5 Deaths by Social Media

By: Martha Mukaiwa

ThOUGh we’ll probably be exiled somewhere as remote and abandoned as MySpace for saying this, there are Luddites among us who long for the days before receiving handwritten letters, maintaining physical photo albums and answering a phone call would have us wondering whether the instigator had sustained a brain injury situating them firmly in 1997.

Much like video killed the radio star, social media has buried a host of interactive, intimate and real life alternatives to their fast, loose and curt social media counterparts. And as the world continues to transform into an impeccable online version of its less than perfect reality, one can’t help but lament five things social media murdered... in the socialsphere... with the follow function.

Networking Events
Remember when like-minded people would gather in a room, eat sausage rolls and drink tepid wine while trying to garner an introduction or join a conversation that may or may not give them a leg up the corporate ladder? Today all that effort is as simple as following companies and business people you admire on Twitter and rabidly tweeting pop- economics until someone with some pull retweets you and gets everyone else to drink the Kool-Aid.

High school reunions
Before Facebook ensured everyone and their stepmother requested your friendship, high school reunions were a way of seeing who got fat, rich or simply got what was coming to them. nowadays, however, we know that someone we last saw in pre-school had lasagne for lunch because they posted a photograph of it... And tagged us in memory of eating pasta during recess together ... 20 years ago.

Birthday cards
If you’ve received a handmade card during the last five years, it’s because whoever gave it to you has a rare disease that makes them unable to write on your Facebook wall. Once a symbol of care and creativity, today handmade cards are only acceptable, if by handmade you mean you used your hands to Photoshop happy Birthday over the receivers most liked photo and used your fingers to post it on their wall.

The Mystery of Someone New
Before Zuckerberg made friendship as simple as liking someone’s photos a minimum of once a week, people used to get to know each other by meeting up for a series of coffees or cocktails to slowly reveal their character. Today, we skip through all that, spend 20 minutes trawling through their photos, status updates and likes before chalking them up as psychos, superficial or suitable to see you naked in less time than it takes to watch an episode of ‘Friends’.

Going Anywhere without a Camera
Photographs used to be special. We used to get scrubbed for school ones and spruced up for family ones but today the thought of not taking a photo of sunsets or sangria is enough to make Instagrammers break out in pocks, which begs the philosophical question: If you eat a piece of cake but don’t post a picture of it on Facebook, did it ever even exist?
The answer is yes. Yes, it did. now gorunitoffatgymandbesureto check into Virgin Active on Facebook so people can see how balanced and beautiful your life is.
At this point you’re probably thinking whoever wrote this is pretty jaded and doesn’t own an iPhone ... and you’re right.
But what you’re probably not thinking about is when last you invited someone out for a long conversation over a cup of coffee instead of talking to them distantly and distractedly on Facebook or Google chat.
You’ve also probably glossed over the fact that time spent trying to edit whatever experiences you can cram between Twitter updates into 140 characters can be better spent just being totally present in whatever it is you’re doing.
My challenge to you?
Invite someone you admire professionally out for dinner just to talk about your industry and leave your cellphone off the entire time, delete all the people who annoy the living daylights out of you from Facebook, make someone a greeting card by hand, introduce yourself to someone new then don’t read up on their whole life on social media, take one photo a week of something you find incredibly special or significant... and let me know how it all works out.

– martha@namibian.com.

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