I’m not the generation that built it, but I am the generation that took it from obscurity to fruition.
In 2014 I cut back on my use of social media, primarily because I felt that the very fabric of the internet was starting to ‘guide’ me in a direction, whatever that direction was I didn’t know, but I didn’t like it. I actually really don’t come here that often now. I create and stock, or post, I contribute but don’t partake, I have too many other things on my mind to pay attention.
Twitter, to me, was always a bullshit platform, I still think it is. In the beginning, it was people talking about what they were doing at that moment, just rubbish, typing to be heard. Now, it’s that and more of it in cumulative voluminous chorus of pure unmitigated liquid shit.
Anyone who thinks Twitter is a powerful news media platform is off their rocker, simply and plainly, we are not journalists.
Pick a minstrel, and they will play to, or for their audience. You put a hundred people in a room and the dynamics will form eponymous groups
The first thing you learn in a conflict zone is there is no truth, that goes out well before boots hit the ground or even the first fist is raised, let alone bullets or Molotov’s. Truth was shoved out the door before the show even started.
Regionalized information delivery is 100% against what the internet was raised to be.
Proper news information delivery is journalism, and that comes with context, perspective and contrast; two or more sides of a situation delivered within the parameters of context and with ethics, backstory and overview. Yes the journalist is skewed, intrinsically, but the journalist is the brightest computer fueled by conviction, compassion, empathy and had human experience, which as yet, has not been emulated by machine, but is in danger of being swallowed by the tsunami of white noise, grey noise, black noise, brown noise, noise, or, as Navy personnel call interference, which all comes with agenda and skew.
What is real? Where is the middle ground?
Where are we?
Remember who you are.
Who are you?