Social Media Is

Abstract

A crap poem.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, then instant instagram regret, but damn, too late,

it’s all over What’sApp.

And please don’t tag me in that photo; I’m sure I never looked like that.

Immediate connectedness with “like-minded” people, too awkward to ignore or un-friend.

Staying in touch with family in 3 short sentences, when once whole letters we would send.

But oh the ease of inviting everyone to a party in a single click;

Then the horror—they all turn up and think you’re only 36.

Social media is the daily-me, self-expression taken to the “n”th degree;

Obsessive individualism

In a networked community.

It entertains us while waiting for the bus and in boring conferences and work meetings,

Even sitting on the loo,

When we should be writing the book, and there’s that article for this great journal we really ought to do.

It is the digital summary of all of us in digitally enhanced, carefully selected, self-publicising form.

Do all my friends really look that good, am I so against the norm?

Social media is happiness by likes and hatred by trolls,

And intrusions into our privacy, that we can never seem to control.

Old boyfriends stalking your status and writing on your wall;

And having to contemplate whether it really is polite to un-friend them all?

Social media is all over our every day, punctuating all other habits

Where WiFi becomes more relevant than running water,

With lots of fluffy rabbits.

Ten questions to determine what sort of cocktail you might be,

All for a bunch of tax dodgers, data exploiters, and aids to “security.”

Exactly what are we “sharing” with whom, in our search for affinity?

We exchange speed and space, multiplicity and polycentrality

For private companies to turn our communications into commodities

Where advertisers feed off our cyber footprints

And we surrender our privacy to corporate giants

And state surveillance.

While we share our opposition and hopes for resistance

Evade censorship

Mobilize protest

The wondrous possibilities of digital activism

Are we audible above the endless hum of digital murmurings?

Will this voice I am given transcend the pact between technology and capitalism?

Social media, point and click, advertising trip, nowhere to hide.

An anti-social media to avoid eye contact, while commercialism thrives.

Silly cats, cute cats, clever cats, cats with hats, cats with dogs with cats with a bone.

Will someone please talk to me and stop looking at their phone?

Where your brother’s Father-in-law wants to be your friend.

Really? Really?

And please, please,

Don’t ever poke me again

Click, Delete

Start over.

Remove all advertising

Take out the data capture

Add in total user-transparency

Full user-control and accountability

A cooperative society

Equal and deliberative

Recognition of difference,

Space for contestation,

Politics unwrapped

Room for understanding

Privacy and participation

A commercial lock-out zone

And yes, some crap poems

Social media could be a communication commons.