This is a bit of a rant, you may disagree with it, and that’s fine…

There is a friend of mine, a good friend, a friend I like very much, and with whom I share a great many foundational moral principals, who I find my self snoozing for 30 day on Facebook every month. Not because I dislike or are offended by any his posts in general, but because they are relentless.

Utterly unbearably relentless.

At one point, while not snoozed, he put up a post say “If you are offended by the things I post feel free to unfollow me.” but I am not offended. I agree with them, and I do not wish to unfollow him, I just want him to be less utterly relentless… It is a problem, and indeed it is a problem that affects peoples mental health, drives wedges between them, and I would argue, doesn’t help the cause he is trying to champion either.

To explain why I think this, lets go for a wander down memory lane… To a simpler time.

When I grew up, and for the early part of my adult life the news was a thing you got in national newspapers on a morning and local papers on an evening. There was also the news every two hours for five minutes on the radio. While on TV the early evening news for half an hour at 6 o’clock, and the evening news at 9 (or 10 if you watched the other side). And that was it. News entered you life in half our segments if you didn’t have better things to do than watch it.

Obviously there was not less news, but there was less news coverage. You knew there was a war on somewhere in the Middle East because Kate Aidie was there in a flack jacket and helmet dodging bombs to report on it. If there was something we needed to know, she would tell us…

Fast forward to the world of 24 hour news cycles and channels, social media et al. And I can not tell you the name of any war correspondent.

I can tell you a lot about war however, which is perhaps a good thing. Wars do not get forgotten, and human suffering does not get forgotten… As long as it a war involving some kind of western political interest. There are many conflicts going on in the world that no one is highlighting but lets not get into that right now. the point is that if you want to know what is going on it is easy to go and find out, and Kate Aidie doesn’t need to tell you.

This is to say a simple google search, a flick through Blue-sky or Twitter, and you will find all the terrible things you could possibly wish to know about. But you have to go look. Which is good, because sometimes you don’t want to. Not because you don’t want to know. Not because you want to close your eyes to the horror of the world. But because you need a break…

Oh for the good old days of half hour news programs you did to need to watch.

So back to my friend, a left wing Christian with a heart in the right place. Slightly left of center just below the four rib… He has very strong opinions about the current genocidal war in Gaza, the Ukraine and British politics. I know this because I know him. I agree with almost 90% of everything he posts on these subjects, the 10% I disagree with is simply because I am slightly less left and more center on some subjects. So to be clear I have no problem with the posts he makes.

The problem I have is the sheer relentlessness of his posts. Five posts on Gaza today, five posts yesterday, five posts the day before that… Every post is about horrible things, terrible things, things I agree we should be righteously angry about. And individually I agree with his sentiments in each of them. Collectively however they are a constant hammer on a nail that is already hammered in place. They make me numb to it all.

I can be angry about Gaza, Thump, Ukraine, The Right Wing and Nigel bloody Farage. I can be angry about all of them. But I can not be angry about all of them all the time. More importantly I don’t want to be.

Another of the things he has said is “If my posts upset you, good they are supposed to be upsetting!” and it is there he loses me. Social media is not the nightly news, I do not go on social media to be upset by the shit going on it the world. I don’t want my friends to constantly post about the horrible things that are happening. Indeed I go on social media for the exact opposite reason, I go there to connect with friends and to get a break from the horrible shit in the world.

I have 24 hour news, news sites for that, and ‘gods forbid,’ twitter. For all the bad shit.

On social media I want to see pictures of my fiends in silly costumes, friends bad jokes and news that makes me smile. If a friend does have bad news to share I want to know about it is the personal bad new like illness or the death of a loved one. Things I can offer support and sympathy for or even a helping hand. Not impersonal news about children been bombed on the Gaza strip. I am already aware of that and it is not something I can do anything about and furthering our awareness of things we are already aware of achieves nothing. It is not like we are unaware to start with.

This is not to say a post now and again is a problem in this regard. I am all in favor of keeping the issue present in the zeitgeist but several posts an hour, every day, constantly, achieves nothing good. It makes people numb to the word and care less not more. It is psychologically damaging, and not just to the ones who’s feed is getting flooded with the horrific but to the one doing the posting to begin with.

We know what is going on in the world, I am probably more aware than most, but I do not need friends to remind me when I am looking to escape from it all for a few moments. Life is short and happiness is a finite, so spread joy not tears.

Here end’th the rant…