does not really qualify....

If it's truth, it's not really a 'rant', right? If it is obviously factual, it can't be considered whining? We all know, witness it every day, so all can testify it's actual/factual. Here's the thing: Social media is a terrible misnomer. The one thing it is NOT is social.

You see it all the time, everywhere you go, even places it is illegal. Those folk who are stopped at the traffic light in the next lane over, busily checking their phones, looking at emails that could not wait until the ignition key was turned off. Responding to text messages while idling, waiting for the light to change in fifteen seconds. I just read something in the paper recently about a traffic cop in the Atlanta area who has given out 800 tickets to motorists since the start of the year for texting. He reported that easiest way to catch someone is when they are waiting for the light to change: if you are out in the roadway, texting, it is illegal! Gotcha!

All those folk, who sedt emails and texts to friends to say: meet at _ _ _ _. Then they sit together, separately, oblivious to neighbors at adjacent tables, or right in front of them. Each staring at their iphones, or ipads or laptop screens, never looking at the 'friend' (probably texting the person next to them or across the table - mere inches away!)

And Facebook: surreptitiously sneaking a peek into someones life, without actually making contact. Like standing out in the dark, in the hedges, avoiding the light, looking in the window, before the shade is pulled down to cut off the view. Voyeurs. Not really making contact, heaven forbid communicating, or getting involved by actual exchange of news, information about goings-on in one's life. Just peeking through the screens, the not-quite-drawn curtains,  into the lives of others...

And then there is YouTube: I recently heard someone on the radio describe it as 'the clearing house for all of human stupidity'. That quote by Andy Warhol has come true, probably sooner than he would have predicted. The things people will do and publish for the world's amusement, for that fifteen minutes of fleeting fame....