If social media has done anything, it's blown the lid off our collective cluelessness. People used to be able to say the most eyebrow-raising, head-scratching things in the privacy of their own living rooms. Now, with a megaphone to the whole world in every pocket, we are treated to some plain jaw-dropping lack of common sense.
Take the old "reply-all" email disaster, now multiplied a million times. Someone makes a simple inquiry on an open posting ("Does anyone know a good plumber?") and the comment stream blows up with everything from government-conspiracy theories around water pipes to a lengthy treatise on how Bluetooth faucets will spell the doom of civilization.
And meanwhile, the original questioner has long since moved on, overwhelmed by a digital deluge of unwelcome "expert" opinion. Then of course there's the emergence of "keyboard courage." In real life, they might never cut you off at the coffee shop, but online they'll debate you at 2 AM about whether or not the moon landing was faked, typing out their diatribes in Comic Sans with no punctuation whatsoever.
They're practically Shakespearean in their lack of ability to construct a well-formatted sentence, and yet they're certain that they're the ones who are redefining history. Of course, we can't rule out the viral misinformation buffet. One minute your newsfeed is filled with adorable puppy videos, the next it's clogged up with "facts" about cucumbers curing cancer or how your house plant is spying on you for the Illuminati.
It's like we're watching a virtual theme park of gullibility, where each click-bait billboard leads you deeper into the rabbit hole of "I read it on the internet, so it has to be true." Social media also does a great job of revealing the armchair philosophy grandstanding habits. A little weather event is "evidence" that the government is running hidden mind-control weather balloons; a tweet by a celebrity is an existential breakdown regarding human morals and what it says about them.
It's as if all the mundane little aspects of life are a hidden puzzle that only the boldest Reddit detectives are brave enough to decipher. But for every face-palm, there's something perversely comedic about it. Watching someone attempt to spin this as a sign of intellectual superiority to eat pizza crusts first might make you cringe, but it's also a reminder that we're all human, and that a healthy dose of humility is just what the doctor ordered. And where else are you ever going to see 17 different versions on whether or not cereal is a soup?
So yes, social media lays bare the fact that we’re all capable of looking pretty oblivious sometimes. But it’s also a reminder that the Internet is a giant public experiment in human behavior, one that, despite its many absurdities, keeps us endlessly amused, occasionally enlightened, and, let’s face it, never bored.
