Overdue rant - enjoy your Thanksgiving

Social media is a hellscape. Most days I am moderately amused, other days I am forced to contain the urge to heave my computer down a flight of stairs my office doesn’t have or restrain myself from throwing it out the upstairs window of our single story building. That does not, however, stop me from killing the battery on my phone refreshing my apps to see what you guys have posted every three minutes and what bullshit “Marlene” is responding to which usually is none of her business to begin with. It is why I exist.

It never fails, I am always lured in under the guise of wanting to keep up with how my friends are doing; or who they’re doing, and before I know it I’m scrolling through endless cat memes and pseudo inspirational quotes. Come for the friendship; stay for the epic bullshit. It’s a mixed bag - I’ve seen some great stuff; like charitable and heartwarming acts that reaffirm my faith in humanity and I’ve seen underwear that creates the illusion of having “camel-toe”. There must be a tiny market somewhere or it wouldn’t exist, right?  I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have had to put my head in my hands and utter the words: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now!” We’ve all been there – I’m not special. I just like to re-hash things and take others along on the ride.

I’ve walked away from a lot of toxic shit in my time; why not the internet? It’s clearly fucking with my health. My blood pressure spikes every time I read some twat get involved in a post that clearly has nothing to do with them. Pro-tip: If it has nothing to do with you and the writer is not specifically asking for help; stay the fuck out of it. This is a HUGE pet-peeve of mine; bet you couldn’t tell. If someone is suffering that’s one thing, or if someone has posed a question to the masses that is understandable,  but if you find yourself offering “assistance” in more than 40% of your posts…you ARE part of the problem. If your responses are a paragraph or more…you ARE the fucking problem. Get a hobby. Maybe you should consider writing a blog where you can unleash all those feelings of inadequacy – it’s what I did.

I’m on a few different social media forums; mainly because I don’t want all of you knowing how entrenched I am in my addiction. I keep it balanced between Twitter and Facebook with a sprinkling of Instagram. I’m thinking of adding Reddit but definitely not Snapchat because that’s for cheating dirty whores; or that’s what I heard. I don’t understand the premise. Why do I need to take photos that disappear only to never be found again? Sounds shady as fuck to me. You say Snapchat has cool filters? That’s great! I’m rapidly hurtling my carcass at age 38; I’m way past pretending that an autumn halo is going to fix my shit. Bunny ears and cute pink nose? Get the fuck outta here with that shit! Clearly you don’t know me. I am not sending you pictures of myself that are going to self-destruct; I am not Inspector Gadget. Fucking millennials.

I spend an inordinate amount of time each day scrolling through various feeds. Some of it is hysterical. Some of it reminds me that I am not terribly funny; some remind me that I’m not too dull either. The vast majority of it just fills the space between sips of coffee, telephone calls, and f-bombs. It keeps me safe from having conversations with people that I probably don’t want to, if I am with my nose in my phone or glued to the monitor at work. Downside: it keeps me from ever really enjoying time in the present. Even after I’ve “unplugged” I can spin in my head about something I’ve run across on the internet. I like to play this game when I get home, it’s called: “Oh my God, let me show you this shit I read today”.  I like to make sure that people around me are as miserable and hostile as I am, I guess. What’s that shit about? Is that anything like: “Oh fuck, that tastes terrible, here try this?”

This is where I’m supposed to tell you that for this Thanksgiving I will be unplugging and living in the present. I’d be lying, and while that’s not surprising, it’s also not quite noon yet. I have a hard and fast rule against lying before noon. I just felt like venting a little bit about the shit that really gets under my skin. Mom said there’d be days like these, she just didn’t tell me that I’d have to contend with a million other assholes just like me.

Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving.

This message brought to you in part by #halldark ~ for when you care enough to send whatever.