Just read a great article in Wired Magazine titled #Crowd Control. (Wasik 2012) It is about how social media
fuels social unrest. It gives a timeline of the unrest that social media has
caused in 2011. It covers how some 20,000 people gather for a “day of rage,” in
Yemen to Athens Greece where up to 100,000 revolt against pay and pension cuts
to how in Boston where a kid on Facebook invited and had hundreds of kids show
up at a late-night beach party; forcing for a SWAT team to be called in.
The article lists 26 incidents that gathered people together
throughout the world, for some cause good or bad, all who got the message from
a social network or a SMS or email transmission.
I personally identify with the opening statement, “Why pack
into Target when Amazon can speed the essentials of life to your door? Why
approach strangers at parties or bars when dating sites like OKCupid … can more
efficiently shuttle potential mates into your bed? Why sit in a cinema when you
can stream? Why cram into arena seats when you can pay per view? We declare the
obsolescence of ‘bricks and mortar,’ but let’s be honest: What we usually want
to avoid is flesh and blood…”
I do not think I could have said it any better than that and
that is exactly how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, I am the first one to want to have
dinner and drinks with friends, but only with those friends that I have already
met. I suppose I have enough friends already and really do not care who I meet
at the supermarket. I have a 50” flat screen with surround sound, why would I
go to the movies just to pay $14 for popcorn and a coke, let alone the price of
the ticket when I can have Netflix stream directly to me. It saves me the
hassle of walking on the sticky theater floor, sitting next to the people that
do not stop talking and even better, when I want another Coca-Cola, I can
pause, go to my frig and get one that cost me .42 cents at Costco.com.
Did the convenience of social networking cause me to have
societal anxiety that I do not need to be around them? I doubt it is the cause,
but it certainly showed me that there is a better way to buy everything from
Mother’s Day presents to computers (as I type on my new Dell Alienware Aurora
X79 with Dual Layer Blue-ray reader, dual 23” wide screen monitors and 2 TB
RAID hard drive that I custom built online from Dell) to products from
Walmart.com (even though Walmart is only 5 minutes away).
One of the best things is when I find a vendor out of state
that offers free shipping and no sales tax! Maybe it’s just laziness, because I
KNOW that Target would have a problem with me if I went in their store and
shopped in my pajamas. My two cents again. – Chris.
