Social Media Comment Sections are a HELLSCAPE.
There is no other place that better illustrates the lack of comprehension, intelligence and humanity than a social media comment section. As a social media manager, I spend hours during my week deleting, responding to and hiding comments on my client’s pages. The comments I read usually leave me like:
I’ve yet to understand why someone would scroll past an ad for a business, click “comment” and proceed to type out a paragraph explaining why their product is stupid and how they will not buy it. I’ve yet to understand why someone will go on a celebrities page that they hate and click “comment” and then proceed to berate this OTHER HUMAN BEING as well as their supporters. But, this behavior is rampant on social media and in the past few years (I would say after the myspace era) it has become the “cool” and “acceptable” thing to do. People seem to get a rush out of it, but I’m not sure why.
One thing I do understand though, is how comprehension affects comments. I see this every day. People will flood comment sections either echoing what they hear the general public saying (no original thought) or by simply making STRONG decisions based off of only reading a headline (no context) or doing minimal research (only gossip blogs and YouTube videos), thus flooding a comment section and revealing their lack of comprehension of what’s really going on. It’s gross to see. Embarrassing even.
What if social media was broken up by IQ level. No seriously, think about it. What if you only saw posts that were on your level of comprehension. Remember how in school we had reading levels? Level 1, 2 3 and so on. Some kids read on level while others did not. In this case, some social media users are complete idiots and probably would do best only interacting with other idiots. The rest of us can interact with each other, share things we care about and are into and not worry about those not on our same frequency barging in to offer their two cents that makes absolutely no sense.
Cancel culture is also a culprit. If only we all knew what it felt like to grow in front of the entire world, make mistakes that are broadcasted across all media outlets and our inner world invaded every day. If only we all understood how misunderstood we would be if our every post, thought, opinion and move was dissected by the entire globe and picked apart for blogs. None of us would be safe. None of us would be “liked” by everyone. Most of us would be “cancelled” even if we don’t have a malicious bone in our body. But for some reason we find it reasonable to do this to entertainers and public figures and stand boldly on our decision. Humanity has left the chat. But this cancel culture doesn’t just affect entertainers, that same intensity of hate and outrage is directed toward every digital creator out there.
No seriously… something as innocent as a middle school girl posting a TikTok dance video can lead to thousands of comments telling her how she sucks, how ugly she is and what seems like a weird competition to say the most outlandish and creative diss to get the most likes in the comment section. I’ve seen it. Instead of seeing something that they didn’t feel was up to par (by who’s standard?? anyways…) and simply scrolling past it… they took it upon themselves to completely tear the creator down.
I haven’t seen the type of hate and discourse in real life that I have seen in comment sections. Does it only work online? Is it only to get likes, attention and to cause outrage? Would you say half of that stuff if you could look right into the eyes of the HUMAN BEING on the other side of the screen and they could immediately respond to you with either tears, cussing you out or hopefully a punch to the face that you deserve? I’m not sure but comment sections are a literal HELL.
In my world that I have created and that I have control over (my social media comment section and feed, my explore page, my client’s comment sections) I will continue to mute, block, hide and delete all the hate and ignorance. In my world, it’s like it doesn’t exist. In my world, if you don’t agree, we speak privately, one to one like humans and calmly discuss our viewpoints. In my world, we aren’t expected to like the same things and we accept the beauty that we can still like each other without sharing all the same similar interests. In my world, when we see something we don’t like online, we understand we have the power to keep scrolling and let that person have it unless it’s personally directed to us. In my world, gossip blogs, slander posts and posts that attack entire groups of people maliciously don’t exist. I don’t see them. In my world, I don’t have people pretending to my my co-host on my page by inserting themselves and their inner turmoil onto my posts.
Remember when people could share a song without someone commenting how that artist is trash and why do you like them? Remember when people could share a photo and just get likes and not comments picking apart their body? Remember when people could post that they are just leaving church without people in the comments leaving paragraphs about how their pastor is a con artist and they shouldn’t go there? Remember when people would share a little bit of their inner world without people using their comment section as their own think piece breaking down this COMPLETE STRANGER’S traumas and what must be happening and critiquing their emotions and response? Hmm…. I remember.
Maybe if we all remember that we aren’t someone’s therapist or judge when we comment and we remember that what these strangers post on the internet honestly has nothing to do with us the social media climate may become a little better. Arguing with strangers online has never changed their opinions on whatever they just posted about, it probably only cause a bigger chasm in between the two worldviews…. and probably could have been avoided if the keyboard assailant actually had a deep rooted understanding of the subject that they were so angry and outraged about.
Protect your energy on social media. Use the delete, block, mute and hide features like Florida Water, cleansing your feed. Also remember that successful people who love themselves and are at peace within aren’t the ones who are attacking others in their comment sections and watching/following pages that they hate. Take that information and do with it what you will.
Me quickly acknowledging that this is my first blog post on here in like 4 years…. ok byeeee
