Small turns big and big turns to small in social media
Small is now big and big is now small. Confused? I am elaborating a bit more. A small incident now a days gets hyped in the social media specially Facebook and gets big. A big incident gets flatten and makes no impact in the society, which it should.
The social media has brought a lot of blessings in our life by connecting instantly with our loved ones (really? All Facebook friends are loved ones? Not really most of the time I guess). You get emotional finding your lost friends or can see your little niece growing hairs or get jealous about your friend doing honeymoon in Paris. Lately it started helping you to promote your home based business showing your newly baked cake does not matter it tastes good or bad, if it looks great with that warm filter you get the order. It made promoting you and your business so easy. Yes there are controversies that social media is eating up our family time and making us unnecessarily interested in other person but it is helping us in a way, you cannot deny.
Social media is doing a lot of good things but I see a big problem sprouting out of it. Recently in a country government has announced lockdown as Covid situation worsen. Some professionals are identified to be given free movement permission such as doctors, all professionals related to treatment, emergency exporter workers, medicine and other emergency products carrier etc. Other people except those mentioned in the circulation must take movement pass from a designated website of government. Suddenly a video got viral on Facebook YouTube and other social media showing a mid-aged lady doctor arguing with policeman. The argument seems like started because the policeman was not letting her go amid her showing her car sticker of hospital she works, her permission paper from hospital and the logo of her hospital on her doctor apron she was wearing. The group of policeman was not ready to allow without showing her doctor’s ID card.
It was a story in the afternoon under scorching sun. It was visible that both the lady and the group of police were arguing loud almost to the extent of verbal abuse. I am not judging here who was right and who was wrong. My opinion is may be both of them were right in their jurisdiction and may be they could let it go speaking softly. But sometimes people get bothered about something in their family life or health or financial condition, and they burst out with others for no actual reason. It may have happened there.
Now that video got viral big time in that country parting the residents into two groups one supporting the police and another supporting the doctor. In fact fans, instantly created, started fighting in between them over Facebook. The argument between the doctor and police has spread out in entire country. A small incident of argument has parted the country into two communities who is wasting their time and mental peace just to justify either the doctor or the police. In fact the court has given speech on that both parties should act responsible which indicates the fact that how popular and important that incident has become.
I understand there was some prior tension of another doctor has been fined by the police for not carrying his doctor’s ID card and the later incident may have fueled the previous incident but yet it was a mere small incident among few people. Think, if there was no Facebook or YouTube we may not have even idea of what happened there, which means it would not become an issue in other people’ lives. But just because the video of that cat fight was published in social media people got some issue to express their own opinion and eventually enjoyed the entertainment of group fighting sports (I termed that) the personal battle has become national war on virtual space.
Such a small incident perhaps a small personal incident has become one of the most important and large issue to discuss.
Will those people be discussing and making it large if that any of that incident’s participants got cancer? And if he or she asked for help by donating only a few bucks from all those thousands and millions of people fighting for him or her in this incident? I doubt that. I am sure you will doubt that too. It is not like that his or her deadly disease is also a social or national problem but that is little bigger problem than they started fighting.
Besides what if the same incident had happened when there was no social media. How many people would waste their time on it and take it big? You can hand count them. And in most cases authorities can control the thoughts and opinions of social media can very easily dampen the importance of big incidents which will really impact people’s lives. People also find less interest in talking about boring subjects thought it is important to discuss for their future. In most cases those small gossipy occurrence overpowers big news in social media so as in real life.