Has social media become an endless nightmare? | Matt Mohan-Hickson

I read an hilarious joke on the internet this week.If you will be kind enough to indulge me, I would like to repeat it for you now since any attempt to paraphrase it would likely prove a disaster.
RAGE: Social media can be a rough old placeRAGE: Social media can be a rough old place
RAGE: Social media can be a rough old place

It was posted from an account called Mutable Joe and it goes like this: ‘Dearest Martha, the culture war continues, seemingly with no end.

‘We fight and fight but gain no ground, our efforts futile. Please tell Joe Jr. daddy did his best. It has been brought to my attention you liked a problematic tweet so I will not write you again.’

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I bring the joke to light because it puts into words the way I’ve been feeling about social media recently – in particular Twitter and Facebook – but have not been able to articulate properly.

It is all so exhausting. Everywhere you turn there seems to be yet another war.

And I’m not just talking about politics, the arguing and raging is everywhere.

If you turn to the sports sections you can find fans stuck in eternal disagreements over players or whether a manager should be sacked or not.

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But what about if you have just finished binge-watching that latest show or come to the end of the big new video game? Alas, there is no escape.

Type the name into a search bar, or read the comments under a post, and you’ll quickly find yourself witnessing some form of vicious argument.

It feels like all I see these days when I’m scrolling is people using bad faith talking points to try a bit of one-upmanship on each other, with no room for proper debate and nuance.

Back in the day, alchemists were known to use the symbol of the Ouroboros – a serpent eating its own tail.

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However instead of symbolising the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, it feels like it could be used to represent the toxic state of the discourse on social media.

You could easily swap the F or the blue bird logos for the Ouroboros and it would probably fit better.

It is so utterly exhausting, but like a black hole it is almost impossible to escape the pull of scrolling away.

A decade ago social media seemed like an exciting new frontier, now it just feels like an endless nightmare.

Rain stops play – a British summer has finally arrived

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Nothing says summer more than the sight of cricketers trudging off the pitch because of rain.

I thought we’d never see it happen as the pandemic wrecked all our plans. Yet last week England returned to action and immediately the Test with the West Indies was hit by rain. This harbinger of summer was soon followed by another in the form of an England batting collapse. A good old-fashioned British summer had arrived.

All we need now is for a bank holiday barbecue to be rained off leaving us to sip Pimm’s while gloomily staring out of the window while moaning about the weather.

Surely not even coronavirus can deprive us of this annual tradition?​​​​​​​

Longing to hear that song for the very first time yet again

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If you are anything like me – which I hope you’re not for your own sake – you might devour new music the way Tudors did a feast.

Working at home I’m constantly searching for fresh tracks to play on loop until I am sick of them.

But last week I experienced a rare pleasure, the moment you stumble on a new song and it’s so powerful it sends chills down your spine. The song is Your Ghost by Dave Hause featuring Amythyst Kiah and Kam Franklin.

Attempting to describe a track is a Sisyphean task I’m not going to try – except to say it is a ballad inspired by the death of George Floyd. The saddest part is that I will never again be able to experience hearing the song for the first time.

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