From Pandora's Box, where all the ills of humanity swarmed, the Greeks drew out hope after all the others, as the most dreadful of all. I know no more stirring symbol; for, contrary to the general belief, hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself - Albert Camus
Pandora’s Box and Social Media
Pandora opens the box in Greek mythology thus releasing ills on the world, yet closes the box lid on hope. It is very easy to simplify the story to one of her releasing horrible things and keeping what was good in a box. But like Social Media, that is over simplification.
The Greeks deliberately left hope in a box and remember it sat with the other ills prior to Pandora opening the box’s lid. Huh? This is what the initial quote of Camus drives at. Hope can be read as resignation or hanging on. To the Ancient Greek it was an ill, and this is the double edged sword of the tale or in fact as Camus in his quote hints at the salvation for humanity as hope is kept in a closed box. And the same, for me, applies to Social Media. It is a modern day version of the box - full of ills, but can also be a boon, a raising of humanity from its base self.
The advent of social media opened up a wealth of information that in the physical world could only really be accessed by physical access and knowledge thereof of this information. So a big thank you to an Englishman who was fed up cycling around a rather large science experiment in Switzerland to get paperwork and files.
On creation we lifted a lid on the box and out (as many now realise) flew out a load of shite. How many of us have been sucked into reading and watching content that to be honest is pointless, to have read false news from false heroes, to have judged jealously, spitefully what others say, to fall into a pit of woeful inadequacy and self loathing. Forgetting that no one really uses Social Media for truth, in fact only painting a false reality in order to make themselves feel better. Acting outwardly, too fearful to look in a mirror.
Social Media for me, and I would hope a lot of people, has become an absolute bane of my life in terms of its useless content and stoic ability to suck the life and time out of anyone.
Social media is Pandora’s box and what we have opened has proliferated to the point of worry and concern.
Yet the Ancient Greeks offer salvation in the form of hope being held within, and this is the same analogy we can draw for Social Media. Hope is a form of inaction, of doing nothing, of resignation, of anticipation. And I am glad that hope be denied also for Social Media as well as Ancient Greek Society. It means we do not have to resign ourselves to fate, where we are, and in modern day terms the pervasive and corrupting entity that is Social Media.
It modern parlance and less prosaic we can get up off our arse and do something about Social Media, its creators, and call out those using it - “fake, liar, full of shit, unauthentic, polishing a turd” and so on. Now my language fruity but Social Media like a Greek Tragedy only exists if it has protagonists or actors. So be a better fucking actor and disengage from Social Media; that’s what I am doing, and that also includes tech such as my iPhone.
We can view the Internet/Web as gifts for the dissemination and consumption of information. But remember Pigs eat pigswill. The Internet/Web can and does power the sharing of information, akin to the written and oral tradition that drove the Greeks. Instead of being a Piggy Piggy be a wise Owl soaring above the land spying what is worthy of a visit, and the scoffing the occasional rodent.
Yet we are forgetting that Social Media as an output of the Internet/Web is only as bad as it’s creators and users - don’t be one. Or if you do use it, use it with aforethought. A bad workman will always blame their tools.
We have opened in modernity Pandora’s Box and having left hope in the box, are forced to take society to the next level, without hope stifling, dragging us down, as we close down on the ills and woes we released with the birth of this technology.
Are we becoming dead in ourselves as a result of the usage of the Internet and Web? (Note I have switched from Social Media to Internet which is technology, and Web which is the content, of which Social Media is one output, and a cancerous one at that.)
Are we alive but asleep as we jump to algorithms, duplicity, and AI?
Have a read about DEAD INTERNET THEORY. Though read with a pinch of salt, it is a conspiracy theory, and I use it loosely and in allusion. In its context we can see the true death of our very being by Social Media, because it is the death of ourselves at the hands of what sits beneath Social Media which is the Internet and Web. Social Media is merely a Chimera, something of which the Ancient Greeks knew so much. And the beast that the Internet and Web has both created and become needs slaying. Where do we go next? Maybe we go back to books, to oral tradition, to human connection - I certainly think so.
Oral Tradition meets reading. Pick up a book or open your mouth you literary peasants.
The reality is Social Media is a red herring, it a Chimera, not real and mistaken as the real evil. It isn’t. It is what sits beneath.
So I now expand on Pandora’s Box. We can get up off our arses instead of hoping, and reject the Internet and Web as the sole means of life, be aware of the ills it released of which Social Media is one, act to utilise the Internet and Web as a means of gaining information, accept it is out of the box, live with it, but don’t live for it. If we are aware of the Internet/Web, we can accept it for what it is - namely a tool we can use badly or well. I hope to rally people to change usage!
Dumped off Social Media? How shocking! How hurtful! How nasty! Not really, they probably did you a favour so fuck em!!!
Now onto a more amusing bit. As relations now seem to be in the surreal world of Social Media and here I will quote Facebook and Strava, one needs to take stock, stand back, and have a breath of fresh air.
People now have relationships in the air, the ether of the Web in forms such as Facebook, but where is the substance. The substance is speaking to another human being in a truthful way whether good or bad.
I now find it highly amusing that relationships rise and fall on the acceptance and rejection on, in this case for me, Facebook and Strava. In having rejected the Internet/Web, and Social Media in its current form I stand outside the circle of others and won’t pick up the ball and play the game. Plus after all I have been through in and out of addiction I much prefer to say it how it is.
The World of Social Media Knob Heads
Be careful, we now enter the world of Knob Heads in the past life of Peter Cobley, and they are nothing more than a fiction, people living in a fiction, not able to sit in front of a mirror and question themselves. Fuck em’ off.
So my advice if you have been defriended or blocked on Social Media, in my case Facebook or Strava is not to worry. And I mean that. You see if you care you are indulging in this artifice of real life, plus if someone has to do something behind you back and not to your face, then “fuck em’”. They clearly cannot and will not live a real life.
And when I look back, whilst my drunken delivery of how I felt and what was done to me, was well… theatrical, I have no regrets. I am glad I called out Colin Bishop, Jen Ulwin Bishop of Mossley, and publicly. This is authentic, real, challenges the Pandora’s box of the Internet, Web, and Social Media and shows more backbone that Colin Bishop cycling off on a bike.
And it speaks a truth in the true oral tradition, that you are both not very likeable people. You are in fact worse than that. You are examples of people who are dead inside and certainly cannot see beyond Social Media and its like to humanity. More concerned with form and not substance, form over help and honesty.
Over now to Stuart Hutchison and Ruth Hutchison, of Manchester Road, Mossley. Dumping, blocking me on Facebook and Strava is amusing and sums you up as a) trapped in the machine, b) can only communicate via Social Media, and not speak to a face, a person, a human c) live in a world where all is Facebook and Strava etc. yet in fact you are two vacuous individuals who are quite nasty and horrid. I see through you. Wrapped up in your own life of lies, gossip, untruth. And this is what happens to people when they mistake reality for Social Media. Yes, I posted a few rum things, said a few rum things, that I regret, but you actually acted on this reality (which was not the real me, this I now realise) and chose a false reality casing aside friendship - well shame on you.
You see Peeps you don’t have to worry if people reject you on Social Media. It is not real, and neither are the people.
Others who dumped, blocked me include Chris Phillips, who I realise is certainly not sincere as he plays, Julie O’Regan who is gossip extraordinaire and unhappily lonely as she works her way “around”. Richard Gee, butter would not melt in this mouth as to his actions, and James Sheard, who let me down so badly. And Des Thorpe, who I viewed as a friend.
Over to Lily Allen.
You see I don’t really care about the people I just mentioned. I don’t. I am happy. They? I don’t care. And you can be the same if you view them as “Knob Heads”.