Death Race 140

Let me just get this off my chest before I begin... I don't like Mashable!

I find the regular stream of sensationalist link-bait to be no better than the bile that spews forth from "newspapers" like the Daily Mail, or the thankfully-deceased News of the World. Ay benefits or insight that it offered the social media community have long passed.

Despite this I am, inevitably, exposed to some of its stories and one of them got me just a little bit angry. I am referring to the tactless, ambulance-chasing Twitter Breaks News of Whitney Houston Death 27 Minutes Before Press.

I'm not simply upset by the obvious cashing-in on a tragic death. Lots of media outlets do that. It's just as abhorrent when it is a super-sized emboldened headline on the front of the Daily Brainwash, as it is when it's being retweeted a thousand times by people I'd hope could do better. But what really grinds my gears, is this zealous obsession with speed and numbers.

When did social media become all about how fast you could tweet something? "Ooh! Look at me, I tweeted this before you did." And, not only was it before YOU, but it was EXACTLY this many minutes. Oh, and I got THIS many retweets and YOU didn't.

What the hell have we become? Corporations, marketers and accountants have made us lose sight of the beauty, the simple joys, the sharing and collaboration. We used to work together. We used to support each other; not sneak around with a knife in our hands waiting to proclaim how WE were harder, better, faster, stronger.

This focus on the cold, hard, data of social media has been worrying me for quite a while. Platforms like Twitter have, as has been proven time and time again, the capability to bring about real change within society - both locally and globally. I'm not just talking about those serious BBC-News-report-type changes, but changes all around us. Daily changes. Changes that spread and re-imagine our communities from the kind of scale that would usually remain unreported.

I will leave the last words to someone who understood more than anyone what was happening to the world. These words still ring true today as they did when they were spoken over 60 years ago... Unfortunately...

We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls... has barricaded the world with hate.

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people, will return to the people.

Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator, 1940

Stuart Witts blogs at Stay Happy and Don't Die, and is @stuartwitts on Twitter.