Let’s Kill Twitter, Blogs & Bluster

Four or five hours ago I rode out on my shiny keyboard to do battle with trolls, people and personalities, ya know people you meet online.

The point wasn’t to try to convince the people who were debating with me to believe as I do but to convince the lurkers who never comment that they should adopt my perspective about life and living.

Why worry about the condescending fools who like to tell me that I am both fool and asshole for not believing as they do.

In a different life I used to enjoy these battles and I would engage every chance I got because I knew that I could drown the other side in information.

I could bury them in facts and eviscerate their arguments and do so in a manner that made them look stupid.

Sometimes I miss being so very cool.

Let's Kill Twitter, Blogs & Bluster and anything else that makes people think.Click To Tweet

That was before I asked the ever so insightful question of Does Facebook Promote Stupidity & Intolerance?

Eventually, I tired of these debates because I rarely found myself learning from them and I started to wonder if there was any benefit in proving that I could tear down whatever walls were erected in front of me.

We are on the verge of the Jewish New Year, 5776 is the year we are celebrating as opposed to the 2015 we welcomed during the secular New Year last January.

The children and I have spent time talking about what it means to us and what we hope to see happen in the days to come.

We have talked about what is, what was and what may yet be.

It has been fun to hear their thoughts and to not focus on the evil that some people engage in. That’s not to say we have ignored it entirely because we haven’t.

They have heard me stress the importance of getting involved in the world and giving back. They know that I don’t believe in just passing through life hoping that others do the heavy lifting.

Social responsibility isn’t just something we talk about here but they also know that their old man is a big believer in developing a thick skin and a willingness to walk out own path even when others suggest we shouldn’t.

That is because people will always tell you what to do and how to do it. People will always push you to be a sheeple and that is just not acceptable to us.

But then again we don’t believe in rebellion just for the sake of rebelling either.

Life With Purpose

When Ma and Pa Steiner didn’t want my siblings and I to understand what they were saying they slipped into Spanish.

It didn’t take long for my siblings and I to figure out what they were saying in whatever language they spoke.

But when you are learning Spanish, English, Hebrew and Yiddish your ability to focus and move from rudimentary skills is tested and if you are ask foolish as I once was you might choose to stop learning one or two so that you can focus in other areas.

You can call that a long-winded way of me saying it is time for me to focus on Spanish. With some time and effort I should be able to hit the ground running and resume being able to carry on a basic conversation.

So I am in the process of looking for a good way to turn that into something more than just a thought. Got a couple of options and opportunities, just have to figure out what makes the most sense.

That is tied into another lesson I want to pass along to the kids, living with purpose.

To me living with purpose is recognizing our social responsibility to others and to ourselves. It is doing something to stimulate our minds and engage with the world in a larger way than we might if we did nothing to educate ourselves.

Let’s Kill Twitter, Blogs & Bluster

I like social media, always have.

It never ceases to amaze me how it opened up my world and gave me experiences and opportunities I never would have had.

I’ll be forever grateful for the friendships and people I have met but the one thing that makes me look cross-eyed at it is how it has made it easy for certain groups of people to assemble.

How it has enabled and assisted people to pass along some very nasty beliefs and encouraged many to wear blinders. That is not something to be proud or happy about.

Don’t misunderstand this to mean that I think we should truly shut down social media platforms. I am too big a proponent of free speech and the marketplace of ideas.

What I am saying is that it is like any other tool and it can be used for great things and things that are not so great. I am saying we need to be willing to confront some of the crazies and demand they provide fact and substance to support their tinfoil hats and crazy conspiracies.

We don’t need to convince everyone nor should we expect to, but we need to work on hitting at least a few of them.

Consider it the cost of freedom and doing business online.

What do you think?

P.S. This post took a bit of a turn, now didn’t it. 🙂