On social media
George works a corporate job and can’t escape the tech ecosystem. He learned to cope with social media. He does everything he can to avoid it. He knows what’s in the dog food. Jorge is a nurse. He enjoys social media during his breaks and uses it to stay in touch with his family abroad. He has no clue and is not interested in learning about tech companies. For him, it’s a timeline and a chat. George is Jorge's son.
Avi is a quiet New Yorker, occasionally rooting against Israel by reposting when something horrible shows up on his feed. Ari is on the ground in Israel fighting for his people's freedom and checks his feed too. If you saw their faces waking up, you couldn’t tell them apart.
Volodymyr uses social media to coordinate his community against Vladimir’s invasion. Vladimir use social media to manipulate the population of his ideological enemy, Volodymyr. Both are Slavic men living a few hundred miles away from each other. They probably had the same Neanderthal ancestors, cold and scared monkeys.
Marie uses social media to promote her corporate employer's actions. She believes in the goodness of sharing with "the world". Maria uses the same platform for her militant effort against big corporations. They both also use the platform to stay in touch with Marina, their aunt, who seems to find lots of joy in playing strange and addictive mini-farming games.
Nicholas organizes his group rides and brewery outings with friends via social media, it’s easier than group text. Nikolai does pretty much the same on the other side of the world for fishing trips, poker nights, and picking up some booze from Nico – who sells homemade Vodka as an "aside". They all do what "dudes" do. It was the same before social media and will forever be the same.
Kate, Katie, and Karen grew up in the same little town. They were friends in school. At some point, all moved away. Now social media is the last remaining link. When they see posts from each other they all wonder how they could have, one day, not so long ago, have been “friends”.
Threads of humanity and feeds of influence have us divided by screens - whatever the intentions of the ones who maintain or use social media platforms, biology doesn’t seem to allow us, humans, to live peacefully with this technology.
← Index Published on 2025-02-04