WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
Social media to me used to be a place where you could say whatever you want, leave it online, go live your real life & come back to it later. It was nice as sort of an escape from real life but when it gets into real life, it gets all sorts of dangerous. Because we have different mentalities around the world & maybe aren't meant to be exposed to certain dangerous mentalities across the world. Even mentalities of people you don't hang around just one town away from you could be dangerous when they're exposed to certain people online. In general, I think social media was meant for brief communication with certain groups, I don't think it was meant to parasite onto our real lives.
WHO DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO BRING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO REAL LIFE?
It was definitely the suits, the capitalists ruined it for everyone. They wanted to get nerdy & know every detail of random people's lives so they could monitor the world for some silly reason. The problem with that is when social media comes into real life as opposed to some fictional place you could leave whenever you want is that you're bringing dangerous ideologies to places that were never meant to know of their existence. There are still monarchies today & people online under monarchies are going to get ideas to topple their leaders. Capitalist societies are infatuated with the concept of communism because of social media. Oppressed people may benefit from knowing of other ways of life but it's not what's good for the status quo of their land when they start wanting to implement concepts they learnt online in real life. So when we bring social media into real life, all we're aiding in is disorder. Policing social media in the time of the VPN, dark web & changeable IP addresses is almost futile. It was better when it was an escape & free for all on the internet where you could leave whenever you're tired of it or done, there was no reason to bring the wild online world into real life. If you know what goes on online & in real South African life, it would've been better if that madness was left where it was i. e. accessed only when it needed to be. I don't need to see people clowning around on TV with ideas they got from the f***ing internet because on South African TV it looks cheap & unoriginal. Also, what I put online is for people like me... I don't expect what the mayor of Cairo puts online to be for me. Neither do I expect my online world to go outside people unlike myself. Not to be exclusive - but I'm a black guy from South Africa interested in sub-Saharan African sport & mostly house music & old music that I grew up listening to whether it be jazz, r & b, rap, rock or reggae. I don't do filmi (Indian) or mainstream South African music (amapiano, uptown Nasty C-like rap & new school wannnabe taxi drivers that rap in indigenous languages) so I don't expect to see that on my social media. I don't care much about celebrity culture & don't mind nice photos (not of SA celebrities). But the Babylon algorithm of Twitter suddenly wants to jumble everything South African up, ignorant of the different groups & identities of the land. I'm not Sotho, I don't want to see Sothos on my social media, I'm not Xhosa - I don't need Xhosa content on my social media. Then they claim we have a "bad attitude" because we don't get why they're on our social media. I think my rule on social media is to send quick direct messages or opinions to whoever is concerned, which is usually my profile group. It's weird that people are spending their money coming at you sideways online. It is the funniest thing. I think the online world was going to sort itself out & used for constructive purposes, eventually. It's annoying when random cockroaches are reading your comments thinking they know you. No, they don't. I don't speak English, French or Portuguese half as much in real life as I do online. It's a false world & you're not my friend or acquaintance because you saw my social media posts. You're my friend & acquaintance because I choose to make you my friend & acquaintance, not because you've been voyeuring my online posts. It doesn't work like that. I comment on a lot of political posts online, it doesn't make me a politician. I comment on a lot of sports posts online not because I want to play that sport but because I know of that sport. We mustn't force association with things that aren't associated. You can't force friendships or association because of some funky thing you saw on the internet. The internet may be ubiquitous but it's still not real life.
WHICH IS THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA?
When all is said & done, we still want to go online & post something or express an opinion so which social media is the best for such? If I were to choose just one social media & nothing else, I'd genuinely choose the old Mocospace, it was a little like MySpace in that you could add music to your profile but the Topics, blogs, videos added another dimension to it. Unfortunately, it's not as popular should you wish to reach a wider audience. Twitter is great because you just tweet whatever you like but you don't get to know what the person behind the message is all about except for a brief few words on their profile. With Mocospace you'd get words, pictures, videos & sound to get a better image of an individual. Also, see Ebulenjini.com. They are a little like Twitter & Mocospace combined. They just need the numbers & they'd be mainstream in Africa. One social media website that was near perfect was the very popular Peperonity, it was great because you could upload nearly anything & make your own website & chatrooms. Unfortunately, Peperonity didn't have Forums like Mocospace. Peperonity was made by Germans Thomas Bühren & Maciej Kuszpa. It was extremely popular in India & the rest of Asia.