Addiction is a powerful thing. It can be discrete and hide behind something. Most addictions are destructive. Even if it’s an addiction to something good, it will most likely either damage you or someone else. A lot of people would be addicted to things and not even realise it. Like social media. They find themselves always checking back, always with the phone in hand checking how many more likes they’ve gotten on their latest #instadaily. They will make justifications as to why that is when they catch themselves doing it. But as a result of doing it so often, it becomes a habit. I’ve been through this and I hate it. I would always take my phone out when standing in a line or waiting for someone, with the head down and phone out just scrolling through a Facebook or Instagram feed. Then I’d get bored of those platforms and move on to reddit or twitter. Just constantly being bombarded with useless and meaningless information.
Social media addiction is one of the most difficult addictions today because it’s so intelligently constructed. It plays into a lot of our natural instincts. We have a natural urge to see what other people are doing and to show people what we are doing. We want validation. And social media is the best place to get it. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and I think it ties into the whole PC culture. We want validation because we are insecure. We want to be agreed with and for people to like what we like and hold the beliefs that we hold. PC culture is based on people wanting a ‘safe space’ where they won’t be offended. They don’t want to be offended because that would mean that someone disagrees with what they believe in, and as such, they don’t get the validation that they want. This results in them feeling uncomfortable and god forbid someone feels uncomfortable about who they are.
Being uncomfortable instigates action. Action to change yourself for the better, and that doesn’t mean that you change your beliefs or what you stand for. It purely means that you change how you look at yourself. You stop caring about the validation, and you believe in something because you believe it is right or just or ethical. You stop caring whether or not people will support those beliefs. You give yourself validation as opposed to letting other people dictate what you like and don’t like. If the biggest problem you have in this world is that you get offended, then you are one of the luckiest people on the planet. People in western cultures complaining about how it’s against their rights that someone doesn’t refer to them by their preferred pronoun, act as if their feelings are the most important thing in the world.
The fact that they even have the ability to complain about their feelings on a large scale, shows how easy life is for them. There are people who wake up in the morning and know that today might be their last day. There are people who are constantly worried about where the next meal is coming from, or if their families are safe, or if some western country will decide to bomb them today. Hundreds of innocent people die every day, but all you care about is how you felt when someone offended you? And not only that but it was your country that killed those people. The news will publish story after story about feminism and PC culture but ignore the mass murdering that their government is currently spearheading. But it’s ok because they're not bombing western countries…
The easiest way to corrupt the youth is to convince them that its better to befriend and respect only those who hold the same beliefs and values as they do. Change doesn’t happen by everyone blindly following the pack. It happens when people talk and argue about it. You analyse both sides of the argument without any bias. This is why the feminist movement is such a disease. Everyone supporting it has an emotional attachment to it. I had dinner with my sister yesterday, and I mentioned how stupid and futile some feminist arguments were and she immediately hit back. And it’s not like there was a logical argument to it, it was just cheap statements that all the feminists throw around.
Social media addiction has a lot of knock-on effects. I would compare it to a sugar addiction. No one wants to admit or even believe that they are addicted to sugar. When someone who is addicted to sugar gets a craving they just put it down to hunger. So they say ‘well I’m hungry, so I better eat. What do I like to eat? Chocolate!’. And if you mention this to those people, like I have, they go crazy. I think it’s hilarious that people will argue something with you without even educating themselves on the topic. But then again why would someone bother reading a book or scientific research when they can just get all of their information from someone they follow on twitter?
Everyone thinks the world will be destroyed by bombs and guns and warfare, but I think it’ll be destroyed by people who act on emotions and who participate in dogmatic thought.
Cormac