“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Shakespeare was talking about “life” in Macbeth, but that’s because he didn’t have social media in the seventeenth century.
The election is over (or is it?). As always, it depends on the telling.
Social media has become a vomitous stream of nothingness. Opinions fly this way and that like bothersome gnats that are swatted and promptly ignored. Sometimes one comment or post might bite and itch for a while, but you scratch a couple of times and it fades. But nothing changes. Society screams out into the void and the void ignores. Not even an echo.
For the last four years (maybe longer, but the last four years seems like a reality unto its own), I have watched Trump supporters attack the left and Trump-haters belittle the right. Names were called. Insults were hurled. Arguments were made. By the billions. And not one mind was changed during the course of that avalanche of babbling and bickering.
Not. One. Mind.
Yet it goes on. Drones on. “I’m always right and you’re always wrong.” “I’m always smart and you’re always dumb.” “I always know and you’ll never learn.” Half the world thinks those on the Red side are a bunch of idiots. The other side thinks those on the Blue half of America are a bunch of idiots.
I think they’re both right.
So take some time to read a post on social media and reserve comment. The author is regurgitating misinformation and outright fallacy. They don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s just a story, full of fiction and drama and fantasy. The person writing the tale is an idiot. But before you reply with certain wit and scathing “facts”, remember, so are you.
We all tell our tales.
And that, friends and foes alike, is my tale, full of sound and fury.
And nothing.
