They sow political discourse and are evil and thoughtless.
They do not promote discussion.
The modern tech giants that spy on you and sell your data to 3rd parties for profit, Google, Twitter, Facebook....if you use them, you are part of the herd of useful sheep running off a cliff.
We live in an age where millions of people speak (or type) whatever impulsive garbage happens to be on their minds at any given moment without giving much though to whether or not that's a good idea, or if their innermost ponderings contribute anything of value to society at large. And the ease of doing this daily brain dump is thoroughly addictive for most Americans and puts billions into the pockets of the social media corporations who enable it. Speaking our minds online with our real identities has pretty much become the equivalent of career suicide, however, depending on which side of the ideological spectrum one happens to fall.
Myself, I find it very difficult to absorb, let alone estimate the foolishness of those who enter into discussions online about supercharged, sensitive political matters with their own names and photographs as their screen avatars. They're just begging to lose their jobs, professional contracts, and otherwise be publicly smeared and shamed into oblivion. That said, I do not use Twitter and Facebook has become a sometimes useful means of connecting with family and old Army buddies, but I've used it less and less the past couple of years. All the other social media outlets? I don't touch them, nor will I dirty my boots in the online comment sections of "news" sites. USMB on the other hand is one of the few message boards I still bother with, as it affords some small degree of anonymity, or so one can pretend.
Otherwise, people are so damned rotten and venomous to each other on most social media sites it sometimes makes me wonder how people can stand the sight of each other in the real world. Case in point, there's the key problem with spending too much time in electronic discourse; people forget what it's like to actually interact with each other in the offline world beyond their computer screens. Being a complete asshole wannabe keyboard commando is a cinch when the person you're mistreating can't see or berate you back in person. There's really no personal consequence for being a jerk online beyond getting banned from whatever site. More often than not I wish for a time machine so I can take a ride back to the time before smart devices and the internet and all the asshole culture it has spawned. Then again, where would we be without our daily dose of venting steam in pixel space?
