Blog 3865 – 06.22.2026

Social Media – Blessing or Curse?

We signed on to reconnect with friends and family, but instead became addicted to a reinforcing algorithm feed back loops that are designed to keep us connected so we will buy more crap. We paid for cable and streaming services to avoid commercials, yet allow social media to steal our attention away from real life and real connections for a virtual existence where we are constantly bombarded by promises of incredible products and services that are in the word of a friend just so much “bull shit.”

Freedom of speech is not free, the Internet is not free, social media is not free, but has made several billionaire media moguls who would literally sell their grandmothers, their souls, and all the rest of us to be the next trillionaire.

Some years ago before he lost his cognitive functions to dementia, Bruce Willis made a movie where most people were trading their real lives for virtual lives where they lived through their avatars in a virtual world. They just lay around their houses with a headset over their eyes as their bodies wasted away as they watched themselves forever young and beautiful acting out excited adventures in their virtual world.

This is the world Zuckerberg envisioned when he renamed Facebook – Meta and Musk envisioned when he renamed Twitter – X. The names reinforce that their true aim is just to suck the life out of us all and enrich themselves. They are but vampires, zombies, and monsters sucking our blood, eating our brains, and destroying our lives to enhance and extend their own.

But, hey, that’s just my opinion and that of the former Vice President of Facebook.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White