Stephen King Was Right!

Facebook started out as such a great-sounding idea: connect family, friends and strangers throughout the world in friendly communication and information sharing. Alas, things have not gone well. Growth in quality all too soon evolved into growth by whatever means, and some of those means (e.g., the deal with Cambridge Analytica) were downright criminal, not to put too fine a point on it. For all its promises to police itself against gross misuse, we are confronted with an ever more smelly swampiness (e.g., its willingness to allow unlimited political disinformation ads without review). Facebook’s many failings have been discussed at length and do not need to be repeated here. Stephen King was right to walk away from this sordid example of mercantilism gone berserk with power and greed.

As to Twitter, and other dubious platforms, they are like whirlpools that suck you in and bring you ever-closer to a bottomless hypnotic realm of wasted time and banality. The internet has plenty of good things to offer. One need not slum-it all the time.

As an emetic for our over-consumption of garbage and a corrective for our flaccid minds, we could purge the disinformation and bile, and then we could read the entire two-volume magnum opus of Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities, followed by the recently released Agathe: Or, The Forgotten Sister as a chaser. Trust me its more rewarding than cat videos, beheadings, conspiracy theories and the Dumpster Fire-In-Chief’s misinformation machine.