Waste of a good point   

By JEFF LUND

April 24, 2019
Wednesday PM

(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - The worst thing on social media is when someone you don’t like has a great point. You had this whole little topic figured out. You felt really good about yourself because you had planted your flag on a side and there were plenty of others around you so you felt really welcomed and validated. Then some idiot has to go and ruin it with something that needs to be considered.

What do you do? 

You run the program. Get angry and run to the comfort of an untested world view. 

Right?

I was scrolling through social media the other day just to see the people with whom I collude. You know, check out my echo chamber, see my part of the salad bowl, melting pot, whatever metaphor we’re using now. 

My buddy Steve reported that a support dog defecated on the carpet at San Diego International Airport, escaped its leash and took off down the corridor. 

Someone posted a video clip of a basketball game. 

Someone posted a video clip of him playing a video game, as in the replay of something that happened in the video game.  

None of that was interesting or juicy. Well, the first one maybe, but in a different way. 

Anyway, someone posted a link to people protesting a family squirrel hunt in New Jersey. I wondered what the point of some of those signs was. “Pathetic parents raise pathetic kids” because the parents are taking their kids to a squirrel hunt? It was about to go down. I was going to entitle myself to a digital Two Minutes Hate. 

But I talked myself down. 

If I want people to understand hunting and fishing then I have to represent it well and when I don’t, realize the damage I do. It’s the damage that gets the most attention because there are always people who can’t wait for the opportunity to make others feel bad, guilty or otherwise inferior because of their conduct or even beliefs. 

I don’t always like how I’ve represented hunting and fishing. Even down to photos I post on Instagram. Makes me wonder about things like the ethics involving fishing for what I don’t intend to keep. 

So, I was sickened by the posters, but the message or idea was a valid one. Some people might not like the idea of advertising a killing contest and that is a legit submission for contemplation. 

There’s a big difference between pushing your morality on others and adding to the discussion. But we look for key words and phrases to put people in a category and in doing so, miss out on the content of what’s being said. I once tallied how many times a speaker said “um” and though I had my number, I couldn’t recall details of the speech. I got fixated on the wrong thing and missed the point. 

As far as this point goes, most people just want to be left alone. Antagonists will continue to look to weaponized social media for attention or to feel a purpose. So, I have a choice in who I follow and how I react to the content. 

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