The Age Of Triviality

This is the Age of Triviality. Well, that's my name for it.  People everywhere seem more concerned with the trivial than with the important. It's probably because they either want to be distracted by triviality in order to escape reality or they have been seduced by it, since it is everywhere. If we build sandcastles in the air, the air is the Internet. Further, I think the best place to notice that triviality has taken over the world is to look at how that social media is used. Even though I rarely participate in it, and only as a viewer when doing so, I can see that social media is mostly much ado about nothing.

Most of those "tweets" on Twitter are trivial ones....or annoying ones if you dislike them as much I do. And social media sites like Face book are mostly posts about nothing. "Here I am making coffee this morning", for instance. Posting pictures of things that we don't care about is the norm on most of the social media sites. There is also an excess of exaggeration about what the person posting is trying to convey and often what is posted is untrue or meant to impress the viewer. If friend Mabel posts her photos of the local hangout, for instance, Audrey posts her photos of her recent trip to Paris....just to one up Mabel.

One thing absent from social media is the discussion of any serious subjects. There is no depth there.  I guess that's why some talk about Face book being "Fake book". I suspect that allot of what is posted on Face book/Fake book and other social media sites is just not real. But then, the trivial is that way. What's posted is pretentious or egotistical or some other illusion. I doubt you'll find any serious discussions there. Any serious subject gets mentioned only because it is trendy to do so, and the posting is often nonsense rather than reality.

Social media is a mirror of what concerns humans, and a look at social media sites today shows that we are concerned more about nothing than about something. I realize that social media is seductive to some, that it is a "toy" and that many don't want or see it as appropriate to use for intelligent postings. But nonetheless, what we see on social media is mostly triviality that confirms that we are not thinking very deeply during our days on earth. .  And that is troubling.