Retirement Protests, an idea by Caree Risover

Because of the tragedy in New Zealand and the role, social media played in spreading the video of the event. Many of us are upset. In her post of March 15, Caree, over at "A Retirement Blog" talks about her concerns about the use of social media and makes some very good points. I agree with her statement:

"Fanatical and populist ideology posted by dubious sources and shared across newsfeeds worldwide has become so mainstream that people I might previously have considered to be critical thinkers now seem to repeat and repost without any obvious moral compass. They fail to hear or seek to comprehend that there is a valid argument against the stance that they promulgate. Where has reasoned and reasonable debate gone? I can offer an answer for that one: it has been buried in the adoption of subconscious Orwellian mantras like "the will of the people," "strong and stable," "no deal is better than a bad deal," or "make America great again."

She goes on to say, "I know protesting seemed simpler when you could turn up at Greenham Common with a tent and wire-clippers but how many of us have actually chained ourselves to railings recently? Planet Retirement is the perfect battleground to take the fight to the doors of commercial interests and large corporations. Boycotting remains a powerful tool as does complaining, giving bad (but honest) publicity and lobbying your MP.

Today I have absented myself from my Facebook account whilst contemplating its deletion. With over two billion active users monthly, imagine if only half its users did likewise. Ten percent of its current subscribers are apparently over 65; the deletion of two hundred million accounts isn't going to happen, but it would be some protest if it did!

Boomers were not the first generation to protest, but we did work hard at it in our youth. Over time I think got complacent and lazy. We believed we had won the battles that were important to us. We believed we stopped the war in Vietnam, we believed we had created a more open and forgiving society. We believed we had reduced, and some of us in our naively believed, we had overcome prejudice about race, sex, gender. Of course, none of that is true, but we believed it to be true. There may have been some movement in all of these areas, but not enough. 

Through social media sites, today those who hate, find each other and thrive in their own little worlds, and the rest of us ignore them or tolerate them and their views.  Our parents fought against the rise of the right-wing hate that is with us today, we lived in a time when we thought we knew the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. We were wrong, the bad guys were always there but they were underground and hidden in their own tiny frightened world.

In the day of the 24-hour news cycle, the agencies we used to trust to give us the facts, give us innuendo and rumour disguised as facts. In the "mainstream media" reporters, editors fearing for their jobs, latch on to the latest outrageous event, embellish it and attempt to grab our ever-shortening attention span. 

Over a period of time, the outrageous becomes the norm, the fringe becomes acceptable and the bad guys crawl out of their hidden worlds and creep into the mainstream through social media. We ignore them and we go on with our lives. I agree with Caree, we need to take a break from social media to gain back a sense of our understanding of humanity. By taking a break we can, I think, begin to move back to a time when we would not accept the fringe as the norm. 

So I ask you to do what Caree and I are doing which is taking a break from Facebook. Boycotting remains a powerful tool as does complaining, giving bad (but honest) publicity and lobbying your elected representative.