Being of a certain age (the ever-expanding middle one), I remember a time before social media, before the Internet, even before the computer. So I’ve been a little slow in embracing, or even grasping, the significance of social media.
I’ve had Facebook friends for several years now. I’ve posted 150 tweets in 2.5 years. I’m thinking about using Pinterest for storing recipes. What is Vimeo? You get the picture.
That disclaimer out there, I can tell you my revelation of the past week – I think I get social media now.
This I discovered while spending too many hours trolling the trending topics around the Jian Ghomeshi scandal. (If there are non-Canadians reading this who haven’t heard of him, you should google him.) I won’t be commenting on the actual scandal in this post. But anything could be up for grabs later in the NaBloPoMo month.
It was a week ago today when I just happened to be on Twitter and saw that Ghomeshi tweeted that he had posted “the truth” about his firing on Facebook. I clicked the link to his post. It was just 1 minute old. And it was quite shocking.
I was not a huge fan but I enjoyed Q when I listened to it. I knew nothing of his personal life or even how old he was, 47 – which was surprising to me. I only follow 155 people on Twitter, mostly travel and Roman history people, but Ghomeshi was one along with CBC’s George Stromboloupoulus (please George don’t have any dark secrets, the country might explode if you do).
A few hours later, I came across a tweet with a link to a Toronto Star article about Ghomeshi. It was the one that broke open the scandal and it was just a few minutes old. This time the tweet was from Star sports reporter Bruce Arthur. How is it I follow him on Twitter? My son suggested him during the Olympics because he posts some interesting non-sports tweets. Wow, wow, wow again for the revelations in this article.
So I was hooked. Over the last week the speed and directions this story took have left me breathless. No point getting news from “paper” newspapers, or tv and radio newscasts because it was all happening first on social media and the Internet. The conversations happening on social media were now the stories that the papers and tv were reporting on.
I know that social media was involved in the Arab spring and other revolutions around the world. But I only witnessed these events through the lens of traditional media.
Finally I now get it.
Social media is a teeming vortex of humanity in all its ugliness and its beauty. It has speed and it has power. It gives a platform to people who have no other voice; it is a place where conversations happen about issues that shoot-off from other issues; it brings out not just haters, but people who support and care about each other though have never met. It is a vast network connecting seemingly unconnected people. It can be destructive and it can be uplifting. It is global. And it can’t be controlled.
Now here it is, your moment of mosaic. I tried to find a mosaic that might tie-in with my musing and thought of Medusa with her twisting snakes. Unfortunately I don’t have a good photo of a Medusa mosaic. So here is a fishy one with two Roman knots in the corners.
