5 minute read
CRAIG'S THOUGHTS by Craig Hanlon-Smith
It’s Not You, It’s Your Phone (It’s you)
With the exception of what now feels like an unwelcome belch of summer liberation, we’ve been living with current restrictions for almost 12 months. For some parts of the UK, our short southern summer break was nothing more than trapped wind as early experiments of the so-called tier system meant areas of the north, both east and west, have been completely locked down throughout.
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While enthusiasm for the vaccine appears largely universal as we pin all of our future dreams on the mythological messiah we call hope, we’re also warned that the easing of restrictions must be led by the data and not dates. I suspect anyone expecting a street party on March 8 should start polishing their disappointment today. And rub hard, the stains of tarnished hope take some shifting.
We half-hear reports of impending financial ruin, both personal and state level. While I respectfully acknowledge not all have benefited, the government hand-outs to support future jobs and business survival will be paid for by all of us for years to come. We are warned of the unseen pandemics. The seismic growth of struggles with our mental health, increases in domestic violence, addiction to drugs and alcohol, and the inability to access medical services we’ve come to expect in normal times, as usual. This is just the beginning.
We do, however, find ourselves living through a second pandemic which has been building for the past 15 years, and which has firmly taken hold during the days, weeks, months and now year of living in lockdown. Our self-harm, self-destruction and community annihilation through the medium of social media platforms.
The current furore in Australia involving Facebook and news websites is an international indicator of just how far we have fallen. Most news in the UK (and indeed the world) is accessed through links to articles/ stories/sites shared across social media platforms such as Facebook, not forgetting they own Instagram and WhatsApp too.
A few problems with this. We only access what drops into our feed, which is in itself decided for us following years of computer-generated algorithms self-choreographed with every ‘like’, ‘dislike’, ‘love’, ‘guffaw’, ‘super-cutehuggybunny-emoji’. We no longer get the full picture. And if anyone reading this is thinking “Not me… I am SO aware of…”, yes you. Unless you drop by the newsagent, pick up all the newspapers, read them, watch a range of news outlets and, after all of that, make up your own analytical observation, we consume and regurgitate a fraction of reality.
Social media makes it easier for us. It’s all in one place, we can access it anywhere on the go from our phone and the moment we are outraged to learn whatever it is we are outraged to learn, share said sudden illumination and uneducated opinions across as many platforms as our tired little thumbs can manage. If it weren’t for the hospitals packed to the rafters with Covid-19 patients, we’d have been seen for our repetitive strain injuries months ago, but we soldier on because there’s so much to say.
In many ways it’s not your fault in that this has been 40 years in the making. The politics of individualism born out of the 80s across the Western hemisphere established a defiance of the self in real company, face to face. The difference being, then we had to make an argument stick with at least the flimsiest of evidence. Leap forward to now and we can drop the evidence and just shout. This form was settled long before the pandemic of course, the online discourse in the run-up to the UK/EU referendum is a demonstration of that on both sides of the discussion, and then there was the establishment of Trump’s America. Trump didn’t invent his route to the White House, he capitalised on a form of communication which we were all well versed in by 2016. My way. Online.
It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility if shouting in capital letters like an electronic replica of the Handforth Parish Council meeting. Peculiar, isn’t it? That we mocked the belligerence of such high blood pressured communication with an unaccountable belligerence of our own across faceless social media soap boxes.
How horrified we are at the extreme racism broadcast across these app-driven sites and yet think nothing of screaming SHUT UP to those whose opinion differs to our own. Granted, belligerent shouting isn’t racist but both behaviours are bigoted and demonstrate an inability to connect with one another in an emotionally intellectual way.
In lockdown, it just got worse. Me, myself, my phone. Its label as the ‘I’ phone is no accident. Your entire everything in one palm-held device. Just swipe up and start screaming.
The challenge with this style of communiqué is that we can already see the consequences, the future and it’s ugly. The different social movements across the world who see the message of others as an assault on one themselves – so we shout louder. The misinformation and lies we are fed and in most cases accept. The storming of the capital in Washington DC. The military coups in democratic states in 2021. The Covid denying. In the face of the highest death toll in Europe, our leaders repeating the mantra that we are world beating and doing better than everyone else. And despite their lies, the popularity measured in the polls continues to rise as oppositions crumble. We see that if you shout, and repeat, it works and so we all do it.
LGBTQ+ communities assault one another, online. And no corner of our collective is immune or innocent. In simple terms, it’s the art of not listening. We’ve grown deaf by choice. And when we’re eased from lockdown? If we do nothing to make a change, we’ll have never seen the like.
Put the phone down, Mary. And yes, I’m talking to you.
