I have a fantasy and it goes like this: a political party is formed, running on an anti-social-media platform. It campaigns on a pledge to ban social media. (“SWITCH IT OFF” is its straightforward, and elegant, slogan.) The party wins a general election and at midnight, on what comes to be known as Social Media Freedom Day, the prime minister pushes a giant button that blocks all access to social media. Crowds cheer. On the anniversary of Social Media Freedom Day – which becomes a bank holiday, of course – children burn effigies of Mark Zuckerberg and dress up as the Twitter bird.The ravings of a demented madwoman? Well, yes. It's a 'Guardian' column, after all! What else would you expect?
I write this as someone who owes her career and her partner to social media. I had no journalism qualifications, (Ed: Really...?) connections or experience when I began blogging in the mid-2010s, and through Twitter I was able to get a paid internship that gave me my start in journalism.
But as time has gone on I have become more and more certain that the solution to many of the most pressing issues of our time is simply to switch social media off.We can all do that, any time we want!
Of course I could delete all my social media accounts. Cancel my season ticket to The Discourse; stop watching as a new villain of the day is crowned on Twitter. You think I don’t want to do that?
What's stopping you?
I need a responsible adult to do it for me. I’ve had enough of the bad feelings machine. Won’t somebody switch it off? Please? Can we switch it off?
Aren't you one of those? Oh, silly me. Of course you aren't...
Julia
ReplyDeleteWith all due respects, to you and your assumption (I suppose) that most women are just like you, ‘this’ is exactly what my decades of experience indicates the vast majority of women are really like.
They yearn for the ‘strongman’ (unlikely to ever recognise a true one when they see him, they then throw themselves at anything in trousers with a bad-boy attitude, tatts and a criminal record instead), they dream of being dominated (witness the absolute … um, er, domination of the female fiction market with bodice-ripper clones), they want/need to be told what to do … but since they have made it all but illegal (and actually in many cases) for a man to do anything but whatever they tell him to, they … vote (every singe time) for more of, and more repressive, nanny-state power that will do just that - dominate, control and direct them.
Oh, the overwhelming majority will ‘say’ otherwise, take umbrage and become angry in the extreme at my ‘misogyny’ and then … go out and try and get the local ethnic, low-life, abuser or just player to take notice of them (by all but, or often actually, throwing their knickers at his feet) to make themselves feel better (followed by a demand that the government set up an organisation, of ‘dishy, square-jawed, rough men in uniform preferably’, who will spend time listening to their gushed, and panting, complaints, then shoot anyone who disagrees with them).
So? Whilst there are many (but actually a small minority) of men who vote as idiotically (or usually for corrupt reasons), we are ‘where we are today’ as a direct consequence of women voting en-block for ‘daddy’.
Western civilisation isn’t dying, it’s being murdered … by women (who ironically this time, really 'will' be worst affected, and no-one will deserve it more).
I wish I could say you're wrong and these woman are outliers,,,but when I read stories like this, I really do wonder!
DeleteNo Julia. I'm over 60 and I don't EVER recall an adult writing for the Gaurdian...
ReplyDeleteGood point!
Delete