i constantly feel the need to share my mind on so many things, but i almost always stop myself before actually saying them. it's like writing an angry email to your boss before deleting it but for everything. sometimes, i think it's a good idea, and honestly i think it's a practice that should be done more often, but other times it leaves me feeling pretty weird and conflicted. like, i very much want to show my disagreeance with you, but i don't know you. i don't care to you, you don't care to me, what am i doing? why did i spend 40 minutes crafting up a reply to something that i know you won't process in the way i want/intended, or won't care about after reading anyway?
but it also feels like, maybe it should be said, that maybe i should funnel my ideas into something that might upset someone, or have someone disagree with me in a more stilted post-oriented environment instead of a text chat, where things often fly by without a second thought.
i feel like the problem is that, when i write something in a chatroom, it's not "private" per se, but it's far more personal and limited and casual than something you would see here. when i post here, i am publishing my thoughts, my feelings about something. it feels like a lot of people don't really know the true weight of a write-up. you are archiving your current state for the future to stumble upon, it's not like an IM or arguing in a channel, it's got some gravitas to it. shitposting is one thing, but i am eternally conflicted talking about serious matters in a public environment. this is probably from having negative experiences with it in the past.
but, that's only the half of it. the other half is the fact that i feel all too aware of how most platforms get their traffic. many different platforms have optimized the use of outrage for traffic, because being angry is a great way to get people to use your platform, and never stop circling amongst themselves fighting wars for things that aren't as important or influenceable as they're being perceived, once put in wider context. arguing through posts, that is, feeding these strains of outrage often times does not serve the people in the front seat, but rather the outrage itself, i guess you could say. post-based arguments can last for eternity without being aware of oneself and what one is actually feeding via engagement.
Pandora's Vox, that is, your emotional output as funneled into content for other users beyond your immediate conscious control, is opened, and you become less your own voice, and more of a tool for something beyond yourself. it's something that majorly disillusioned me from social media for a long time, hoping to avoid this unconscious night-driving you see all over twitter, but i think it's a lot easier to mull back to that dull anger than to step back and kind of comprehend what the forces involved are and what you're actually doing.
i could go on with some psycho-social-spiritual-babble, but i'll save you the time and mental energy for something else, thanks for reading my ramblings if you did.
