Wiping Away the Tears of History
As a society, we don’t much like to cry, but we love to rage and so we’re drawn away from tragedy and into conspiracy.
Tragedy is messy and uncomfortable. The only brief moment when we gave a damn about the thousand immigrants who drowned in the Mediterranean every month was when a child washed up on a beach. We looked away. You did and I did.
But conspiracy is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Elvis, John Kennedy, and Bigfoot are cryogenically frozen in an underground bunker. Princess Diana was assassinated and our government blew up the World Trade Center. You get my drift. We can come close to blows in a saloon over such stuff, but no harm done.
That was then and now is now
Then was before Zuckerberg was even born and now is since he saddled and bridled close to three billion active monthly users. Facebook is not all sharing kitten and puppy pictures with grandma. The gossip we used to indulge in over the back fence now has more eyes and ears than entire continents. It fascinates me t…