Meme Wars

A friend of mine posted a cartoon/meme on their Facebook page and my only reaction was “what was your point?”. I do like Facebook as a way of sort of keeping in touch with friends who I don’t get to see. Although I have noticed the number of people engaging seems to keep dropping. For me, I use it to post pictures of the animals around the house just because I like animal things.

And there are funny things that people post which I enjoy. But I find that I don’t enjoy the ones that are really more opinions just disguised as something “funny”. First of all, because most of them aren’t funny. They typically involve false comparisons and if you are coming at me with a bad analogy, I’m going to see right through it. It’s like an old comedy sketch I remember which started with someone saying it “was exactly like and when I say exactly I mean somewhat like”. And it eventually devolved into not at all like.

It is also probably true that the closer a meme/cartoon is to your political leanings, the funnier you will think it is. But the vast majority of “hot takes” are lukewarm musings at best. As I said at the beginning, it makes me wonder why someone chooses to share them. How often does someone see a meme/cartoon and then say “you know what? I’ve been wrong all along”. Yeah, never happens.

Maybe it is the digital version of showing your colors. Are you team blue or team red? Its not a starting point for discussion because you’ll either get people hitting that like button or starting an argument based on the fallacies in the particular meme/cartoon. I suppose it could just be a way to show virtue and that you have “right think” on a particular issue.

At least you think you are right. The older I get, the more I come to realize that there are very few “right” positions. It is really more of a matter of what you value or believe. Which doesn’t make it “right” except to you and those who think the same way.

And that’s one of the downsides to social media. It just allows people who have thoughts to share them to the world. Is that really just ego? I mean the reality is that very few people care what you think. Is it a way to screen out “wrong thinkers”. If so, that would be sad.

Which is not to say that I don’t have opinions since I’ve just put a whole piece together on why I don’t post blatantly political memes/cartoons. It is just my opinion that you aren’t adding positive energy to the world by doing so.

I’ll freely admit to muting people who get in a rut when all they do is post this type of stuff. But I’ve never dropped anyone because that would be silly. A person is more than just their opinion on a political issue and/or what type of political cartoon/meme they find funny. If I were to come to the conclusion that someone is really nothing but negative energy, then I would remove them from my feed.

Discussions are social. Arguments really aren’t because your ability to change someone’s opinion is limited. If you do, then it most likely means it wasn’t a hard ingrained value. Me, I’ll just keep on posting pictures of the various wildlife that comes to visit our yard.