For those of you still anchored in the 20th century or who have somehow been living in a cave and aren’t familiar with social media yet, I hope today may illustrate just how counterproductive it has become in some ways.

Let me state for the record: I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite here today with what I’m about to say, because I use social media quite a lot. I’ve got a lot of people from our community –  and really around the world  – who keep up with Thomasville and Thomas County in their lives in some ways through what I put on my social media outlets. I’ve always seen social media as a tool that could be used to create healthy discussions, and even something that can be used as a teaching tool. So I appreciate the positive value that can be found within it.

However, just as it is with so many other things, human beings cannot figure out how to make a good thing last or how to be self-aware enough to make an effort to use those things for positive purposes.

So, let’s do an overview, shall we? Twitter was a place for people to go and make very quick, brief statements about whatever whetted their interest that everyone else could see. You were only allowed to use a very limited number of characters about whatever topic you wanted to talk about. In turn, people would respond with their reactions and thoughts regarding whatever was said. It became a worldwide phenomenon.

When Elon Musk stepped in and purchased Twitter and subsequently changed the name of it to become ‘X’, the tone of the platform took a decidedly more conservative turn. Now it must be said that social media has been used to underpin both liberal and conservative views, which, of course, created some spicy dialogue along the way.

Once considered a hero regarding environmental and other issues, when Musk became part of Donald Trump’s accountability efforts regarding Washington, DC, liberals lost their minds. Not only did they start torching Tesla vehicles (which is just stupid) across the nation, another of Musk’s creations, in some kind of weird symbolic protest, but they also started jumping ship from his social media platform ‘X’ in droves.

So, almost too predictably, now we look and discover a new social media site called BlueSky has been created. This particular entity is apparently designed for liberals to almost exclusively interact amongst themselves, giving them a virtual “safe space” to share without having to worry about those pesky conservatives getting into the mix.

So, in essence, if you step back and look at it objectively, now both sides have their own little personal echo chambers to live in, with the walls lined with mirrors exclusively of their design that they can conveniently step in front of and talk to as much as they would like.

So what is wrong with that, you might ask? In my opinion, everything.

For one, it appears we are admitting we, as a society, simply are incapable of discussing ideas that we disagree on anymore. Normally, through the course of our history, our greatest ideas have come through something Thomas Jefferson called ‘enlightened engagement,’ which essentially meant educated discussion served with a healthy dash of civility between people with differing ideas. Now we are essentially acknowledging that so many of us have allowed ourselves to become so cultish in our thinking that we are simply incapable of doing so.

In other words, if you disagree with me, not only are you an idiot, you are an enemy.

And that leads to my second point: when it comes to making important philosophical decisions about the direction of our nation, it would seem counterintuitive to think that doing so without input from all angles involved would not be the best approach for us to take as a whole. In other words, sometimes we need to argue for the health of who and what we are headed as a society, because maybe, just maybe, through the argument, valid and cogent points can be offered from both sides to help find answers that benefit all Americans instead of just one group.

I would hope that all forward-thinking Americans would be able to clearly see the danger in all of this and willingly choose to unplug from epicenters of purely partisan self-worship in the interest of that ‘enlightened engagement’ mentioned before. I mean, it was through that mindset that those brilliant minds, some 250 years ago, created the foundation for this still incredible nation – and if it worked then, coming from a figurative and literal dark hole of nothingness to become the most formidable society in the history of the known universe, it should be able to work now.

Otherwise, we may look very soon, and not even be able to talk to our neighbors, friends, or family.

Oh, silly me. I forgot…that’s already happening.