Open Letter to
the Social Media Pill
by K. A. Laity
Dear Social
Media Pill,
They say when
you want to stop bouncing on a trampoline, you
should bend your knees. You are the bent knees of
the Internet.
There is no
excitement you cannot wet blanket, no sorrow you
cannot sprinkle with clichés, no observation
that you cannot disagree with in a carping and
slightly resentful way. People turn from you not
as they would from some grand tragedy where a
valiant heart meets its final dissolution with
dignity and stoic silence, but as they would to
avoid stepping in dog excrement on the street.
You are an
annoyance; worse, you are a bore.
You quibble,
you nitpick, you object, then admit to
misunderstanding only to follow up your admission
with a long and pointless tale that exhibits no
connection whatsoever with the original topic.
Affiliated to
no political party, you find fault with everyone
else's. Solutions, however, are anathema to you.
No public figure is beneath your dismissal, no
music meets with your approval -- or you used to
like that band, but sigh sadly that they aren't
what they used to be (back when you had some
other reason to complain about their clothes,
hair or place of origin). You dismiss most
restaurants and will not drink beer.
We dream daily
of your death, but killing you would either
irretrievably doom heaven to your endless mild
disparaging (and force Odin to call down the
destruction of Ragnarok) or offer Hell its finest
weapon.
At parties one
could simply avoid you. In real life, you were
only a casual acquaintance/work colleague/distant
relative; your effects were sporadic and largely
negligible.
On social
media you have become dangerously if
inconsistently present. Your Twitter account,
seldom used, springs to life without warning at
any instance of a fruitful meeting of minds, as
if some warning chimed unheard by human ears.
Each blog post provokes trepidation, awaiting
your next tedious cavil like an undropped shoe.
No Facebook celebration is complete without your
half-hearted praise and subtle suggestion of
nepotism operating behind the scenes.
You are the
wheezing, sniffling, tutting embodiment of Arendt's
'banality of evil.'
I have
unfriended you.
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Forwarded Message
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