Does The Government Run Social Media? - Op-Ed Piece
Oh boy, this is one of those posts that I may need to wear my tin foil hat for.
I gotta make sure that no one is listening and that no one can find me after this.
I might have my next post be about how the government promotes shooting video games, just to really go off the rail.
What?
You say that tin foil hats do nothing, they can still hear me, and they know where I am?
Oh…
I was on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (you know, the popular social media profiles), pretending to become informed, but actually becoming distracted when I noticed a recurring motif on all of the sites.
They all have political news as a large portion of their updates.
I couldn’t avoid them.
I had to see some sort of news on this part of the world, even though I did not go on to read of it at all.
I only went on to clear that notification button.
That button not being pressed is a problem.
I am sure that connections and updates matter too.
Anyway, social media has either become run by politics cause people are really passionate about that sort of stuff. (which is a very real and reasonable possibility)
People can’t go a few seconds without tweeting about the president’s latest thoughts, or the governor’s latest actions, because we all feel that those mean a lot to us.
Or there is a push from the government to make sure that their news is the news we see. (which is not as real or possible, but much more fun to write about)
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are being told by a few people to make sure that certain news gets the headline.
It doesn’t matter how many people like the story, how many people share it, that political news will be a headline cause they will make sure of it.
Have I lost you yet?
Can you at least not throw out the tinfoil hat, please?
In real life, no one even wants to vote. In fact, the average voter votes against a candidate more than for one.
Every few years, celebrities you don’t know or care about try to persuade you to vote.
It matters. It is your voice. It is your time.
And what do we still do?
Not vote.
We hate politicians.
We try to avoid their interaction in our lives as much as possible.
We also live in a culture where talking politics at work is a no-no.
Why?
It can cause problems between you and your co-worker.
As you fill out a form, load up a truck, or call a vendor, you don’t need to agree with the person next to you about the president’s ways, so it is best to avoid that stuff in the break room.
We try to keep the two separate because we acknowledge that we can never all agree on it, so it is best to keep quiet about it.
Plus, who wants to disagree with the boss on something like that?
The guy who can fire you doesn’t like you now because of what you said about the election.
That is not the best thing that can happen in your career.
Yet, somehow when you go online to check your notifications, politics is all the rage.
It is the number one spot, the number four spot, and the spots five through nine.
My god, if politics was a musician and social media was the charts, politics would be breaking records, receiving awards every other day.
All anybody wants to talk about online is the latest political news.
What did the president just say?
What did a governor say about the latest incident?
What… (this list is pretty long)
There is update after update on what is happening in politics.
Why the disparity between the real world and the online one?
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to say that having the government-run social media is the perfect cover.
Everyone will be given political news, so we will all be convinced in thinking that we are informed of what is really going on.
Which, of course, isn’t the case.
We talk of the political news they give us while never even getting to the actual information we either see or want.
If the government wants to hide something that happened, they can just have a new update up, and we will all forget about the thing that they hid.
It is the perfect cover.
Or maybe, just maybe, people have now become interested in politics.
As we binge-watch TV shows, spend too much time on social media and learn how to skype, we all decided the best way to get by is to talk about the one thing that makes us all divided.
That is probably not the best idea on our ends.
And we wonder why we are all mad and angry…
It’s because we are talking about things that make us mad and angry.
We are eating spoiled food and then complaining about getting sick as if that doesn’t happen.
When voting comes up, only half of us even do it.
Yet 100 percent of us get the updates of the news.
Try to figure that one out.
Is this crazy to think of?
Am I off base with this?
Should I go back and write another Halloween story?
Probably…
But I don’t think I am wrong when I ask who is telling us what is essential?
Who is creating the headlines?
Who is telling me the news?
After a while, if it is all the same group of people, then that is not a conspiracy.
It is not a conspiracy if they are really after you.
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Greg Luti is an editor and blogger on pensandwords.com. His favorite writers are Robert Frost and Charles Bukowski. He enjoys reading up on history, watching comedies, and playing video games, when he is not writing down a few notes for his next piece. He started this blog out of his love for literature and hopes that the reader shares that same passion.
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