It's time for those of us who want the world to be better, more joyous, and positive to BOYCOTT ALL SOCIAL AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Just turn it off for a few weeks or months. You can pop in on it from time to time, but don't stay engaged with it in any meaningful or indeterminate way. We now know that ATTENTION is inversely correlated with CREDIBLE INFORMATION. The more attention grabbing social media information is, the less credible it is. Fact.
The reason this kind of mass boycott can work to change the world - if enough people do it - is that in our electronically connected (and often addicted) world, ATTENTION is a valuable commodity. Huge corporate profits are made by keeping YOUR eyeballs on screens. It may not seem like it when you are in it...but consider WHY IS MOST SOCIAL MEDIA FREE? Someone's paying for it. But not you. Because...and this is true...YOU ARE THE PRODUCT BEING BOUGHT AND SOLD (or more precisely your attention is being bought and sold). Advertisers are paying the social media platforms and underwriting their tech because they know that can get your eyeballs locked onto the very screens that bring them profits. They don't actually care about the validity or credibility of the information you are seeing on social media. They just want you to relentlessly consume it.
If 25% of the population suddenly WITHHELD its attention (the profitable commodity we are all the fungible tokens of), these technology corporations would feel the hit financially. They would then complain to their political policy makers and demand changes to end the boycott.
The main obstacle to this solution is ADDICTION. Social media (and to some extent mainstream media) are ridiculously addictive and hard to quit. But people quit addictions all the time...usually because they have a WHY.
If you knew for certain that intentionally boycotting social and mainstream media could affect positive change, would you do it? Well, it can. So do it.
It might be good to have your WHY in mind, and it helps if your WHY is shared with a lot of other people. My WHY is to keep toxic grievance and vitriol out of my life and since I have eliminated social and mainstream media from my life, 99.9% of all that negativity is OUT OF MY LIFE. I am not going to consume social and mainstream media until those media do a better job at detoxifying themselves.
I encourage you to go 100% media free for a minimum of two weeks and ideally one month. You'll be shocked and pleasantly surprised how much more positive, happy, and smart you become when the "fake news" is out of your life.
The End.
