“Oh God I’m So Sick of Politics!”

I’ve been sad and down the last few days, mostly by my own self-induced reasons. When I’m feeling down, I find myself avoiding Facebook and photos of everyone’s seemingly happier lives. I also tend to avoid Twitter like the plague. But I do often find myself browsing Imgur, looking for amusing cat pictures. Or I’ll browse Reddit for a bit.

However, I’ve noticed that, even within the more organized categories of Reddit, two things have been seeping through. The first is people talking about politics, particularly USA politics. The second is people complaining about people talking about politics.

“But my social media is full of politics and I hate it!”

I’ve actually been seeing this a lot. Not just on Facebook (which I only really use for family), but on other platforms too. Imgur is the one that stands out the most though, with plenty of people in the comments complaining about the influx of politics. Heck, it’s easily to capitalize on people complaining about politics by making posts about “here’s a break from the politics”.

Things have been particularly shit-show-y for a while, and things got even more crazy just now.

Between the pandemic, various elections across the planet and, yes, Trump losing his reelection bid, there’s been a lot going on. And what better place to discuss this than on the internet? While it’s been a treasure trove for meme creation, there’s in fact so much going on (and, more importantly, being seen) that people get overwhelmed and frustrated. The internet has always been a box full of arguments, cats and memes and current events make for great arguments and great memes.

But there’s been so much more happening, almost non-stop. 2021 has already proven to be as crazy as 2020 was.

Let me put it another way: there was a coup in the USA. People are going to want to talk about it. Everyone is asking questions and demanding answers, and those leak out from their normal hidey-holes. And everyone wants to discuss things on their favourite social media platforms. The politics-o-meter is working overtime and no one’s happy. Especially because tons of people are locked down at home, avoiding a deadly plague, while others protest about their candidate not getting as many votes as the other. And being massive hypocrites as they do so, to the point of storming the capital.

Even for non-Americans though, it’s still concerning.

Most social media sites are very USA-centric anyway. All the biggest ones, like Facebook, Twitter and Imgur, are based in the USA (even if they’re hosted abroard). The main language on these sites is English. The main audiences are English speakers, namely Americans. So of course American politics is going to be brought up regularly.

Of course, the USA is only one country, and many people visit these sites. But it’s also one of the most powerful countries on the planet and the one that has the most nuclear weapons. Even without a nuclear arsenal, the US has a massive military and a massive economic pull. Whatever happens in the USA is bound to have ripples across the entire planet.

This stuff never went away, it’s always been there.

No matter how much you hate politics, the politics has always been there. The chaos has been simmering in the pot for years. But over the last four of them, the lid of that pot has intentionally been lifted. And stirred. Stirred to the point that it’s sloshing all over the edges and making tons of mess.

Now, it’s all out in the open, for literally everyone to see. And doubly so, because we have so many platforms to communicate and react on. Literally everyone has a smart phone or some sort of camera. Not just that, but everyone also has the data to not just upload but live-stream what is happening right now. The picture is no longer fuzzy. We can ALL see what is happening. And we all want to ask questions and find out more about what’s happening.

We shouldn’t silence this discussion.

You may be sick of seeing it, but it’s better to talk these things out, to have discussions and try and change people’s minds. Sure, move political discussions to the right place, but don’t delete it. Large parts of the western world have been ignoring politics for years. And, in doing so, we have slipped away into all the chaos, accumulating into the massive messes we’ve seen since November 2020. The reason why we are here today is because the majority of us are apathetic and don’t care what our leaders do, as long as it doesn’t bother us.

To put it another way, while, yes, social media has been the cause of a lot of disinformation, it’s also allowed more people overall to get involved. This is not going to go away any time soon. In fact, it should probably stick around for a bit.

And if you’re really, really tired of politics, well, there’s plenty of cat pictures and memes on the rest of the internet. You can do a break from being on social media all day anyway.