By JST

 

At first, you might think this is a dictatorial view sending humanity back hundreds or thousands of years, and you might be right! However, with the extreme freedom of speech that social media has provided, we all hope some people would just not share their opinions. There are many examples for people who should not say anything, but to make my point, I will only limit it to five categories:

 

 

The Idiots

These are the people who “discover” something irrelevant and run to their social media accounts to share this new “discovery” with the world. The examples are too many, ranging from the person who thinks the thin membrane separating the layers of an onion is plastic, to the person who thinks that the valve of the wheel is a tracking chip by the government! These people should not have access to social media or any other platform!

 

 

 

The haters

There are far too many of those online these days. They hate for any reason under the sun, religion, creed, race, gender, orientation and whatever else that comes to mind. If anyone says anything, they start wishing ill on some group or the other and trying to enlist the world against that group. Luckily some countries such as the UAE has put laws in place to bring such haters to justice. But that does not stop them from hating!

 

 

The Karens

These are the whistle blowers for things that have no reason what-so-ever. They would become victims for no crime and no injustice. Somehow, these people feel they are bullied constantly and take on the role of a bully. An “offline” example of a Karen is the lady in the US who called the police on an 8-year-old child for selling water on the corner. Of course, this specific story had a racial aspect, but Karen was simply being Karen and there are way too many Kerens online today! They need to just stop!

 

 

The Gurus

By Gurus, I am not referring to the true gurus who are actually enlightened people, but to those who pretend to be gurus. These are the ones who keep filling our feeds with inspirational quotes that have no bearing on their lives at all and in many cases are against what they do. The term “practice what you preach” is a foreign concept to them. They keep telling us to “let go of materialism” but are obsessed with the amounts of likes and comments they get on their posts! They get angry way too much and act on emotions far too many times to be enlightened…and they tell us about it too! They need to either act on their advice or simply be themselves.

 

 

The fake influencers

There is a reason I am referring to the fake Influencers and not generalizing. These are the people who bought their likes and followers. They boast about how many people they have access to but when you look at their posts, you notice that there is little to no interaction from their “followers”. A key rule for Influencers is to be focused on a message or direction in all their posts, yet we see these “wannabe influencers” posting about everything under the sun and not having a single link between posts…just that they look nice. It makes them appear like they are trying anything to see what works. These people need to realize that the higher they climb on a lie, the harder they fall from the truth. They need to know that the water that holds the ship up is the same that sinks it.

 

 

Naturally, the list goes on and there are more categories of people who should not have a voice, but to end this, I will rephrase the title to become “Freedom of expression comes with responsibility”. When your voice is heard by so many, make sure you say something that builds.