I remember the day I first created a Facebook account. I was in school, everyone was talking about it and I went home, activated an account, and it started. At first, it was photos, wall posts, birthday wishes and jokes. There was no politics, no dirty media, no nothing. It was like a mini lala land online. With time, the internet in my country grew and electronic news outlets reproduced. I opened a twitter account and my addiction to social media began. I always wanted to refresh my twitter timeline, get the juice of the recent headline, read the comments, reply, enter into arguments, and then just randomly tweet.
Facebook became the same thing as well. On one hand, you have people sharing weddings celebrations happiness, while on the other hand you have misery wars death tolls. Nothing was ever in between, and especially when you live in the Arab World, the past 3 years have been devastatingly bloody, and it seems the blood is going to increase. The thing with electronic newspapers is the fact that they are not monitored nor do they publish hours after the event happens, but release the headline the moment it happens, without any proof without any credibility. It’s awful, really. The amount of lies you read, the titles they use for an article that is not really saying what the title suggests, the comments they allow to be written underneath the news…etc. All of this opened my eyes to something in my society I did not know existed: hatred. We have it within us, and the thought of the comments I read being written by people who live in the same community I do, scared my heart. When did we become like this? Were we always like that?….
For now, I am saying goodbye to social media. I have lost my objective of being a member of that electronic community, but I will keep my blog. It is something I enjoy having despite not writing anything for a while now. To be honest, I stare and stare with no clue about what to write..my hands are numb to the things I am hearing and seeing on the news..it’s really sad how we watched cities and countries crumbling down in front of our eyes..makes me feel powerless, helpless.
I will try and write more, and less people will read as I will not have a Facebook/twitter to share it on, but hey that’s is a sacrifice I am willing to make 🙂
Badia 