Where in the world is [insert digital medium of your choice here]?
I struggled over how to interpret this question for many days. Do I read it as what happened to an old beloved piece of digital media from my childhood? Do I read it as where do I see different pieces of digital media in life? At one point I even took the question in its most literal sense and considered where the headquarters of big social media companies are located? The many different ways this question could be interpreted made me consider which question I felt needed to be answered the most. Which question had the biggest impacts on the world and should be discussed and brought to the forefront. Eventually I decided on focusing on the impact of certain social media apps on real-life decisions and event.
When I was younger, I thought that anything that happened online would stay online, only having consequences if you were ‘dumb’ online. I took this to mean googling things like ‘how to make a bomb’ or sending people threatening messages. We currently live in a world where social media is everywhere, and Twitter (X) especially, is a social media app that has direct effects on events and decisions made in the real world. I still struggle to process the fact that leaders of countries, people whose choices literally impact the rest of the world interact with Twitter the same way I do. Posting, ranting and even making memes, all these being activities deemed unprofessional in the early days of social media.
The significance and potential consequences of Twitter entering the political world remind me of an episode of Black Mirror. ‘Hated in the Nation‘, season 3 episode 6 of the British tv show Black Mirror takes place in a world where cancel culture has arguably gone ‘too far.’ The episode follows a detective as she investigates murders performed by ADI (Autonomous Drone Insect) bees triggered by mass tweeting of the hashtag ‘#Deathto [name and photo of the person they wish death to].’ Although this was essentially an extreme exaggeration of what cancel culture was in 2016, it no longer seems as far-fetched as it did about 10 years ago.
Rewatching this episode made me think about how Twitter has cemented itself as part of the political world. The same could be said for TikTok as this is also a social media app which has become more and more prevalent in political discussion throughout the years. Official departments of different governments are posting memes on Twitter, making light of serious topics such as deportation. Twitter is not just an app for people to post their funny little thoughts anymore, it has become a space for anyone to comment on anything, and insight violence all from one tweet. Twitter is now the home of most political debates, with the comments of any post getting flooded with generic right-wing slogans and ‘subtle’ racist jokes. All this poses the questions, how long until social media is just for the discussion of politics? Will we reach a point where it is expected of us to use social media to push a message, and interacting with people online for fun is just a thing of a past?
I also watched the show Black Mirror, and I feel the same way. It seems like social media has become a place where false information can spread so easily. I think this connects to the question because as social media becomes more focused on sharing opinions and pushing messages, it might lose its original purpose of connecting people for fun. As long as social media exists, there will always be both true and false information. What really matters is how we receive it and how carefully we think about the content before believing or sharing it.